In the rush to end 2020 you may have missed our December newsletter. If you did, you missed seeing the launch of our new learning hub – MosaicLab’s Learning Network. The beauty of this space is that you can now access some of our tried and tested live training online and in your own time!
Young people are dichotomous. On the one hand, glued to our phones and immersed in a narcissistic, materialist culture dominated by social media. On the other, we are turning out in the streets in huge numbers to protest global injustices and generate reform for the most pressing issues of our time.
Meet our newest team member, Lyndal Mackintosh. As a senior facilitator and engagement professional, with extensive experience working across government, we are thrilled to have her on board.
Our Managing Director, Nicole Hunter, appeared before the Australian Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee Inquiry into Nationhood, National Identity and Democracy on the 13th of November. The Inquiry is concerned with exploring issues around the worldwide trend in public dissatisfaction with democratic politics, the erosion of trust in democratic institutions, and the challenges and opportunities they present.
We held our final Continuous Connections webinar for 2020 on the 27th of November. This was the seventh in our series, and a great way to finish off a challenging year with our friends and colleagues.
As the end of 2020 draws closer, we wish to thank all of our wonderful clients, participants, partners, friends and readers for their support and friendship during a very difficult year for many people and businesses.
As we move into a new year, we hope to continue providing our community with free webinars. Register now to let us know what topics you would like covered, and to join the early-bird list.
MosaicLab is excited to launch our new training platform. Providing access to information on all of our courses, we are also now able to offer self-directed courses that you can begin online immediately or in your own time.
Find out more here.
The United Nations (UN) Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) recently ran a leadership learning session on environmental governance to provide policymakers with a better understanding of policy-making approaches to deal with the challenges of sustainable development. Our Managing Director, Nicole Hunter, spoke at the session.
Major crises, like what we are experiencing currently with COVID-19 globally, impacts every aspect of our lives. In our roles as engagement practitioners, it is crucial we are sensitive to the changes and feelings our participants may have undergone or are currently feeling during this time.
This article provides four tips to keep in mind when facilitating during times of massive change.
After almost a year of learning how to facilitate and conduct engagements exclusively online, we want to share with you how to bring some fun into your zoom sessions. Join us in session seven in our ‘continuous connections - engagement in the time of COVID-19’ webinar’ discussion series.
Register now to learn new skills and connect with engagement professionals around Australia and beyond. Be quick - places are limited.
Josephine is a senior facilitator and engagement professional with a strong belief in encouraging dialogue and strengthening democracy by involving people in decisions that affect them.
Covid-19 has forced engagement professionals to move their work entirely into the online space.
As we think about a future where we can hold face-to-face workshops again, it will be fascinating to see what we carry forward from this online experience into our engagement programs.
As Victorian local councils face a local government election on October 24th and the induction of a new Council they are also implementing a new Local Government Act. Amongst the myriad of changes in the 2020 Act are new provisions for community engagement. This is a major step change in seeking to put communities at the centre of local government decision making.
Many councils would be wondering what they need to do meet these requirements, particularly the one about deliberative practices.
Our new world of online conversations can raise challenges. Every meeting no matter how small or informal needs a lead person, whether that is a chairperson, a facilitator or simply the person who initiated the meeting.
There are many meetings for which a member of the group can take up this role. But when is it wise to appoint an external, independent facilitator? This post explores the five reasons you should give this role to a skilled facilitator.
MosaicLab is excited to be offering two new training courses - Virtual Facilitation and Technical Skills (for anyone that is currently hosting, or learning to host, online meetings and workshops) and Deliberative Engagement for Victorian Councils (for council staff, executives and councillors who have a role in relation to the deliberative engagement requirements of the new Local Government Act).
Find out more here.
We often hear councillors and staff saying they don’t need to involve the community in deliberation as it is the role of councillors, or any elected official, to deliberate on an issue and make decisions. It is important to note that deliberative engagement does not supersede or dismiss the role of councillors in making decisions.
In this #MonthlyMyth, we discuss the five main ways that deliberation can help decision-makers and add value, rather than take away their decision-making powers.
