Have you heard about standing panels? They’re a form of deliberative engagement that can be super effective, particularly if you have a lot of different issues and topics you need to engage your community around. They’re also a really cool way of embedding deliberative practice in decision-making. Plus, they’re already happening in Australia. We’ve got the lowdown on what they are, the key considerations in planning for them and some snapshots of the two ongoing standing panels we’re facilitating in the local government realm.
CASE STUDY: TACKLING TOBACCO HARM IN PUBLIC HOUSING
Four language interpreters. Child-minding. Recruitment challenges. Birthday cake and a lot of laughs. These are just some of the unique highlights of our work with Quit Victoria and VicHealth in 2022 on a project to reduce tobacco-related harm in public housing. This case study takes a detailed look at how MosaicLab supported this process with a residents’ panel and sense-making workshops. All to drive improved, long-term outcomes for community and public health.
CASE STUDY: WATER WORKS ACROSS 2021 - 23
The past three years have seen a tremendous amount of water works under the bridge in the deliberative engagement catchment (oh yes, puns galore!). It has provided us with such a great opportunity to design and facilitate a range of interesting processes from community co-designing long-term strategies, through to community deciding pricing and servicing levels across the water industry. Let’s take a closer look.
CASE STUDY: GLEN EIRA CITY COUNCIL ASSET PLAN
In 2022, council worked with MosaicLab to deliver an engagement process to gather community feedback about its assets. The process included a survey and the creation of a citizens’ panel, one of the first we hosted fully face-to-face post-pandemic. Participants enjoyed not only being ‘back in the room’ but also the strong sense of achievement at the end of the process as they saw their recommendations reflected in the final Asset Plan adopted by council.
CASE STUDY: MORNINGTON PENINSULA SHIRE STANDING CITIZENS’ PANEL
#MONTHLYMYTH: ACCESSIBILITY IS EASIER IN-PERSON THAN ONLINE
Making processes accessible for everyone is something we all strive for in the engagement sector. Most people naturally think that this accessibility is most easily achieved in face-to-face sessions where you can see or hear the interpreters. However, in this blog Q&A, we hear directly from two interpreters and two participants about the many accessibility advantages (and some disadvantages) to online workshops that are worth considering.
CASE STUDY: 11 TRANSFORMATIVE COUNCIL DELIBERATIONS
When 10 councils give real influence to their communities, we see real change, real impact and trusted decisions that increase faith in democratic processes.
This case study explores 11 deliberative engagement journeys and the profound impact they have had on councils, communities decision makers and participants.
SPOTLIGHT ON COUNCILS EMPOWERING COMMUNITIES
MosaicLab has had the privilege of working with many Victorian councils over recent months and supporting them to design and deliver deliberative engagement processes. An interesting and exciting element of this experience has been the high level of influence some councils offered to their community around the development of their community visions.
In this article we look at three different approaches. One council that set the level of influence at ‘empower’ from the outset, and two others that accepted their community’s vision statement in full.
MAKING A DECLARATION IS THE EASY PART
Globally, 1,807 local government bodies, such as municipal councils, have declared a climate emergency within the past 5 years. But making a declaration is the easy part. Partnering with the community to come up with responses to such a momentous and complicated challenge is not something that every council is willing to take on. But those who do will be rewarded with ideas and momentum from the community that council cannot possibly achieve on its own.
In this article we share with you a story of a local council in Victoria who has partnered with their community to respond to the climate emergency together.