You can also read our publication, including the spreadsheets for calculations, here.

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Sciencewise-ERC is funded by the Department of Business Innovation and Skills. It provides advice and funding to support Government departments to commission and run public dialogue on policy relating to science and technology. It also aims to raise awareness among scientists and policy makers about the value of public dialogue. Sciencewise-ERC is internationally recognised as being at the forefront of government-run public dialogue on science.

Involve’s responsibility lies in the areas of thought leadership and embedding engagement across government. With the other partners, we are also responsible for helping to determine the strategic direction  of the programme.

Our specific areas of work include:

• Thought leadership and research: Delivering a variety of thought leadership pieces and research  which highlight to policy makers the value of dialogue and the innovations and practice in the field.
• Creating a Community of Dialogue Practice: Bringing together people from across government to share ideas, access resources, learn from each other and provide mutual support in carrying out and commissioning public dialogue.
• Delivering training and mentoring: Providing hands on support for those across government who want to understand and deliver dialogue and participation.
• Creating a Citizens’ Group: Setting up and supporting a pioneering Citizens’ Group to enable Sciencewise-ERC to engage in direct discussion with members of the public about the design of the whole Sciencewise-ERC programme, its priorities and implementation. 

The programme is running from 2012 – 2015. More information can be found on the Sciencewise Website.

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This year’s audit makes for quite depressing reading, with a number of aspects of political engagement at their lowest levels since the Audit began in 2004. These include, among other things, interest in politics, propensity to vote, satisfaction with the system of governing and frequency of discussing politics, contacting an elected representative and signing a petition. The report sums up people’s feelings towards politics as: ‘Disgruntled, disillusioned and disengaged’.

I recommend reading the full report, which can be found on the Hansard Society’s website, but for a quick summary of the headline findings I thought I’d post some of the tweets from the launch:

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In this session,  Mark Parker explores what modern broad-based organising looks like in practice, where it has come from and how organising can contribute to reviving grassroots democracy. Mark is a community organiser working in Southwark in South London, part of the four-year programme of training in organising delivered by Locality and partners across England.

Creating space for communities to gain their own power is vital to tackling injustice and poverty. Unless people come together and challenge their own expectations and those of their allies, they will never find the ways to control their own destiny.

Here is a recording of the webinar for your interest:

You can also flick through the slides from Mark’s presentation:

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Some thoughts on how to run participation exercises which favour the least powerful.

In a recent post I argued that if government-run participation is going to have a transformative effect on our society, we need to see it as a power struggle. If we don’t, participation is likely to replicate existing power relations, with the same potential for pursuing the interests of the more powerful at the expense of the already disadvantaged. The role of the practitioner, then, is to act as a power broker, and to manage this power struggle in a way which at least gives everyone a fighting chance.

I want to think now about what this would look like in practice. I don’t think the answer is a new methodology. All good advice on running participation should (and often does) consider power in one way or another. But as I’ve argued, a shift is needed if we’re going to see overcoming power inequality as the overarching aim, rather than an add-on.

As a way of starting this off then, I want to suggest one principle to guide decision-making about participation, three things to think about when running participation and finally, a note of warning.

One (working) principle:

Design participation in a way which discriminates in favour of the least powerful participants.

In practice this should mean that when we’re designing a process, we need to stop and think:

• Who are the people who will be affected by this decision?
• Which of these people have the least power and are least likely to participate?
• What do we know about how and why they are most likely to participate?

Then, design a process which works for them.

In a way this is a form of positive discrimination. But rather than weighting responses afterwards, the discrimination happens upfront, in the design of the process. This kind of discrimination is likely to be controversial. But given that most forms of political participation are strongly weighted in favour of the most powerful, and that participation inequality is likely to get worse with austerity measures (you can find yet more critiques on this here and here), I think it’s justified. I’m not proposing excluding anyone; those who want to have their say anyway are still able to do so.

Three things to think about

Thing 1. The messages we send

Making public participation genuinely accessible goes way beyond wheelchair access (though that’s obviously important too!). People not only need to be able to participate, they also need to feel welcome, invited and ideally even ‘at home’ in the form of participation.

