Related guide: Community engagement planning: from the decision to a working plan
The Engagement Institute has released Engagement Cortex, a new model for community and stakeholder engagement developed over more than three years across Australia and New Zealand. The decision to proceed has been made, the model is still marked draft, and it is now open for member and practitioner testing before its formal launch.
This article looks at the model as it is currently presented: what it adds, how it compares with the IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation, and what it means for organisations whose engagement framework is built around the Spectrum today. It will be updated as the model and its guidance develop. It sits alongside our guides to community engagement planning and the IAP2 Spectrum in the CE Canvas practice hub.
What is the Engagement Cortex?
Engagement Cortex is the Engagement Institute's next-generation model for contemporary community and stakeholder engagement. The Engagement Institute is the trading name of the International Association for Public Participation Australasia (IAP2 Australasia), so this is a model from within the IAP2 family, not from outside it.
The model was developed by Anne Pattillo, Amanda Newbery and Amy Hubbard for the Engagement Institute. In the Institute's words, it offers "a new way to consider how communities and organisations influence decisions, take action and work together."
Three things set it apart from the Spectrum:
Two halves, not one row. The model has an organisation-led side and a community-led side. When an organisation leads, it describes the levels of community influence on decisions and actions. When a community leads, it describes the levels of support an organisation can give.
Build Understanding at the centre. Engaging respectfully, learning about one another and sharing accurate information in a timely way sits at the centre of the model, underneath every level, rather than as a level of its own.
Decisions and actions. The levels describe influence over what happens as well as what is decided.
The name is deliberate. The cortex is the part of the brain that turns information into decisions, and the Institute uses it to position engagement as "the intelligence of the project".
The levels
Influence increases from left to right across the model. These are the levels and what each commits the organisation to, as published in the draft model. You can view the draft model (PDF) on the Engagement Institute's site.
Organisation-led engagement
Level | What the organisation commits to |
|---|---|
Consult | We seek and consider community and stakeholder feedback. |
Create | We invite communities and stakeholders to be part of creating better solutions. |
Collaborate | We share responsibility for decision-making and action-taking with communities and stakeholders. |
Enable | We enable communities and stakeholders to make informed decisions that we commit to implementing. |
Partner | We build committed partnerships with key community leaders and stakeholders to achieve agreed outcomes. |
Community-led engagement
Level | How the organisation supports communities |
|---|---|
Connect | We support communities to build connections and foster respectful and productive relationships. |
Strengthen | We assist communities to build their capability to act, develop and respond to community needs. |
Cooperate | We invest in communities to work together on key challenges, opportunities and priorities. |
Extend | We encourage communities and their leaders to build diverse networks in their communities. |
Partner | We support communities to partner with others to make shared decisions and to take shared action. |
How it compares with the IAP2 Spectrum
The IAP2 Spectrum has five levels: Inform, Consult, Involve, Collaborate and Empower. It gave practitioners around the world a shared way to say, at the outset, how much influence the public would have in a decision.
Reading the two side by side, as the models are currently published:
Inform is no longer a level. Sharing information moves to the centre, as Build Understanding, and applies to every level. That responds to a long-running problem with the Spectrum: an Inform column that lets a newsletter or a public notice be called engagement. We cover the difference in not every project is an engagement project and community engagement and communication.
Consult and Collaborate keep their names. Create sits where many practitioners would place Involve.
Enable is closest to Empower. Both describe a decision the community makes that the organisation commits to implementing.
Partner is new, describing ongoing partnerships to achieve agreed outcomes rather than a single decision.
The community-led half has no Spectrum equivalent. The Spectrum was written from the decision maker's point of view. Cortex gives organisations a way to describe their role when a community is leading.
This is a reading of the published model, not an official mapping. The Engagement Institute has published its own mapping of Engagement Cortex against previous models, and practitioners should use that as the reference.
The timing matters too. IAP2 International is reviewing the Spectrum itself, and its Spectrum Evolution recommendations, which also move sharing information out of the levels, are with the IAP2 International Board. No final decision has been announced. In September 2026 the Engagement Institute asked that Board to keep the current Spectrum unchanged, with a stronger Purpose Statement and a practical User Guide, and IAP2 USA took the same position. So the Institute's direction is a familiar international Spectrum alongside a new regional model, rather than one replacing the other. How the two sit together in practice is one of the things its guidance will need to make clear, and the fact that both conversations are happening at once says a good deal about whether the profession's tools still reflect the work on the ground.
The opportunity
The clearest opportunity is to make the relationship between community influence and organisational responsibility explicit. The Spectrum describes how much influence the public has. Cortex also describes what the organisation does: what it commits to, what it shares, what it invests in and what it supports. That is closer to how engagement is actually run, particularly where communities are already leading and organisations are deciding how to help.
