FS67 - Public Dialogue with Suzannah Lansdell

Facilitation Stories

In this episode Nikki talks to Suzannah Lansdell about Public Dialogue. Suzannah is a freelance facilitator who also advises organisations on how to do public and stakeholder dialogue, particularly in the science and technology sector for Sciencewise.

They talk about

• Public Dialogue as a process bringing together members of the public with specialists and policy makers to discuss complex and controversial topics and gather public insights on the issues without necessarily coming to firm recommendations;

“this is this is not a Focus Group. It's not kind of top of mind views. It's digging behind that”

• How members of the public are engaged to take part;

• The role of a facilitator in Public Dialogue and how it’s different from other types of facilitation;

• Some recent topics for Public Dialogue including Embryo Research, Future Flight and the role of Data;

• The experience of participants and how this differs from other consultative processes;

“one of the key things about Public Dialogue as you give people the time to kind of wrestle around the issue and think more deeply.”

• How information is shared with participants, including striking a balance on the level of detail and the importance of including a diverse range of specialist perspectives;

• Evaluation in Public Dialogue and the focus on monitoring longer term impacts from the process;

• Suzannah’s hopes and expectations for the future of Public Dialogue, becoming more embedded in policy making and democratic processes.

A full transcript is below.

Links

Today’s guest:

Suzannah Lansdell on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/suzannah-lansdell-ab23a78

Today’s subject

Sciencewise: https://sciencewise.org.uk/

Involve Resources: https://involve.org.uk/resources/knowledge-base/resources

Involve Methods: https://involve.org.uk/resources/methods

To find out more about Facilitation Stories and the IAF and the England and Wales Chapter:

Facilitation Stories website: https://facilitationstories.libsyn.com/

And to email us: [e-mail]

IAF England and Wales: https://www.iaf-world.org/site/chapters/england-wales

The Facilitation Stories Team:

Helene Jewell: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenejewell/

Nikki Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolawilson2/

Transcript

N.W

Hello, and welcome to Facilitation Stories brought to you by the England and Wales chapter of the International Association of Facilitators, also known as IAF. My name is Nikki Wilson (NW) and today I'm going to be talking to Suzannah Lansdell (SL) about public dialogue. So welcome, Suzannah.

S.L

Thanks, Nikki, lovely to be here.

N.W

Okay, so to start off with, could you tell us a little bit more about you and what you do.

S.L

So I'm a freelance facilitator, I've been doing that for about 15 years or so. I started, and so how I got into it just as a bit of context, as it sort of helps a bit with the public dialogue is, I started working for an environment charity back in the 90s. And I was doing a lot of work then with businesses, convincing them that there were commercial implications around environment sustainability issues. But one part of that the charity had was also about consensus building, about how do you get different organisations to approach environment sustainability issues, that at that time in the 90s, were very kind of adversarial in a more kind of consensus based approach. And absolutely core to that was facilitation, as a way to, to break through that more adversarial approach. So then I started working a lot on that and I kind of cut my teeth on some of the big issues of the day, things like nuclear waste, oil disposal, oil infrastructure disposal, biotechnology. So some really kind of big issues where people were on opposing sides and a facilitative approach helped people to kind of have more constructive conversations and find a way through. So that's kind of where I cut my teeth. And then moving on, what I'm much more doing now is that I advise and I support organisations on how they do public and stakeholder dialogue, and particularly around public dialogue work for an organisation called Science wise, that looks at public dialogue around science and technology. But I also do some kind of keeping my oar in on the practice in terms of facilitating citizens assemblies, and other kind of processes involved with the public. And then a little spattering of training in facilitation and a little bit of kind of charity away days, but most of my work at the moment is around the kind of public dialogue in science and technology.

N.W

Okay, great. And that was a very neat segue into today's topic, which is about public dialogue. So for listeners that aren't familiar with this term, what do we mean by public dialogue?

S.L

I suppose in its simplest terms, it's a process where you've got members of the public coming together with specialists and policymakers and other stakeholders to deliberate and have conversations about usually kind of complex or controversial topics. And they do that over several hours, so this is not a focus group, it's not kind of Top of Mind views. It's digging behind that. So you give people a lot of time to think about the issues and to have conversations with those specialists, but also fellow participants. So probably people are maybe deliberating over 10 hours or a couple of weekends. It can be online, it can be face to face, it can be a bit of a mix of both. The key purpose is to get those insights from the public to feed into kind of a decision whether that be a policy or whether that be a strategy. And some people might have heard of the term of mini Publics, so it sort of fits within that frame of mini Publics. And we could talk a bit more about who's the public in this. The key difference that I see with public dialogue is that unlike, for example, citizens juries or citizens assemblies, we don't usually ask people to come up with or vote on recommendations or come up with specific recommendations. It's much more that they're kind of invited to explore that issue and then there are insights that come from that, but it's not taking it to that kind of final this is what this group of people think and vote on.