The way in which participation takes place speaks volumes to people about ‘who’ the process is for. So often when speaking to citizens about why they don’t want to get involved their response is that ‘it’s not for people like me.’ Choosing a venue in a posh area, or one where alcohol is for sale, or choosing a process which requires a large amount of time, or where there’s no way for children to participate, will all send messages to people about whether or not it’s a process ‘for them’.

In making all these decisions, we need to think about the messages we’re sending – both before and during participation – about who the process is for.

Thing 2. Equalising understanding

In a recent community organising workshop in Leicester, we asked local citizens what got in the way of them participating with the local council. The technical language and the use of acronyms by council officials came up. The woman who mentioned it had overcome this by Googling acronyms after meetings and turning up to the next meeting armed with this new knowledge. But she shouldn’t have to do this, and we know that most people wouldn’t. They’d just leave and probably not come back.

Clear and accessible language is important for two reasons. Most obviously, unless everyone understands the issues, they’re not going to be able to contribute. Not many people can overcome their own pride enough to say that they don’t understand something, and doing so can be a confidence-knocking process. Secondly, though (and following on from Thing 1) complex language is a powerful way of telling people who don’t understand that they shouldn’t be engaging. Or, as Oliver Escobar puts it much more articulately in his recent pamphlet:

At best, we use jargon unwittingly. At worst, we use it as an instrument of power. It becomes a marker of our status, expertise, or authority. It helps us to establish zones of exclusion (untouchable areas) in the conversation, and to justify our monologues, pre-packaged messages, and dominant voices.

While knocking out the jargon and acronyms from all participation is a good first start, given that one in five adults currently struggles to read and write at all, this only gets us so far. Any written material at all still excludes massive numbers of people.

If we’re using our principle correctly, and assuming that those with the lowest literacy levels will correspond roughly to those with the least power, participation should be entirely non-written. There are lots of other ways to communicate – using video, pictures and the spoken word.

I realise that this sounds a bit drastic. But I think this is the level of discussion we need to be having if we’re serious about participation equality.

Thing 3. Equalising voice

People learn and communicate in many different ways, and exploring these can be a powerful equaliser. We know, for example, that running a participation process which requires people to stand up in front of other people and talk at a meeting will put most people off. That doesn’t mean that we can’t include this, but it does mean that we need to think about other ways of doing things.

One example is Planning for Real. This approach brings people together to make a scale model of the area – much easier to understand than a map – and discussions take place through this model. The physicality of the approach allows people to show their needs in a non-confrontational way, rather than explaining or defending them. There is also little or no bias in favour of the articulate or self-confident, and the process can accommodate a wide variety of people (cue photo recently dug out by my dad of me aged 3 looking fairly happily engaged  in just one such process).

Our toolkit on informal participation also includes a range of other methods such as video blogging, which can engage people in different ways.

A final note of caution

I know that for some people, discussion of ‘accessibility’ of information in public participation can ring alarm bells. There’s a danger that they can present a dumbing down of content for public consumption. And yet there’s nothing patronising about using accessible information and participation methods unless you see a hierarchy between different ways of communicating.

However, I think there is another danger here. Because there has traditionally been such a strong hierarchy between different ways of communicating, there’s an entrenched sense that if something doesn’t include some long words and a form to fill in, it’s likely to be less serious and therefore less influential.

When participation is more informal and fun, this does not change government’s responsibility to deliver a process which has integrity – ie. where citizens can influence decisions and in which decisions are fed back to citizens once their views have been considered.

As always I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Image by donielle

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This post explores the challenges of conflict to effective participation. Should we reframe our approach to dealing with conflict in light of the localism agenda?

A few weeks ago Involve and Consumer Focus hosted a seminar to explore ‘where next for localism and co-production?’ Consumer Focus launched their research into participation and active citizenship – ‘Hands Up and Hands On’ at the event. The research identified a number of critical issues that create challenges for participation within communities. One of these issues is conflict. At the seminar I participated in a lively group discussion about the meaning of conflict. A few things stuck with me that I would like to explore a bit more in-depth in this blog post.

