Laurie Drake is an experienced facilitator working as the Director of Research and Learning with MASS LBP in Canada. She comes to facilitation, as many do, via teaching and this explains her strong focus on the learning elements of deliberative processes. Laurie is passionate about the power of deliberative mini-publics to improve democracy broadly and...Continue reading
Episode 30: A scientific perspective on deliberation with Chris Forman
Links: What unmet needs could be met by deliberation? Deliberation Gateway Dr Chris Forman graduated in 1999 with a Masters in theoretical physics from Edinburgh University. He spent four years doing defence research in the UK, first with DERA and then QinetiQ in satellite communications before returning to education in 2004 to complete a...
Episode 29: Deliberation planning with Anna Kelderman
Unusually for a town planner, Anna Kelderman does her own facilitation of engagement processes and sees it as a natural and effective way to do town planning. She wishes more of her planning colleagues would do their own public deliberations with diverse groups to co-design their futures. In this episode, Anna shares what she has...Continue reading
Episode 28: Perspectives on Facilitation with Scott Newton
A slice of history since this was recorded with Scott Newton a year-and-a-half ago when he was less experienced with public deliberations than he is now. However, it’s illuminating to hear the voice of a rookie. Even though Scott was familiar with facilitating workshops and public meetings, this conversation follows his first foray into the...Continue reading
Episode 27: New to deliberative democracy – The Madrid Observatorio with Arantxa Mendiharat
Arantxa Mendiharat was relatively new to the field of deliberative democracy when this was recorded in May 2019. She was also involved with an exciting project in Madrid that she helped design and implement — a combination of direct and deliberative democracy that was written into the city’s laws. Arantxa has gained a great...Continue reading
Episode 26: Learning from an experienced facilitator with Max Hardy
Max Hardy was one of the earliest adopters in Australia of deliberative methods such as citizens’ juries. Currently, he is working primarily with local and state governments and government authorities. After many years Max has retained his early enthusiasm for facilitating public deliberations, in particular collaborating with citizens in order to deal with complexity....Continue reading
Episode 25: The skills of an experienced facilitator with Marcia Dwonczyk
Marcia Dwonczyk has been facilitating for decades and it shows. Her tremendous experience will be invaluable for those who are new to facilitating public deliberations. Marcia’s primary role is on the Leadership Team of the international Partnership Brokers Association but she has also facilitated a number of public deliberations in Australia. Here she compares...Continue reading
Episode 24: Facilitation and Open Government with Don Lenihan
Dr Don Lenihan is Co-Chair of Open Government Partnership’s Practice Group on Dialogue and Deliberation. He is an extremely-experienced facilitator with a willingness to share his immense experience with others. Much of his thinking, along with input from others in seven countries, can be found in the guides developed by the OGP Practice Group....Continue reading
Episode 23: Long-form deliberation – Perspectives from experienced and new facilitators with Kaela Scott and Dominic Ward
Kaela Scott and Dominic Ward from Involve UK come together in this episode to share their experience of facilitating long-form deliberations like citizens’ assemblies. They cover how to structure one and how to adapt that plan for different circumstances. They also offer their experience of facilitation training: one as an extremely experienced facilitator and...Continue reading
Episode 22 Part 2: Techniques for deliberation with Wendy Faulkner
Wendy Faulkner has an academic background as well as an enormous amount of practical wisdom to offer in this conversation which has been split into part (1) and part (2) because of its length. Wendy and her colleagues have produced an incredibly useful handbook that they generously share with others, and also offer some...