N.W

And so who would normally be the sort of Commissioner of the public dialogue who would bring those groups together?

S.L

It would be a decision maker. So it'd be somebody that has some traction over that issue. It might be that they own the policy or that they own the strategy the public dialogue is feeding into. So that could be a government department, it could be a Research Council, it could be a regulator. So usually at that sort of level.

N.W

And you touched on this a moment ago, but mini publics as it were, who normally would get involved in these, and how would they get involved?

S.L

Yeah, so I think what's really important to know with public dialogue, or indeed any of those mini publics is that these are not public participants that choose to sign up, because they've seen it in their local paper or something, they are kind of randomly recruited to take part in this process. So what you're trying to do is to get a reflective group of the population to be part of these processes, and they're paid to attend. So you're getting over that slight bias that you might have, if you have a local meeting, for example, where just those people with the time and the inclination, and already with an interest in the topic turn up. So you're recruiting them kind of randomly, and that might be that they are approached on the street and it might be that they are approached through some kind of invitation. So usually, for example, on citizens assemblies, they're approached through a sortition approach, which is, you randomly receive an invitation through the post. Most public dialogues, it's recruited sort of on the street. And then you're looking for a kind of demographic, as I say, that kind of reflects the population, whether that be gender, whether that be where people are from, it might be things like whether the urban and rural split, it might be to do with the age profile, so that you've sort of got a little mini public in the room that you're having that conversation within.

N.W

Have you got any examples of recent topics that you've seen covered in a public dialogue, just to bring that to life, I suppose.

S.L

Well certainly. So the science wise work that I work on, it's, I mean, as you might expect, it's kind of around science and tech innovation, sorts of topics. So some of the recent ones have been things like embryo research, and where that goes in the future. Future flight technologies. So there's a whole new area of kind of innovation around future flight and what does the public think about where that might go? BioMed adaptation has been another one. Lots around kind of data, what do people think about data that is held on them or data that might be used? Where are the boundaries around that? And through things like genome editing in farmed animals, so a real range across that sort of science and tech space.

N.W

So obviously, we've talked about the commissioners and the public involved in this, but this is facilitation stories. So what would you say the role of facilitators is in a public dialogue? And how, in your experience, is that different from other types of facilitation?

S.L

So I suppose, obviously, there's the core basics of facilitation, that are the same, but I suppose, for me, the real the things that really stands out are that, absolutely, as with lots of other facilitation, your view on a topic has to really stand down you can't be seen to influence the process in one way or another. And when some of those topics they're very kind of emotive. Another thing is that because you've got a group of the public there, so I suppose those two things, you're likely to be part of a bigger team. So the number of participants involved in a public dialogue might be, it might be 30, but it may well be closer to sort of 100. So there's a team of facilitators, you've got a group on your table, say if you're just a table facilitator of seven or eight participants, and they're public participants who, it's not like if you were, say, working in with an organisation where you might have a bit of insight as to who's going to pop up on your table, you might have people there who are really not confident in speaking or, or who might have literacy challenges, or who might have English as a second language. So you've got to sort of adapt to that group of participants that you have, and work with them to build their confidence to express their views about the sorts of issues that are under consideration. And then I think this notion that you're part of a team of facilitators, you're all doing the sort of similar process on separate tables, and that is part of a bigger jigsaw piece. So you sort of got to manage how your group is responding to those questions and that plan that you've got, and knowing that you need to kind of get to an output for that specific section, because it fits together into the whole jigsaw piece of the whole process. So I think that that's an interesting dynamic. It's not like you're there and you're kind of controlling the whole space. Of course, I'm talking there about a table facilitator and then there's the kind of facilitator who's kind of orchestrating the whole piece as well. I mean it's fascinating working with the public, that's the bit that I just find so interesting is giving people the opportunity to have their voice heard in these issues and people love it. But as a facilitator kind of getting to the point where people are comfortable to do that is interesting.

N.W

Yeah, I mean, I haven't mentioned as we've been talking, but I have facilitated in these environments. And I think one of the things that I always find so fascinating is that you can have a whole load of different groups essentially following the same framework and process and they will come out with completely different things, or they will respond to the materials in completely different ways. And you've got such a close comparison, because they're all in the room together with half an hour, or whatever it is, and I just find that fascinating, or I've done some where I've done the same process two nights in a row with different groups. And literally, it's nothing to do with how I facilitated it because I was the same person. But yeah, so interesting to see how different groups respond to the material.