Conflict is an almost inevitable part of working with groups of people with different backgrounds, interests and experiences. Conflict can have negative influence on achieving a successful outcome, although it can sometimes act as a trigger for change and progression. In any case, conflict has to be dealt with otherwise it may spiral out of control. So far nothing new. Yet, I believe it is important to think about conflict and how to deal with it in the context of the localism agenda. With ‘dealing with conflict’ I mean to maximize its benefits and minimize its harmful aspects. If we agree that localism requires a rethink of how councillors, community groups and citizens collaborate, then how to deal with conflict should be an integral part of this.

Why do tensions arise?

Participation has many positive affects, but it frequently also involves conflict, within and between groups and communities, and between groups, communities and government. There can be tensions between the local authority and the community, for example due to lack of trust and faith. There can also be negative relations within community groups, for example groups that are perceived as unwelcoming or cliquey by potential participants. Add to this that lots of projects are pressed for time and it’s not hard to imagine conflict being sparked.

Poorly run meetings and lack of action afterwards can have a negative impact as well. The methods used for participation can cause conflict to manifest itself to a greater or lesser extent. Public meetings where a facilitator is spending more time fire fighting issues than actually getting on with the agenda seem to be more common than not. When implementing collaborative projects with community groups, councils and other actors it is crucial to be aware of issues and behaviour that may cause conflict, and to think about how these challenges can be dealt with effectively.

How to deal with conflict

It is not easy to deal with conflict though. We all perceive conflict differently, what is challenging behaviour will vary from one person to the next. People engage in challenging behaviour in order to achieve a certain goal, therefore it is important to understand the purpose of this behaviour and how this can be reconciled.

Easier said than done perhaps, but here are a few thoughts to take away in thinking about how to deal with conflict differently:

• Scope – Overpromising and not delivering can potentially fuel conflict. Being clear about what’s up for grabs will minimise the potential for conflict. People might not agree with the level of influence they can have. However, when you’re transparent about the parameters of the participation from the start, you can always refer back to them.
• Reframing – Reframing the issue or the question can go a long way in turning around a tense situation and changing the discussion into a constructive conversation again. Negative statements can easily put a conversation to a close.
• Strengths – Rather than focussing on the problems and what divides people, it could help to start framing with what you have in common and mapping the strengths. For example, asset based community development is based on a similar principle: look for resources and expertise in the community that can be disclosed and made available for everyone’s benefit. (Have a look at ABCD Europe’s website if you’d like to learn more about asset based community development).
• Terms of engagement – On whose terms are people participating? In order for people to participate, it would be useful if opportunities complement their lives and respond to people’s needs, aspirations and expectations. A mix of methods might be appropriate; a number of parallel spaces where people can contribute to the conversation might be a solution.

Conflicts are there and actually they are not necessarily a bad thing. It’s how you handle conflict that will determine whether it will be constructive or destructive to participation.

I’ll leave you with a statement from the seminar: “Don’t shy away from difficult conversations, be prepared for the complexity of localism”.

Image by: soikha

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One of the best tools to overcome power inequality is bottom-up participation such as Community Organising. However, there is still a need for top-down participation too.

Recently, I suggested that if participation is going to work towards a fairer and more equal society then participation exercises need to challenge existing power imbalances. A number of the comments I received prompted me to think about the different roles for top-down and bottom-up participation in overcoming power inequalities.

Here are two of the comments on my last post:

Naomi Diamond says:

Community organising is the participative process which has been developed specifically to address and overcome power inequalities. Root Solutions Listening Matters, the community organising tool or method which lies at the heart of the OCS funded Community Organisers programme led by Locality explicitly sets out to reach the uninvolved where they are – on the doorstep, in shops, schools and businesses. Only in engaging these people – all of us – in the having a say, getting involved, doing things for themselves, participating in democracy and opposing abuses of power is it possible to ensure a healthy democracy which does not simply concentrate and continue to reinforce power inequalities.

