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LATEST BLOG POSTS
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.
Deliberative engagement aims to build trusted decisions. That’s only achievable if the people impacted by the outcome have access to information about the process. This isn’t as easy as telling your communication team to send out a media release or publishing a few social posts telling your community the panel or jury is happening. Your communication approach needs to be thoughtfully planned, aligning communication and engagement efforts and ensuring deliberative principles aren’t compromised.
Conflict - generally feared and constantly mismanaged, it’s one of the biggest challenges you will face in engagement. It’s also the most common challenge our subscribers submit to us. If you anticipate conflict, outrage or emotion ahead, this article is for you. Inside - how to avoid the three biggest errors we see made (and they are made a lot) and some simple, yet effective things you can do instead to navigate the situation instead of making it worse.
What are you asking your participants to help you with? Topic choice and how you craft the question, challenge or remit you put to your community is critical to a successful process. In this deliberation disaster, we explore the most common mistake we see made. Plus, there are free tips for selecting and communicating a topic that will result in better response rates, a more meaningful experience for participants and more useful outputs for decision makers.
We’re feeling energised as we zoom through the first month of the new year. That’s because we can see what’s ahead, and we’re excited about the possibilities. Are you ready to set sail with us? We’re celebrating what’s been achieved in partnership with people just like you so far, while setting our sights on facilitating more important conversations in more places and having even more positive impact on more communities. We’re ready to embrace where engagement and deliberation are going, are you?
Ready to put your best engagement foot forward in 2024? We have the free resources for you! Whether you’re prepping an important engagement project, have a tricky engagement problem to wrangle or just wanting to upskill, we’re here to help. We have so many free resources, it can be hard to know where to begin, so we’re sharing what our top 7 resources were in 2023 so you can see what others are reading and learning about. Jump in and let this be your most effective year of engaging yet!
A message of thanks to you - our clients, participants, partners and friends - and hope for what’s ahead. As we head towards the end of a big year of big conversations, our team shares what they’re grateful for, their biggest highlight of 2023 and what’s really lighting them up when they think forward to the new year ahead.
We need to find a way forward. We’re seeing increasing trust divides between government and their citizens. You only have to see or hear a few news headlines to know that humans are facing really big problems that decision-makers are getting stuck on. From housing affordability and gender equality through to water security, climate change and the energy transition, there are tough issues before us that we simply have to solve. What if there was a way to tackle these ‘wicked problems’, answer the big questions and collectively agree on a way forward that was in the best interest of the many not the few? Here’s an insight into what that might look like - some inspiration, possibility and hope amongst the despair.
Did you visit our carnival stand at the recent IAP2 Conference? If so, you might feature in this post! And if not, here’s your chance to fight the FOMO and have an insight into the bean bag toss fun (and really cool dancing) that happened. We also have some super tips for you from IAP2A Chair Tony Clark around increasing accessibility and inclusion in engagement (spoiler - it’s not always easy, but progress is better than perfection). And we share our program highlights. Let’s dive in!
Meet the newest additions to the MosaicLab team: Belinda Lowing and Fox Gillen. Both Belinda and Fox have long career histories that span across interesting and complex roles that have included facilitation and engagement in many forms. Learn more about these two and gain some insights into who they REALLY are through their answers to our fast five questions!
Deliberative democracy experts and practitioners from across the globe recently descended on Copenhagen for the 6th annual Democracy R&D Conference, ready to explore this years theme ‘Let’s Give Democracy An Overhaul.’ Our directors and co-founders Nicole and Keith were there to soak up new ideas, share learnings from our delivery of more than 40 deliberations in Australia, connect with like-minded people from around the world and deliver a facilitating deliberation masterclass. Couldn’t be there? Never fear. They’ve shared their insights and top takeaways from an event they’re calling a “supernova of deliberative democracy”.
Lyndal and Jane are experienced, senior facilitators that have recently stepped into strategic, leadership roles at MosaicLab. They’re each responsible for overseeing a key area within MosaicLab - Lyndal with a focus on training and Jane on quality and communication. Both of them are committed to advancing our facilitation and engagement practice, continually strengthening the impact our processes have on organisations, decision-makers and communities. While many of you will have met them before, and they are not new to the MosaicLab family, we’re taking this opportunity to put a spotlight on them so you can learn a little more about who they are and what they’re here to offer.
Engagement processes must be accessible if diverse voices are going to be included. One of the many ways we can achieve this is through the use of interpreters (both for online and face-to-face engagement). If you’re working with interpreters it’s essential to collaborate with them and think carefully about how the session will be facilitated. We spoke to Bruce Song, a Mandarin interpreter whose worked with us previously.
We accept the very generous invitation of signatories to the Uluru Statement from the Heart to walk together in support of a Voice to Parliament. We believe that amplifying the voices of Traditional Owners in decision-making is critical to achieving a better future. We support the alteration of the constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice.
There’s a new round of engagement on the way for local government in Victoria. You need to start now if you want to achieve a process that meets the requirements of the Local Government Act 2020, works around key dates and council elections, incorporates a wider engagement process and delivers useful outputs for their council and community. This isn’t easy. So, to help, we’ve created a short, free guide that you can download today. This free ebook includes a roadmap outlining timelines and phasing, biggest lessons learned from 11 local government deliberations in round one, advice from council leaders and decision makers, a guide to scaling your deliberation based on budget and more.
Facilitation is a practice, and that means facilitators never stop learning, no matter how experienced they are. We’re constantly working to refine our skills, and we’re committed to sharing our knowledge with others. To honour International Facilitation Week, four of our facilitators are sharing techniques anyone can try out. Give them a go next time you’re involved in an interaction or group conversation, even if you don’t normally think of yourself as a facilitator.
Some problems are 'wicked'. Complex, difficult, politically polarised. Housing affordability is one of those issues. Politicians are stuck in a stalemate, there's no right answer, everyone is impacted and any move the government makes will be subject to intense criticism. MosaicLab is joining the growing chorus of organisations and politicians calling for a national conversation, facilitated through a citizens’ assembly, that would help Australia move forward and tackle an entrenched problem that requires urgent action.
Deliberation – what can go wrong? The short answer is lots! In our second article in this new series, we tackle ‘information inputs’. We’re talking about information you feed into a deliberative process to support the deliberating group’s discussion. It’s super important to get this right and the quality of what you put in will affect the quality of what you get out. So, we’re helping you avoid potential pitfalls and learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before you. Learn what to do (and what not to) inside …
Meet Bridget McDonald and Katie Fabel. These two keep the lights on, make our systems hum, explore future project possibilities and build proposals that help you to overcome problems and achieve your goals. Find out what they love about their work, their unique take on engagement as “little F” facilitators and their fun answers to a list of questions that we like to call The Telling Top 10 …
RECENT TWEETS
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We thought we'd share some participant thoughts from our February webinar about engaging diverse voices. Thanks for… https://t.co/T0Y1LbV6AM
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It's not too late to register for our free Lunch and Learn webinar on March 23. Learn more and register here:… https://t.co/tSfbl6n6ye
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There’s something in the water! This case study captures a memorable three-year period where we facilitated 14 deli… https://t.co/f15F2DqGtH
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AI is both wonderfully amazing and exciting and fun, and worrying, overwhelming and scary…..and it’s coming towards us at a pace that our brains are finding hard to reconcile. In this article we’re exploring some of what’s coming up for us so far around using AI. Including how our natural, human biases are coming into play, the risks and opportunities we’re identifying and the three key principles we see as critical going forward.