Charrette

French word meaning “little cart”. A little cart was originally used during the 19th century by art and architectural students to carry their work to the university in Paris. As they moved along the country roads en route to the university, farmers, innkeepers, and everyone else they passed would suggest improvements to finish their designs. Hence, the final work would be a “charrette design” with input by the general public against a tight deadline. Architects used the principle to involve the client and other related people in the design process. The Charrette used today for community futures planning is an intensive face-to-face process carefully designed to bring people from various segments of society into consensus within a short period of time – usually 3–5 days, but one-day and two-week Charrettes have occurred. The pre-charrette planning may last three to six months to identify the key issues, information, and experts needed to address the issues, and include all the stakeholders in the final design. The Charrette is a process of about four to ten discussion groups reporting to the whole Charrette for feedback, and then returning to the groups to further improve progress based on the feedback, and then reporting again to the whole Charrette for feedback. It pulses back and forth between the meeting of the whole and meetings in groups until the deadline is reached. At the deadline, all the groups give their final reports to the whole Charrette, plus the news media, government officials, or the larger public drawn to the final event through media coverage during the process. Charrettes vary in size, from 50 participants to over 1,000 people.