How do you run community assemblies? - tips, tricks, sensitivities

This response reaches beyond any specific “community assembly” process.

Different processes and contexts (e.g., an environment of process buy-in vs contentiousness, or informal dialogue vs a more formal/official deliberation) require different styles of facilitation and facilitator competence. A high-stakes Citizen Council, for example, uses Dynamic Facilitation, which is extremely powerful at transforming conflict into collaborative breakthroughs, but requires a competent dynamic facilitator to do its magic. In contrast, a community World Cafe is great for helping participants both (a) feel heard in a quasi-intimate small group (cafe-like) setting and (b) to have access to the evolving collective intelligence of the whole larger group they are part of. And - although skilled World Cafe "hosts" are to be treasured (notably for their capacity to craft powerful questions!) - practically anyone can quickly learn to facilitate the basic process - especially once they've participated in a few cafes as a participant.

I often envision a community group/coalition investing in thoroughly training a few skilled facilitators for a large or extremely visible central citizen deliberation, while doing a mass "each one teach one" kind of facilitator training for more primal processes like circle, World Cafe, Open Space, etc., which demand less skill to facilitate quite well (since the process "container" and participants do more of the conversational guidance work than the facilitator does). When those capacities exist, one can organize dozens of the relatively self-organizing conversations prior to and surrounding the more visibly central deliberative event, conversations from which participants can feed insights, possibilities and questions into the main event via online platforms like Polis (which can also capture feedback and further evolutionary ideas after the main event, from people who have been exposed to its recommendations, with or without being part of post-event satellite conversations).

There's also the factor of processes

(a) used to generate a "voice of the whole community" (which often involves random selection to be legitimate, like Citizen Assemblies and Citizen Councils),

(b) which provide open opportunities for anyone interested to say their piece and hear other people (like World Cafe or public hearings, with or without coming to agreements or exposing public officials to bits of public opinion), and

(c) which enable various people in the community to self-organize dialogues and/or actions around issues and projects of common interest (like Open Space).

This (a)-(c) list is, of course, not comprehensive list, but it exemplifies the kind of different roles that various processes can fill and has implications for facilitator training, depending on which services you want the conversations to provide in the community. Here's another way to explore this realm.

Thanks Tom for the links, very informative :)

Can i mention the elephant in the room?

Some people may not want to engage with anything that has the XR brand on it. For this reason we set up Cambridgeshire Climate Emergency

Can i propose XR stepping back a bit and supporting collaborative initiatives in communities, rather than constantly stamping its logo on everything?

Personally i find the XR logo a bit cultist, like something youd get in an authoritarian mass rally, and it really turns me off

Why not work with groups like ours in parnership rather than trying to be dominant? The future of XR is to build bridges through deep listening not dominate.

I think Stephan has a valid point about where XR is powerful in leading and where supporting and enabling others could be more effective.The logo is powerful when the rebellion is in challenge mode but doesn't work when in support mode.

I think the key is to foster a diversity of approaches but all united by a common thread. So for example we have taken the theme of "urgency" and wrapped it as "emergency" (XR doesn't 'own' the sense of urgency).

Think of it a bit like the software concept of "open source". There are loads of open source programs with different purposes, logos, etc. But they all share a common principle (and there are even a number of different open source licenses).

Better to be and foster "open source" than Apache Software Foundation.

Similarly, better to foster the "urgent climate action network" theme than XR. Phase II of XR needs to be able to drop its logo and represent an entirely new approach. Would be happy to suggest what these elements should be but our group CCE is all about:

1. Robust data tracking - so actions have maximum impact
2. Leadership training - you don't grow as a movement without building leaders (this is especially critical in rural areas)
3. Effective liaison with other institutions - it is possible to be agitational and critical while also collaborating. It's about moving from a parent->child model to an adult<->adult model

Love the quality and attention paid to getting it right in all of the above. All of it is, in my opinion, important to dwell on.

My only caution would be to try and understand where your community is at before starting your clearly focused group. In the UK the public space is more defined by Brexit than climate. You could find yourselves having to defend your actions in the face of a growing populist sensibility that XR and progressives in general are unpatriotic for wanting to have more regulations rather than less. We have been Trumped in many parts of the country.

That doesn't mean we should marginalise what we are doing, just be prepared to take it to the deeper level of listening and understanding first. Don't over-rely on words - framing, testimony, debate - to set the emotional tone. The arts, food, friendliness - care - are crucial for generating trust before the talking even begins. This is one aspect of the feminisation of politics Jamie talks about (there are many more if you're interested).

The Alternative's commitment is to bringing people together in the face of generations of political division. Liberating what is essentially human ingenuity. But it requires patience. People living side by side hate each other without knowing anything about each other. I've already lived through decades of people 'being right' about how to go forward, making other people 'wrong' for things they can hardly control.

XR may not be the vehicle for this slower patient work - emUrgency is real. However, these two speeds of change do need to explicitly come into relationship with each other. Inform each other. In exactly the way, I guess, we are doing here.

Have you had a chance to look at the Citizens Action Network video on the FDH sight? Alternative's co-lab process begins with 'deep hanging out'. Understanding who the 'usual suspects' (people who want change like us) are and aiming to collaborate on mutual agendas, including but not only climate. They will give you an idea of who the excluded are in the community - meaning people who might share your values, but are rarely consulted. But also, how to tap into the networks that already exist. We don't have time to start from the beginning or to reinvent every wheel on the wagon. Discuss with them how best XR can advance - rather than rob - their cause.

Thirdly, we aim to have a feeling for who else is in the community, creating the context for the work we are doing. Many people - possibly the majority - will have no interest or be actively against what we are trying to do. We try to engage them on quite other terms to draw them into relationship with the bigger issues in manageable ways. Learning clubs, access to free stuff, festivals... we weave the story of what's already happening into the need to come together for the future.

All of this is not easy. But it is possible. And this is the time for all of our quite diverse efforts to move into relationship with each other so that it's not a repeat of old failures. After 3 years of doing The Alternative we have got very excited about the possibilities for a new era of people led transformation. Yet everything still founders on whether or not we can all find the ways to work together or not. XR's contribution has been explosive - waking people up everywhere. But it's what happens next that will, or will not, make the difference we are hoping for.

I just watched your CAN video, Indra. Wow! Very well conceived. (I've logged it for inclusion as a resource on eleven of my wise democracy patterns!) I can see the CAN approach as a way to transcend the problematic issue (raised by Stefan) of "XR" being the center/identity of its local democracy initiatives. XR LGs can be the catalysts for CANs which (by definition) launch as an expanding and evolving coalition of the interested which, being larger than XR, allows XR activists to be subsumed as major organizers/facilitators/servant leaders in the CAN without the CAN being defined by or identified with them. The more the CAN grows, the more XR sinks below the radar and the more potential CAN has to fulfill XR's democratic dreams. XR can continue to have its provocative symbol and demonstrations without endangering CANs' capacity to involve all sorts of people. Nice!

Love the video! Reminds me of the "reweaving the fabric of society" goal of community organisers like Citizens UK. They have run some astounding democracy events including 6k people in London Citizens Assembly (a People's Assembly). Their refugee resettlement network from 2015 also shows what is possible in terms of a national network.

But yes you gotta start from where people arw which may not be as close as one might like as an outsider. I also think it's important to encourage leaders who may not be the "usual suspects" in terms of being XR or even environmental-inclined.

Where is the link to the CAN video. I'd love to see it.

 Citizens Action Network : )