Online engagement is here to stay. How do we get the best out of both online and face to face engagement in the future? Responding to popular demand, we will be tackling this engagement dilemma during session six in our ‘continuous connections - engagement in the time of COVID-19’ webinar discussion series.
Register now to learn new skills and connect with engagement professionals around Australia and beyond. Be quick - places are limited.
This case study looks at lessons learned from running a a fully online deliberative panel for Baw Baw Shire Council. The output from the panel is to form the basis of Council decisions about a range of parking matters, which have been a highly contentious issue for a number of years.
While it feels like the world has been somewhat on hold this year with COVID-19, MosaicLab has been busy growing.
We are thrilled to have welcomed three new members to our team. Each brings with them years of experience in participation, engagement and deliberation, as well as the enthusiasm and shared values that we view as essential to being a part of MosaicLab.
Read on to find out more about our newest team members.
The Bayside 2050 Community Vision Panel came together to hold the first of its three full days of deliberations immediately before social isolation came into force in response to COVID-19. The rest of the deliberations were subsequently completed online.
This post explains how MosaicLab moved the panel online and our learnings from the experience.
The OECD has just released a global analysis of deliberation called Innovative Citizens Participation and New Democratic Institutions – Catching the Deliberative Wave.
MosaicLab along with many other deliberative practitioners around the world contributed to this significant piece of work by providing our list of over 25 deliberations that we have facilitated in Australia. Thirteen of these deliberations were included in this OECD database.
In recent months, we delivered a series of internal engagement programs for Monash City Council, Greater Shepparton City Council and Melton City Council to help build the momentum for engagement internally. Councils have been working on Community Engagement Policies, Council Plans, Frameworks and capacity building programs and have seen the value of engaging a diverse range of staff in this work.
In this blog, some of our council colleagues and facilitators provide their learnings from the internal engagement processes.
This case study covers a faciltated, internal strategy session provided by MosaicLab to a group of organisations facing disruption due to COVID-19. There was a clear need to support organisations transitioning to a remote-based workforce and equip them with the tools they needed to collaborate, be productive and keep motivated.
To help local councils in Victoria navigate the deliberative engagement requirements in the new Local Government Act, MosaicLab has launched a free, short guide.
This e-book is specifically for local government staff and decision makers, and aims to provide assistance and information to help councils better understand deliberative engagement, its principles and how it can be implemented into council processes to meet the new requirements of the Act.
Engagement professionals everywhere are grappling with the dilemma of how to genuinely and sensitively engage with communities during a protracted crisis. There is no easy answer, so let’s connect and try to solve it together in an online engagement experiment.
MosaicLab is excited to be partnering with VoiceVoice to host a continuous conversation. Over the next month or so, you can connect with others in the industry to tackle the topic together. It all starts with an ‘asynchronous’, unfacilitated conversation.
Deciding on and differentiating between appropriate engagement frameworks, strategies, methods tools and techniques can be confusing. Add to this the array of software and digital applications we’re all currently playing with, and the challenges are compounded.
Selecting the right engagement approach is part art and part science. There is no ‘magic’ solution, and no one tool or method that is ‘best’ or ‘one size fits all’. Planning and preparation must happen first - well before we get to methods and tools - creating a ‘blueprint’ for our process that guides these decisions.
Three months have passed since our engagement practice began being impacted by physical distancing restrictions. It’s been a roller-coaster ride for many in the sector, requiring adaption, strategic thinking and transition. So, what have we all learnt so far?
Learn new skills and connect with engagement professionals around Australia and beyond. Every discussion is designed to help support you in your engagement practice, offering tips, resources, insights and more that you can apply to your projects and processes.
Having shared experiences is one of the fundamental features of being part of a community. In our current environment both space and time are different. And creating these collective experiences online becomes our key task as facilitators, project managers and engagement practitioners.
Today we’re sharing a free resource on 7 ways to achieve this and ensure people really ‘hear each other’ online. These are skills that can be used in many contexts, from small, informal conversations right through to large, interactive public sessions.
Uncertainty is the name of the game when it comes to face to face facilitation in Australia and abroad.