S.L

And sorry, I was just going to say. And also giving people the opportunity, because of course, you've got a mini public there. They, the participants themselves are meeting people that are from all sorts of different walks of life, and seeing how they reflect also on other people's contribution and how that adjusts their views. And again, that, for me, is one of the key things about public dialogue, as you give people the time to kind of wrestle around the issue and think more deeply.

N.W

Yeah, absolutely. And again, I mean, we've touched on this a little bit, but obviously, this can often be about quite complex subject matter, you've given some examples at the beginning, and the participants will have varying degrees of prior knowledge. So obviously, giving them some information is one of the key things in this, what have you seen works particularly well, in how you present that information to people and perhaps not so well?

S.L

So yeah, absolutely, you kind of have to give people enough information that they can deliberate on it, but not so much and that for me is the real critical point is that it's boiling it down into what is the appropriate level of detail, participants don't need to have a PhD in the topic. And they very quickly, participants really quickly kind of get to grips with what the topic is. So for me, the really crucial things is that you have to have specialists from a diversity of perspectives. So that participants can kind of reach into the corners of the issues and what the different kind of takes are on that. And I know most of the time it is done through some form of kind of presentation. But it's really important to pick your specialists well, that they can talk in an accessible way or brief them well to do that, and make sure that you know what it is that they're saying, that you get to look at their slides beforehand and make sure that it is accessible. It's not kind of reams and reams of really detailed stuff. But other ways in which the worst sorts of information imparting are where you have a really long, dense presentation. So that's designed out. You tend to give it in small bite sized, probably no more than 10 minute type of talks, you layer up the sort of information that you're giving to people so that they've got these sort of bite sized chunks, and they're hearing from different perspectives. But as well as hearing from different perspectives, you sometimes in public dialogues, you can also interview people before the dialogue and put that into provocation, kind of cards or animations or sort of pictorial scenarios so that people can access the information in different sorts of ways. What's really crucial is that they hear from different perspectives, they get a chance to sort of question and interrogate that, and it's not in a kind of overly complex way. So that's the real skill of who's designing the whole process, is making sure that we're hearing the right sort of information enough for participants to get to grips with it, but not so much that they're just listening to reams and reams of presentations, because that's not the point. The point is not to kind of come out with an educated public. The point is, is that we want to hear what participants kind of deliberations and insights on having known enough about the topic.

N.W

yeah, and I suppose almost that instinctive reaction or whatever it is that they have picked out from a presentation that's most important for them is a valuable insight in the first place is that, actually what is it that they're taking away from all of the information they've been given?

S.L

Yep. What's really nice is if you have the opportunity and the processes, which because they're run over a number of sessions you can often do this, is to ask participants also what might be missing or what they might have to revisit. And, again, if you've got a specialist sort of in the room, whether that's a virtual or real room, using them as a kind of resource to be able to pull on as well is really important.

N.W

Yeah, I think that we perhaps haven't made that clear that quite often those experts will give a presentation but then they are still available to chip in, to answer questions, to clarify bits. So that's really interesting, too. Yeah. And again, so while it's not unique to public dialogue, I think something that a lot of the processes involve is a really kind of structured evaluation. So could you tell us a little bit more about that? And how it sort of fits in the overall process?

S.L

Yeah, yeah and certainly for science wise public dialogue. So just actually, to really quickly scale back. So science wise supports government departments, research councils to do public dialogue and kind of mentor supports those organisations, but also provides some co-funding. So there's always an independent evaluation that sits alongside that public dialogue. And that both I think, quite uniquely, for this evaluation, it sits at the beginning, and it can give sort of formative input throughout the process as it's being designed. But also it produces a kind of summative evaluation at the end. So what is it that participants have felt? What is it that specialists have felt? So gathering all of that data like you might do, usually in a kind of evaluation. So it's more than just observing the sessions, doing a participant survey and reporting on that. And the other thing that I think is kind of really important is, again, certainly for science wise dialogues is that there's a sort of interim report when the dialogue report comes out. But then we go back or the evaluator goes back six months later, and says, right, what was the impact of this public dialogue? And that, to me, is really, really crucial so that you know where has it influenced? You said at the beginning, that this was going to be something that inputted into this policy, or that inputted into this strategy. Six months on what has happened? Have those impacts happened? Have other things happened that have been as a result of that public dialogue process?

N.W

And I suppose with that in mind, have you got any examples of where you've seen really specific big changes that have come out of those that you can sort of share? So obviously, a lot of them are still in progress.

