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The newDemocracy Foundation
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24.01.2022 Jim Rough is a social innovator and Director of the Center for Wise Democracy. Jim Rough started thinking about Dynamic Facilitation in a timber mill in Buffalo, New York. An unlikely beginning for a process that is now embedded in one Austrian state and has been used in multiple countries. This podcast episode explores Dynamic Facilitation and Wisdom Councils and makes connections between choice creation and deliberative democracy.
24.01.2022 Interesting Facebook Live this Wednesday night with our very own Iain Walker on the panel talking about the impact of social media on Victorian elections.
24.01.2022 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. He covers some of that helpful content in this podcast episode.
23.01.2022 Bobbi Allan was randomly selected for a public deliberation in early 2018. Coincidentally, she has a background as a facilitator so can offer an unusual perspective as she describes the residual effect of a deliberative experience.
22.01.2022 The deliberative wave is sweeping the world. Citizens' juries are being used to address diverse topics but a recurring one is climate change. Climate Assemblies and Conventions in the UK and France. Where else? #deliberativedemocracy #citizensjuries #climatechange
22.01.2022 An interesting conversation between Lyn Carson, nDF Board member and research director, and Scott Millar from Collaboration Dynamics on his podcast Cool Collaborations. Talking about deliberative democracy and collaboration. https://podcasts.apple.com//5-lyn-carson-exp/id1534920376
21.01.2022 This conversation is with Rhiann McLean (in Scotland) and Max Hardy (in Australia). Both are dedicated to amplifying the voices of people with disabilitythrough research and public deliberations. LINKS available on https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/category/library/podcast/
20.01.2022 The Athens Democracy Forum is online this year and totally free to participate. Lots of interesting speakers, but specifically a great chance to hear from Annika Savill, the head of the UN Democracy Fund, a real champion of deliberative innovations. Register here: https://www.athensdemocracyforum.com/registration ... Athens Democracy Forum
20.01.2022 As we draw this podcast series to a close, it’s fitting to take a global perspective on public deliberation with Claudia Chwalisz who leads the OECD’s work on innovative citizen participation. Claudia is co-authoring a number of influential reports, convening a global network and maintaining an online digest, Participo. Catching the Deliberate Wave report Leading Deliberative Democracy short course... Doing Deliberative Democracy short course
17.01.2022 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 trainer, the other as an enthusiastic beginner.
17.01.2022 Excited to be partnering with the UTS Institute For Sustainable Futures to deliver Leading Deliberative Democracy, a new short course specifically designed for elected representatives, senior decision-makers and leaders within organisations. Registrations are now open and this online course will start on 1 February 2021.
16.01.2022 Dr Chris Foreman 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 Cambridge in 2004 to complete a Masters in Nanotechnology and a PhD in Protein Engineering at Cambridge University UK graduating in 2010. He took two postdocs - one in bio-inspired manufacturing and one in computational simulations... of proteins. He moved to the US for a research position at Northwestern University in 2016 and currently he researches how to build computers out of chemicals with a view to changing the way that we manufacture materials to be more like biology. In 2015, during his second postdoc, he became local area co-ordinator for 38 Degrees in Cambridge and organised and facilitated many public seminars, injecting scientific reasoning into helping locals discuss topics of interest to them. On transferring to the US he became a Fellow of the RSA and in that capacity is the director of Deliberation Gatewaya national RSA-US network supporting the conversion of the US democracy to deliberative democracy. He is also on the co-ordination committee of Democracy Without Electionsa new grassroots organisation that is the US off-shoot of the Sortition Foundation, and he is the founder of Community Deliberation Networka local society at Northwestern University which promotes and teaches the proper use of deliberation. He has recently co-authored a book entitled Brave Green World which is published by MIT Press and will be available in March 2021.
15.01.2022 Linn Davis leads Healthy Democracy’s program development and process design. He coordinates Healthy Democracy’s complex public processes, trains its facilitation teams, and consults on deliberative projects in the U.S. and abroad. In this episode, recorded prior to the pandemic’s impact, Linn explains the Citizens’ Initiative Review (CIR) and the skills needed for excellent facilitation in volatile political circumstances.
15.01.2022 This is part 2 of Wendy Faulkner's interview. Wendy 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 excellent facilitation training from their base in Scotland.
13.01.2022 A quick reminder that newDemocracy Foundation is partnering with the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures in delivering this short online course for decision-makers about deliberative democracy. The course starts on 1 February and is self-paced interactive online modules ending with a live webinar to hear from leaders who have already experienced the benefits of deliberative processes to help resolve their 'hard' problems. Register now!
13.01.2022 'Doing democracy better' Luca Belgiorno-Nettis on Australian radio this morning talking about Citizen Assemblies, in particular, the French Citizens' Convention on Climate and whether it would work in Australia. Luca thinks it would!
