When thinking about how to pay tribute to Simon Burall and his contribution to deliberative democracy I returned to his paper Room for a View. I had read the paper when it was first published, in 2015. In 2016, Simon invited me to join the Involve team bidding to manage the Sciencewise programme. I couldn’t think of anyone better to work with. I’d known him since 2009, when he became Director at Involve and found him engaging, creative and principled. He brought practical expertise and intellectual curiosity to his work. I knew that working alongside Simon, in his position as Director of the Involve Sciencewise team, would give me an opportunity to learn and practise with one of the best.
In Room for a View, Simon described two forms of insight gained by policy makers from citizens involved in Sciencewise mini-publics. The first is “how citizens form their views (or preferences). Well designed deliberative processes provide citizens and policy makers with the space and time to reflect on their own views and those of others.” (p20)
Simon knew that Sciencewise dialogues aren’t just about the findings: they are about the journey that those involved go on - publics, policy makers, specialists and the people running a process. They are about the reflections that inform which routes they take through the issue at hand and how they settle (or don’t) the trade-offs involved. In deliberative dialogue, people negotiate with others who may share very different views, to arrive at solutions in line with their values. A description I have often used of Sciencewise dialogues, that differentiates them from other forms of mini-publics that aim for consensus, comes from Simon: he said dialogues were about understanding the diversity of views on a particular topic and the values that inform those views.
Many of the conversations I had with Simon were mobile: we walked to and from workshops, between meetings or on the way to the station at the end of a day. Walking conversations tend to set the mind free. One thing I remember talking about with him was the importance of starting the deliberative journey from where people feel comfortable, confident and able to contribute. Rather than bombard them with facts and policy directions from the outset, why not release their imaginations first, with some science fiction? In this example, he is talking about AI.
He didn't see deliberation as a dry exercise in public reason but as a practice engaging people's emotions, hopes and fears as well as their reasoned arguments. Simon knew that people involved in Sciencewise dialogues put the world together in a different way to the decision makers who commission them. Not being confined by the lines that define disciplinary or sectoral interests, and with their imaginations pumped, dialogue participants make surprising links between issues.They ask insightful questions and create novel and thoughtful solutions to problems. This links to the second insight mentioned in Room for a View: policy makers can find that deliberative processes "move beyond answering the specific questions that policy makers arrived with [...and...] open up new, important questions they hadn’t thought of, and can identify new solutions too. " (p21).
What happens in the deliberative space - workshop, online platform or whatever - is not sufficient. Simon wanted people’s voices and values to be heard by those in power. When reviewing Sciencewise business cases for prospective dialogues he returned again and again to a single question: what impact will this project have? Simon wanted the voices and values of dialogue participants to be heard by decision makers with the power to change people’s lives for the better. He was a systems thinker, as is evident in Room for a View, and thought about how Sciencewise projects fit into a wider framework of power and influence. But he wasn’t just a theorist. Rather, he combined his commitment to deliberative democratic values with a pragmatic approach that led to practical steps.
HIs sheer persistence and focus on the quality and impact of deliberative practice helped to make Sciencewise increasingly attractive to policy makers and researchers. He paid attention to what was practically possible within the particular political and institutional context. He was a natural networker, not because he could schmooze, but because he was passionate about his practice and had an unusual capacity to combine ideals and ideas. It is this, perhaps, that did most to steer Sciencewise through its most fragile and hard to navigate moments. His attention to real-world impacts - in the deliberative space and in the real-world - has ensured its most valuable and enduring quality. The programme is flourishing now to such a degree that it risks going mainstream. It could not have got there without Simon.