Peter Cruickshank says:

… isn’t there then the risk that [the people running the participatory process] might (inadvertently perhaps) end up acting as self-appointed advocates? Would another approach be to see the process as empowering advocates from within the community?

Both Naomi and Peter seem to be suggesting a shift towards bottom-up participation. My response is yes – absolutely! As Naomi implies, there’s a whole host of work and thought in this area which tackles power inequalities head on, and often very effectively too. This is particularly exciting at the moment with the Community Organising programme picking up steam.

However, it doesn’t address my initial concern about how to manage top-down participation exercises in a way which equalises power. Here I’m talking about participation exercises which are run by government or other bodies in order to involve citizens either in decision-making about individual issues or setting overarching priorities within which decisions need to be taken.

One response would be that we shouldn’t be investing in top-down participation at all, instead focussing all our efforts on bottom-up models. While I think the answer might be to invest much more in bottom-up approaches, I do think we need top-down participation as well. Here’s why:

• Sometimes, government needs to set the agenda. There’s a lot of talk about creating opportunities for citizens to set the agenda for conversations with government, and that’s absolutely right. But citizens also need to respond to government agendas at times. A lot of our work at Sciencewise, for example, is in the area of science and technology innovation. Many of the issues – such as Synthetic Biology and Nanotechnology – are unlikely to crop up on doorsteps as issues that citizens want to campaign on. Many probably don’t even know what they are. And yet they do have an impact, both now and in the future, and it’s right that government gets citizens’ input into decision-making early on.
• Potentially, the structures of top-down participation can be fairer, particularly with more controversial issues. While Community Organising traditionally has quite a structured process for citizens and community leaders to decide on campaign issues, this is currently the exception to the rule. Much more bottom-up participation is in the form of old-fashioned campaigns, an area which is ripe for the domination of the loudest – and best funded – voices. If governments are going to respond to these voices, I believe they have a responsibility to create spaces where a wider selection of citizens are encouraged to deliberate over issues (there have been a number of interesting examples recently which I’ve blogged on before).
• If participation is restricted to bottom-up adversarial activities, we miss the opportunity for more collaboration between citizen and state. Perhaps the ideal scenario is one of co-production – where government and communities set the agenda together. Previously this has focussed largely on the production of services, but there’s no reason why the principle can’t be applied to decision-making. This requires some work from the top-down too – it requires government to leave space in the policy making process for co-production to have an influence and to invest time and resources into supporting citizens in getting involved.

I’m aware that these opinions reveal my own optimism that those in power are worthy of our cooperation and participation. There are some who believe that a functional democracy relies on a less rosy and more combative relationship between citizen and state – one in which we need to be holding government to account in any way possible, not replying to their consultations.

While I see this view too, I don’t think it’s an either/ or. Indeed, I think it needs to be both. We need to build a culture in which we expect government to involve citizens in important decision-making, where we hold them to account when we don’t think they’re doing this well enough, where we work with them to overcome social challenges and make good decisions, and where we also create change ourselves and set our own agendas which we demand government responds to.

I’ll be posting some more practical ideas about how top-down participation might overcome power inequalities later this week.

Image by Hodges

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Edward Andersson discusses what digital technology means for engagement and what the strengths and weaknesses are of engaging online.

A week ago I gave a talk at Government Digital Services on Digital and face to face engagement. This post is a summary of what I said.

First of all I acknowledge that Involve is different from many others in the digital engagement field; we’re not software producers, we’re not trying to sell software and we focus on engagement as whole rather than digital engagement. Our mission is to make the public sector into better commissioners of dialogue and engagement.  I’ll start with the question to what degree digital technology represents a breakthrough?

Two quotes illustrate how differently new technology is interpreted:

“The world is poised on the cusp of an economic and cultural shift as dramatic as that of the Industrial Revolution.” 

Steven Levy (Wired journalist)

“The Internet is a telephone system that’s gotten uppity.”

