Facilitating Public Deliberations

This is a conversation in two parts with Chad Foulkes from Liminal by Design and Viv McWaters from Creative Facilitation, both of whom are skilled facilitators. The aim was to replicate an earlier brainstorming session that took place among a larger group of facilitators. The discussion is about how to use the ‘marginal times’ to create group cohesion online. New ideas emerged throughout the conversation, as well as recalling many that were borrowed from others.

About Dark Angels writing: 

https://darkangelswriters.com/about/approach/

The Naked Facilitator on-line series: 

http://thenakedfacilitator.mystrikingly.com

The Surprising Science of Meetings by Steven G. Rogelberg

Talk on the Surprising Science of Meetings

Carson’s chapter on The Telephone as a Participatory Mechanism (1999)

Lists of online facilitation, engagement and deliberation tools:

• https://www.involve.org.uk/resources/blog/opinion/digital-tools-participation-where-start
• http://www.participatedb.com/categorizationshttp://www.participatedb.com/categorizations
• https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lPIlL4Cktzse5xKeIbMz0C6s747neqO6vUD0K_JAAjY/edit?pli=1
• http://www.deliberatelyengaging.com.au/2020/04/01/virtual-engagement-neednt-be-second-best/
• https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1NyrEU7n6IUl5rgGiflx_dK8CrdoB2bwyyl9XG-H7iw8/mobilebasic?usp=gmail
• https://www.publicvoice.co.nz/lets-get-digital-52-tools-for-online-public-engagement/

Music acknowledgement.

Susanna Haas Lyons has 15 years’ experience, designing and facilitating in both face-to-face and online environments. Here she generously shares her knowledge of multiple tools, as well as expressing her deep concern about how best to achieve equity and include diverse input, as well as building civic capacity.

LINKS FOR RESOURCES MENTIONED BY SUSANNA

National Issues Forum

Common Ground for Action Online Forums

Digital Engagement Social Media & Public Participation IAP2 Canada white paper written by Susanna Haas Lyons

Public Participation Technology in a Time of social distancing slides and webinar recording

IAP2 Canada June 8-11, 2020: Social Media and Public Participation: How to design and host effective digital public engagement, online course

Digital Public Engagement Tools, collaborative in-progress list of digital tools.

Music acknowledgement.

Leanne Piggott is an award-winning and highly-skilled curriculum designer and university teacher. Public deliberations require deep learning by participants who come to a gathering with different levels of knowledge and understanding about a topic.

As facilitators increasingly move public deliberations online, understanding the principles of transformative learning has become even more important. Anything less keeps us in the domain of opinion collection only and deliberative democracy promises so much more than that. Leanne Piggott shares her approach to adult learning in this interview. It will be of value to all deliberative designers.

Leanne refers to Mezirow's transformation theory and Garrison et al's learning framework as well as Salmon's five-stage model.

Music acknowledgement.

Leanne Piggott is an award-winning and highly-skilled curriculum designer and university teacher. Public deliberations require deep learning by participants who come to a gathering with different levels of knowledge and understanding about a topic.

As facilitators increasingly move public deliberations online, understanding the principles of transformative learning has become even more important. Anything less keeps us in the domain of opinion collection only and deliberative democracy promises so much more than that. Leanne Piggott shares her approach to adult learning in this interview. It will be of value to all deliberative designers.

Leanne refers to Mezirow's transformation theory and Garrison et al's learning framework as well as Salmon's five-stage model.

Music acknowledgement.

Emily Jenke is a very experienced facilitator of public deliberations. She is a Co CEO of democracyCo. In early 2020 she was taken out of her comfort zone when Covid-19 forced the world into physical isolation. Emily and her colleagues were mid-project, having started face to face. They were now forced online. This episode is one facilitator’s story. Emily Jenke, previously sceptical about deliberation online, began with trepidation and finished with enthusiasm. Emily shares the lessons that she learnt here and in her blog.

Music acknowledgement.

Professor Graham Smith is a Professor in Politics at the University of Westminster, London. Graham has a wealth of experience with deliberative democracy.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to some swift re-design among those who facilitate face-to-face public deliberations. In this episode, Graham Smith raises many interesting questions and offers some warnings as well. But, importantly, the conversation ends with a level of excitement about the potential for deliberative designers to radically improve the practice of public deliberations through online experimentation.

Music acknowledgement.

Dr Oliver Escobar is an academic at the University of Edinburgh and has offered training in facilitation for public deliberations for more than a decade. It is this training that provides the focus of the podcast conversation.

Oliver is unusual because of this combination of scholarship and being an experienced trainer. In this interview, he explains the background and theory behind the training program, as well as the people who offer themselves for learning and considerable detail about the training itself. Oliver and his team are growing the field of skilled UK facilitators in very impressive ways.

Oliver has written a monograph Public Dialogue and Deliberation: A communication perspective for public engagement practitioners 

Oliver also works with

What Works Scotland

Beltane Public Engagement Network

Edinburgh Futures Institute 

Oliver and Stephen Elstub wrote the Research Note ‘Forms of Mini-publics…’

You can find out more about the book Oliver and Stephen edited, the Handbook of Democratic Innovation and Governance, as well as read two open-access chapters.

Music acknowledgement.

Matthew Taylor is the Chief Executive of RSA, an organisation whose people are thinking about new models for change, influencing policymakers, practitioners and the public to effect long-lasting change. In this podcast, recorded in 2019, Matthew talks about building mandates for change while ‘thinking like a system and acting like an entrepreneur’. The RSA has deliberative democracy as a core strategy to address anachronistic ways of governing, as well as winning legitimacy for political decisions. The conversation travels from Ancient Athens to contemporary UK and RSA’s strong advocacy for public deliberation.

RSA

Matthew's blog

RSA podcasts

David Runciman's podcast - Talking Politics

Music acknowledgement.

Two seasoned players in the deliberative field: one from a research foundation, the other from a consulting firm. Iain Walker (newDemocracy Foundation) and Nicole Hunter (Mosaic Lab) bring a wealth of experience to a discussion about public deliberations.

They explore: identifying the policy challenge, timeliness, convincing elected representatives, knowing what the most appropriate process would be, what commitment is the decision-maker prepared to make and challenges that arise with polarised communities.

They also, together, reflect on facilitation that works well, Nicole as an experienced facilitator, Iain as an observer of many mini-publics.

newDemocracy Foundation projects

Democracy in Geelong

Nuclear Fuel Cycle Engagement

Music acknowledgement.

British Columbia led the way with a citizens’ assembly in 2004, a deliberative method which has been deeply influential among deliberative democrats. In 2006 a similar process, the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform was undertaken in Ontario.

Peter MacLeod was part of the secretariat that oversaw the Students' Assembly on Electoral Reform which ran alongside the Ontario Citizens' Assembly and whose findings were presented to the Citizens' Assembly.

Peter has applied the principles of those democratic innovations to make it a routine occurrence in Canada. He’s done this through his efforts with MASS LBP over the past decade, using civic lotteries and long-form deliberations, among other methods.

Peter offers a model for working closely with the public sector and everyday people in constructive ways. This particular episode would resonate for those charged with the difficult task of overseeing government decisions.

Fran Peavey’s Listening Post

Music acknowledgement.