Moving information sharing to the centre also sets a higher baseline. Every level now assumes respectful engagement and accurate, timely information, rather than treating those as the lowest rung.
The risk
The risk is another framework practitioners have to learn without it making their work any easier.
The Spectrum is not just a diagram. It sits in engagement policies, procurement templates, project plans, significance assessments and council reports. Across the projects we see in CE Canvas, the level of influence chosen at the start shapes the methods, approvals and reporting that follow. Whatever comes next has to work in those documents too, not just in workshops. A framework only protects an organisation when it is applied consistently on every project, which is the gap we explore in operationalising an engagement framework.
That is why the guidance matters as much as the model. The Institute says the testing phase will inform practical guidance, examples, resources and training. The questions that guidance will need to answer are practical ones:
How does an organisation choose between Create and Collaborate on a real project? The answer starts with mapping the decision space: what is genuinely open to influence.
What does a commitment at each level look like in an engagement plan, and in the report that closes the loop?
How should an organisation describe its role when a community-led process meets a statutory decision?
How should organisations in Australia and New Zealand use Cortex alongside the Spectrum, which the Institute has asked IAP2 International to keep?
Regional models and a shared language
Engagement Cortex was developed in and for Australia and New Zealand, drawing on practice there, and the model states that it applies to engagement across all sectors and contexts. That raises a bigger question for the profession. As practice evolves, there may be more models shaped by the contexts and traditions of particular regions, and room for those perspectives is a good thing. The challenge is keeping a shared language across the profession, so that a practitioner, a consultant or a decision maker moving between regions can still describe the same commitment in a way others recognise.
What it means for your engagement framework now
The model is in draft and IAP2 International has not decided on the Spectrum, so there is no need to rewrite an engagement policy or framework yet. There is a lot of useful preparation an organisation can do now:
Find every place the Spectrum appears. Policies, procurement templates, engagement plan templates, significance assessments, report templates, training and approval workflows. That list is the real scope of any future change, and the record of which level each project committed to is what makes engagement defensible.
Check how your framework treats Inform. If information-only activity can currently be counted as engagement, it is worth tightening whichever model you use. Engagement Cortex moves information-sharing to the centre of the model, and IAP2 International's Spectrum Evolution recommendations propose the same, although no decision has been made on them.
Check whether your framework covers community-led work. If it only describes organisation-led processes, Cortex gives you language for the gap.
Take part in testing. The Engagement Institute's feedback survey is open until 30 November 2026 on its Engagement Cortex page. The November Test Labs are full, but the Institute has said more events, including an online session, are coming.
If you would like an outside view of how your current framework holds up, and where a change of model would need to land, our free strategy and framework audit reviews it against six areas of practice. For background, see our guides to community engagement strategy and choosing your engagement level.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Engagement Cortex?
A new model for community and stakeholder engagement from the Engagement Institute (IAP2 Australasia). It describes levels of community influence when an organisation leads engagement, and levels of organisational support when a community leads, with Build Understanding at the centre.
Who developed the Engagement Cortex?
Anne Pattillo, Amanda Newbery and Amy Hubbard developed it for the Engagement Institute, through more than three years of discussion, engagement and research across Australia and New Zealand.
Does the Engagement Cortex replace the IAP2 Spectrum?
Not as the Engagement Institute has framed it. In September 2026 it asked IAP2 International to keep the current Spectrum unchanged, strengthen its Purpose Statement and develop practical guidance, while it develops Engagement Cortex as its next-generation model for Australia and New Zealand. The IAP2 International Board has not announced a final decision on the Spectrum.
What happened to Inform?
It is no longer a level. Sharing accurate information in a timely way is part of Build Understanding, at the centre of the model, and applies to every level.
When will the Engagement Cortex launch?
The Engagement Institute has not announced a launch date. Test Labs run in November 2026 and the feedback survey closes on 30 November 2026, after which the Institute plans to develop implementation guidance, examples, resources and training.
Should we change our engagement framework now?
Not yet. Map where the Spectrum appears in your documents, review how your framework treats information-only activity and community-led work, and take part in the testing so the guidance reflects your practice.
Sources
Engagement Institute: Introducing the Engagement Cortex, including the draft model, guidance note, mapping, FAQs and Test Lab details
Engagement Institute: Continuing the Evolution of the Spectrum Conversation, including the Institute's final position on the Spectrum (21 September 2026)
IAP2 International: Spectrum Evolution, the international review of the Spectrum and its recommendations
IAP2 Spectrum of Public Participation explained (2026), our guide to the Spectrum and IAP2 International's Spectrum Evolution recommendations