Clifford Stoll (US Author and astronomer)

My view is that both quotes are true, in their own ways. We tend to overestimate changes in the short term (where many people hype up relatively mundane technologies) and underestimate the shifts in the longer term.

There is a tendency among consultants to create artificial distinctions between digital/online engagement and face to face engagement. Human nature is the same in both settings and of course a badly designed online consultation without a clear purpose is just as much a waste of time as a face to face process without a purpose.

I think people get excited about digital for the wrong reasons.

People often think that the key defining characteristics of digital are:

Speed –The internet is making things go faster, but the obvious question is ‘so what?’. The really big qualitative differences in terms of speed of sending messages happened in the 1860s. Nowadays the speed of communication is already faster than human beings can react to.

Scale –The internet does allow a larger number of people to take part than was possible before. It is a great thing but it can also lead people to focus too much on the number of people taking part. Many of the websites or articles which have attracted the most number of hits do so for the wrong reasons; scandals are great for hit rates but not for much else.

Cost–The Internet does have the possibility of reducing the costs of engagement; while this is true it is often oversold by consultants.

There are also very good reasons for shifting to Digital which are often overlooked:

Enabling -Digital technologies allows the third sector and individuals to self-organise and do things that in the past the council would have to do. This opens up tremendous opportunities (if we are willing to give up some control).

Networking –the Internet opens up possibilities of networking people who wouldn’t normally meet, for reasons of time, space and who they are.

Flexible -finally the nature of digital information allows comparison, aggregation, mashing up data, and ability to make it easily accessible. And to make lots of different sorts of outputs which would not be possible using pen and paper.

There are of course areas were online engagement doesn’t work as well as face to face, for example:

• Deliberation – if you want to get at people’s well informed and considered opinions you will find this hard going on the Internet where people’s attention spans are shorter than if you have them face to face in front of you.
• Conflict –Body language and tone of voice play a key role in deterring overt hostility. Neither of these are present online. It is perhaps unsurprising that unconstructive conflicts are more likely in an online setting.
• Ownership –It is easier to create a sense of team or group and a common agenda face to face than it is online.

I’m not saying it is impossible to do any of this online, just that it is more difficult.

But of course it is not an either/or. In many cases face to face and online complement each other; and of course let’s not forget that digital technology can be used in face to face meetings as well.

Adding digital technology to face to face engagement allows:

• Scale and deliberation –in the past there was a trade off; once the meeting hit a certain size it became impossible to run a deliberative process with the whole group. Today thanks to networked laptops and electronic voting pads we can engage thousands in simultaneous deliberation, as America Speaks have shown.
• Quick aggregation of views –anyone who has used sticky dot voting or other analogue ways of aggregating information in a large group will know how frustrating the delay can be for organisers and participants alike. With digital technology this process can be near instantaneous.
• Different levels for different people –digital technology allows you to adapt the engagement to different needs. Those with little time can access the meeting remotely whilst those who wish to commit more to the process can attend in person.

I’ve seen a few interesting examples of the critical interplay between face to face and online engagement:

The award winning Geraldton 2029 process in Western Australia has made use of a wide array of face to face and digital processes in determining the future of the town.  4000 people have been actively involved through world cafés, online surveys, online moderated deliberation, 21st century town hall meetings™, community events to celebrate milestones including BBQs. They have also used the local Newspaper facebook page heavily. What I like about the Geraldton process is how they have understood the strengths of face to face and online and worked with both.

-          The Crowdsourced Icelandic constitution has been in the news a lot over the last few months.  The Constitutional council has drafted and posted clauses each week open for public comment, and has live streamed their proceedings. The focus has often been on the online elements but it was made possible by in depth face to face deliberation, both from the elected Constitutional Council and a randomly selected national forum.

So to sum up my key points from my presentation:

• Start with a clear purpose, not with the method. Only decide if online is suitable after having gone through a clear thought process balancing up benefits and downsides.
• Play to the strengths of digital –don’t use online or face to face methods for what they are not good for.
• The ‘Field of Dreams approach (‘Build it and they will come’) to online engagement doesn’t work; you will need to go to the sites and platforms where people are.

