Our company has been using appreciative inquiry, and specifically appreciative conversations, to help a large metropolitan borough council in the UK to develop a vision of 2021 for its various communities. We have created an AI conversation master guide that allows people who we are working with to carry out detailed AI conversations with people from a range of organisations and interests in the borough. We have synthesised the scripts from the conversations into two composite documents, in effect propositions for 2021, that encapsulate the key hopes and dreams of those we’ve spoken with for the community they live, work and do business in. These were shared at a major conference of the local strategic partnership (LSP) for the borough in late 2006 and more widely via the LSP’s website. We have had excellent feedback from some of those we’ve had the conversations with about the simplicity and power of the questions we’ve asked. The questions have assisted us to ‘mine’ a significant seam of pride in and hope for their community. To limit costs to the client, we have concentrated our consultancy effort not on the more time consuming and therefore potentially expensive in fee terms conversations, but in working with officers from the LSP’s constituent organisations to introduce them to AI and give them confidence to use AI for themselves. Our effort has been to then take the scripts from the conversations and create the synthesised propositions for 2021. This programme has the potential to touch many hundreds and thousands of residents and other stakeholders if we can continue to identify and train those interested in using AI to carry out conversations. Another goal is for a community-based conference to be held later in 2007 where the developing propositions can be shared more widely and developed ‘real-time’ by large numbers of residents.