S.L

Yeah, sure. Well, I suppose the one that quite often is, is quoted and this is going back a little way. I mean if you look at the science wise website, there's always the evaluation reports are up there as well. And they, certainly the more recent ones, kind of capture those impacts. So it might be that it's led to a whole raft of new social science research. But one of the ones particularly that's quoted is around something called mitochondrial transfer, and this was quite a controversial area of research. A public dialogue was held which helped inform. Then the recommendations of what was the human fertilisation embryology authority, the HFEA , who regulates all of that, and that then fed into changing the law on what was allowed in terms of this mitochondrial transfer. Whilst they would have done other stakeholder work, they would have listened to what experts thought about this, actually hearing about what the public thought, whether this was the right way to go, what were the sorts of limits? What were the red lines? What sort of conditions should be in place? Formed a really kind of core plank of then what that recommendation and ultimately, the kind of law change signifies. So it can have some big impacts and what I see a lot with public dialogue, and we'll kind of think about this into the future is, lots of government agencies, or any key decision making authority is really familiar with thinking about how they involve their kind of traditional stakeholders. But thinking about how they really hear from what the public thinks is a more tricky area for them to grapple with. So public dialogue provides one route in which they can really understand, what do the public think about this having had a bit more time to think about it. What drives their concerns or their hopes or their aspirations around this particular topic? And that, for me, is always the missing pieces, like, how are we hearing the public voice in this new development? Because it's not a given that that will always happen.

N.W

And so, I suppose building on that then, are there particular trends or developments that you're seeing happening currently or on the horizon for public dialogue? Where do you think it could go?

S.L

So I mean, I hope, and I think that there will be a move towards this. Rather than this being something that is a sort of almost optional add on, or specifically for some topics that are quite high profile, or kind of think that they might be controversial, but actually, it becomes a much more embedded part of both policy and strategy. So that rather than ‘Oh, crikey, we need to think about doing a public dialogue’, but it's something that's just automatically built into the policy strategy development process for those topics. So it's not saying that it should be used in every circumstance, but that it's much more kind of part of the normal suite of tools that policy makers will be thinking about, that there's that check. Oh, hang on a minute, how are we thinking about public voice? Do we need to do a public dialogue? Do we need to do some other kinds of, you know , how are we going to get that public insight into the development of our policies? Doing public dialogue is about making better decisions by getting public insight into that process. I think the other thing that I would just say is that I think increasingly, whilst the approach is about making better decisions, better policies, I think it will become more clearly linked with sort of a democratic process that ultimately, certainly, if we're talking about science and tech, whether we're talking about climate change with, for example, citizens assemblies, on climate change,that these are things that are affecting people, participant people day to day. If there's a new science or tech development, it's helping us and a lot of that research is funded by the public. So where's the sort of right, almost for the public to have a more considered, say, in the development of those areas?

N.W

And I think what you say there is interesting as well, because obviously a lot of this is technical information. But in the main, there are ways that people find it does relate to their day to day life in some way. And I think that's another quite important tool potentially, is making it feel like something that people have a grounding in their daily life,even if they don't know all of the technical details, isn't it? So they can deliberate with their own perspective on that?.

S.L

Absolutely, I mean, those examples I gave before, they're about the food that we eat, or about the impact of climate on our infrastructure. They're about what we think is right, or how far science should go. If we're looking at AI, or we're looking at these exciting, but also fast developments that are happening in science and tech, there has to be, and this is why I talk about quite often with the people thinking about commissioning, it's got to align with social values. If it's really out of step with that, I think we saw that a lot with GM in the early 2000s, then people start getting really concerned about it. So what's right? What's wrong? Or how should it go? Where are the sorts of red lines? What are the sorts of conditions under which this technology should develop? could develop? shouldn't develop? Understanding that for a policymaker, or for strategies is kind of gold dust really.

N.W

Excellent, well, I mean, it's all so fascinating, we could probably talk all day about it, but

S.L

Just scratched the surface .

N.W

Exactly. And with that in mind, if listeners want to find out more about public dialogue, what would you say the best places to look?

S.L

So I would say there's two. Obviously, I've talked quite a lot about science wise, and sciencewise.org.uk is the website,there's a lot there about public dialogue, but also lots of reports from previous public dialogues. And then the other place that I always kind of point people towards is the involve website. So if you just Google involve, and particularly, I think it's involve.org.uk .Particularly their methods and Resource Bank section. So the methods obviously covers lots of methods, but their resource section there is super useful and that will also touch on things which we haven't delved into as much here, sort of citizens assemblies, citizens juries and other sorts of, kind of public participation processes.

N.W

Right. And we can put those links in the show notes as well. And, and if listeners would like to find out more specifically about your work or get in touch with you, what would you suggest?

S.L

Look me up on LinkedIn as a start. Okay, that's probably the easiest, easiest place really.

N.W

Well, we'll put that in the show notes too. So thank you so much, Suzannah, for your time and your contribution today. It's been really interesting to chat to you.

S.L

Thank you, Nikki.

N.W

Thank you again. Have a lovely day. Bye.

Outro

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