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This post is drawn from involve’s newsletter. You can sign up to the newsletter on the homepage. 

I wrote a couple of weeks ago announcing that we are joining forces with AEA Technology and the British Science Association to deliver the Sciencewise-ERC programme. Rather than reprise that post and outline the key elements of the next phase, I now want to highlight a new element of the programme that we are really excited about – the development of a Citizen Group.

A short article on the Sciencewise website from last year notes the potential benefits from involving citizens in the co-regulation of science and science policy. At the same time it highlights the distinct lack of examples of where this has happened in practice. As we were developing our proposal we felt that the next phase of Sciencewise presented an opportunity to pilot an approach to bring the voices of citizens into the heart of the programme. The idea of the Citizen Group was born.

For this next phase of Sciencewise, its Steering Group will be reformed with a revitalised membership drawn from a similar range of stakeholder groups. The Group will provide strategic guidance and advice to the Sciencewise programme and BIS, the government department responsible for its direction.

A significant difference, however, will be the addition of the Citizen Group.

This is no peripheral add on. Those involved in the strategic direction of the programme will hear the views of citizens directly through the deliberations that take place between the Group’s members. In addition, two people from the Citizen Group will sit on the Steering Group to represent members’ views. We are aiming for the Citizen Group to be at the heart of the Steering Group’s work.

The Citizen Group will be made-up of members of the public who are not experts in the fields of science or public dialogue. The aim is that it reflects the diversity of the people who took part in previous Sciencewise dialogues, as far as is feasible. As more dialogues take place, membership will be renewed.

Because members of the Citizen Group have taken part in previous dialogues, they have valuable contextual knowledge which will be important in informing the development of new dialogues. The Citizen Group will act as a critical friend, testing the soundness of the proposals, reality checking key decisions and asking questions that may not have been considered by the experts. We hope that the Citizen Group will bring a fresh perspective to the programme which will help to encourage innovation.

This is a pilot. While we are excited about it, we are also aware that there are many things we are going to have to get right. Before we establish the exact form and process of the Group we are looking for examples of where groups like this have been used effectively (or not) before. Can you point us to any examples, lessons we must learn or people we should speak to?

If the pilot is successful, we expect it to become a powerful case study of how citizens can be involved in an on-going basis in the development and running of government programmes dealing with complex and controversial topic areas.

Image by Minneapolis Institute of Arts

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It drew upon recent primary research into participation and active citizenship – ‘Hands Up and Hands On’, launched at the event by Consumer Focus, and ‘Pathways through Participation’, by NCVO, IVR and Involve – as well as some case studies of localism and co-production being put into action.

The event started with a welcome and introduction from Alison Hopkins (Consumer Focus) and Edward Andersson (Involve), followed by a presentation of the findings and implications of the two pieces of research by Liz Coll (Consumer Focus) and Tim Hughes (Involve).

This was followed by responses from Marek Lubelski (Luton Borough Council) and Deirdre McGrath (London Civic Focum) and a buzz session, where participants spoke to their neighbours about the research.

Next on the agenda were five mini case studies of existing work where localism and/or co-production are being put into action:

• Caroline Miller spoke about the ‘Clissold Park User Group’ – a community group which gives a voice to park users.
•  Deirdre McGrath spoke about the experience of supporting two, quite different, community groups to reopen libraries in a London borough.
• Marek Lubelski spoke about Luton Council’s work to transform the way it involves citizens – developing a dialogue with communities to identify and agree priorities, and negotiate how to approach them together.
• Mary Burguieres spoke about work beginning in two deprived areas of Surrey to change how public organisations interact with those communities – starting to co-create and co-produce with them.
• Frankie Hine-Hughes spoke about a project in Solihull which established a group of community champions, working with public organisations, to clear up the local area.

The seminar finished with participants splitting into groups to discuss the issues of power and inequality, conflict, the “usual suspects”, and efficacy and trust, and then feeding their thoughts back to everyone.

To find out more about what was discussed at the seminar, an event report can be found here: http://wherenextlocalism.posterous.com/

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