12.01.2022 This is a conversation with Nicole Hunter, Keith Greaves and Kimbra White, the founders of MosaicLab. It covers what happens in the room with a face-to-face long-form deliberation when MosaicLab facilitators are at work. This episode contains an enormous amount of practical advice: the physical space, co-facilitation, templates, report writing, managing data and conflict, as well as many of the creative activities they use routinely.
11.01.2022 In 2017 the former secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, said: We need to make our democracies more inclusive. This requires bold and innovative reforms to bring the young, the poor and minorities into the political system. An interesting idea would be to reintroduce the ancient Greek practice of selecting parliaments by lot instead of election. In other words, parliamentarians would no longer be nominated by political parties, but chosen at random for a limited term, in the way many jury systems work. This would prevent the formation of self-serving and self-perpetuating political classes disconnected from their electorates.
10.01.2022 Dr Kath Fisher is an extremely experienced professional facilitator. She is also an academic at Southern Cross University (Lismore, Australia). In this episode, Kath shares some of her journey and offers a number of useful techniques that she uses routinely in public deliberations. You can find the documents Kath refers to on the newDemocracy Foundation website page for this podcast: https://www.newdemocracy.com.au/category/library/podcast/
10.01.2022 Thanks for the shout out Participedia. Totally agree on the importance of facilitators to deliberative processes.
09.01.2022 Laurie Drake is an experienced facilitator working as the Director 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 for individuals. In Episode 8 we interviewed Peter MacLeod also from MASS LBP about their approach to designing and delivering deliberative processes.
09.01.2022 Lucy Cole-Edelstein has over 30 years’ experience as an engagement practitioner, as a facilitator and process designer. She established and ran a successful consultancy, Straight-Talk, for some of those years and later sold her company to RPS with whom she now works. In this episode, Lucy shares several activities that build the group’s skill set and pave the way for the choice-work that is integral to public deliberation. Visit newDemocracy’s podcast page to access the DOPE test handout.
08.01.2022 Abbie Jeffs has a background in urban planning and public policy but was an excellent facilitator in a successful consultancy, Straight-Talk, for many years. She’s now working for a public sector organisationa loss for the field of public deliberationalthough Abbie remains a strong advocate. She has much wisdom to impart in this episode and several terrific tools.
08.01.2022 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 world of public deliberations, co-facilitating a citizens’ jury. Scott is a very accurate observer of group process and the key role of the facilitator.
07.01.2022 Rosa Zubizarreta is an American group facilitation practitioner and theorist and the founder of DiaPraxis. This episode is a companion piece with a previous episode that featured Jim Rough, the original designer of Dynamic Facilitation and Wisdom Councils. In the conversation with Rosa, the focus is on relational facilitation: attending to the emotional work of deliberation to order to enable a group to fully realise its goals.
07.01.2022 Citizens' juries and other representative deliberative processes are, in many ways, similar to juries used in criminal and other legal processes. The impact of CoVid has moved lots of face-to-face processes online or to cancel them altogether. In the UK it has been suggested that the trials stop using juries with the agreement of the advocates. ... 93 per cent of lawyer rejected this proposal, even though it would allow their work to resume after the courts have not been holding trials for months. ‘A good jury turns into a little community, working together in the interests of justice.’
07.01.2022 Jason Diceman is an experienced facilitator based in Toronto, Canada. He created a very useful tool, Feedback Frames (previously in the form of Idea Rating Sheets and, earlier, Dotmocracy templates). His latest invention enables score-voting on participant-generated ideas, rather than a crude survey or voting tool. It’s being used throughout the world and deserves attention from those who facilitate public deliberations.
06.01.2022 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. Here Max shares some of the important lessons that he has learned over several decades.
06.01.2022 Dominik Hierlemann is a Senior Expert, Participation in Europe at Bertelsmann Stiftung. Dominik heads the project Democracy and Participation in Europe. He facilitates large-scale public deliberations in Europe with multiple languages and diverse cultures. In this episode, we explore the unexpected benefits that can arise from that when facilitation is done well.
05.01.2022 Kara Dillard is an Assistant Professor at James Madison University in the US. She is also the operations specialist for Common Ground for Action (CGA), an online variant of National Issues Forum (NIF). In this episode, Kara explains this short-form process, as well as its strengths and challenges. As a moderator training specialist for NIF she offers insight into the difference between online and face-to-face facilitation.
04.01.2022 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 learnt and some of her project successes in Western Australia.
04.01.2022 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. She has facilitated a number of public deliberations in Australia. Here she compares & contrasts between working with diverse stakeholders and randomly-selected strangers, supporting each group to explore their common ground. Resources can be found in the Show Notes on the newDemocracy Foundation webpage for this podcast.
01.01.2022 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 deal of experience and knowledge since then and plays a significant role in the international network, Democracy R&D, as well as establishing, with others, a new NGO in Spain, Deliberativa (in Spanish only).
