Some reflections on, and tips about, deliberative engagement processes

There’s a growing community of practitioners out there talking, thinking and experimenting with deliberative engagement processes. I happen to be one of them, and I’ve just facilitated my 80th deliberative process. My first was back in 1998, which I presented on at an IAP2 Conference in Banff the following year, sharing a session with the…

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It’s always a Leap of Faith: Reflections on a ‘successful’ deliberative process that never delivered

Max Hardy (Max Hardy Consulting) and Anna Kelderman (Shape Urban) Designing and facilitating deliberative engagement processes have been among our most satisfying professional experiences, though they don’t always come to plan. Several years ago, we teamed up to work on a very challenging project to create a new planning strategy that identifies increased infill development…

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Scoping under the microscope

I’ve been wanting to blog about how we can better scope and define projects for quite some time, especially for authentic co-design. Now we have a tool to move beyond the binary negotiable/non-negotiable approach in project development I couldn’t resist any longer.  We all know it’s handy when engaging the community, to differentiate between project…

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How safe is it to participate?

Something we don’t discuss much is the importance of the ‘do no harm’ principle when engaging the community (especially relevant now with the Covid-19 pandemic). Anthony Boxshall and I identified ‘people feeling unsafe’ as one of the key challenges to co-design. We rely on bringing together a diverse community of interest, but what do you…

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How to ensure the ‘community’ helps frame the shared agenda

Over the last month, Liz Weaver, Vice President, Tamarack Institute and I have been engaged in an email exchange puzzling out the answers to many wicked questions about collective impact and community change. Below is part I of V, where we discuss how to ensure a community agenda not just a shared agenda. How do we ensure…

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