In undertaking the CEDAR project over the last three years, there has been a vast accumulation of knowledge and experiences in processes and issues relating to community economic development.
In this paper we aim to capture some of our experiences in engaging with communities and share these experiences with other practitioners and the wider stakeholder community so as to contribute to building collective knowledge on this subject. The paper is intended to be a resource for those embarking on or keen to engage with communities, whereby they can learn and build on our experiences. It highlights our processes of engaging with communities, our key challenges in building a meaningful relationship with communities/community groups and emergent principles of engagement that can be considered in future work.