Presenter: Brendan Owens and Sammi Bowers, Institute of Physics
Brendan.owens@iop.org samantha.bowers@iop.org
Theme: Engagement mediums and practice
Reporter: Lorraine Coghill
One sentence summary: An interactive overview of a community dialogue project, exploring tools and principles designed to encourage and support co-creation.
Description
In 2020, the Insitute of Physics’ (IOP) commenced their strategy, “Unlocking the Future,” which highlighted the unprecedented global and domestic challenges faced by society, and the vital role that physics plays. It identified key challenges and placed a focus on public dialogue and ensuring the representation of diverse voices.
Communities in conversation is a key part of this strategy, and Brendan (IOP Ireland and Northern Ireland) and Sammi (IOP Scotland), represented this national pilot by taking us through some of the background, activities and learning that have developed through the initiative.
Partnership working was central to the programme, with the IOP collaborating with Belong, an organisation that specialises in community engagement, conflict resolution and facilitation, together with Ondata Research which evaluated the programme and is supporting the IOP in embedding practice. Deliberately seeking to engage with diverse voices, the project also partnered with six communities spread across the UK: in Glasgow, Rochdale and Cardiff in Year 1; and Coventry, Belfast and Inverness in Year 2.
Unlike many other engagement programmes, Communities in conversation had no set agenda in the conversations with the communities. The focus was on the human connections between people – physicists and community members. The hope was that in taking time and care to develop trust and relationships, any potential hierarchies would be broken and stereotypes busted, and that this could allow for an openness to discuss and explore potential solutions to local and global challenges.
Each community project lasted up to six weeks and adapted to the community’s needs. Although each location was distinct, the projects all took a common outline:
- Building relationships
- Taking time to develop trust and understanding
- Finding out what matters now to the community members
- Looking for solutions: where do we want to get to?
Sammi introduced us to design thinking tools and prompts from both the physicists’ training and community sessions. We started with some getting to know you prompts that focussed discussions on general, open topics deliberately designed to encourage levelling and group cohesion, such as “What makes you joyful?” “Sketchy communications” challenged us to listen to instructions, attempting to draw the described object without knowing what it was. As well as encouraging listening, it also helped people to become more comfortable in asking for clarification.
Brendan explained that such activities supported equitable group cohesion enabling open discussions around the challenges that directly affect the communities. The project used the Sustainable Development Goals to focus and drive discussions, and we were set this challenge too, with Sammi and Brendan supporting us to co-create, to discuss, explore and prioritise, looking at the urgency and the feasibility of potential solutions.
The project evaluation shows promising outcomes, particularly around relationships and understanding between physicists and communities. The team plan to share a Communities in conversation resource that outlines the model aiming to encourage further deep public dialogue that not only represents diverse voices but also provides a framework for action in exploring and co-creating solutions to big societal challenges.
Key messages
- The human connection between physicists and community members is key to supporting meaningful, deep dialogue around societal challenges. This includes ensuring that time is taken to develop and build relationships with trust and understanding.
- Communities in conversation provides a model and resources to support deep public dialogue, with a framework for action in exploring and co-creating solutions.
Resources
Information about the Institute of Physics: https://www.iop.org/
Institute of Physics – For physics • For physicists • For all : Institute of Physics (iop.org)
Short video outlining the project in Rochdale: https://www.rochdalescience.co.uk/news/communities-in-conversation/
Symposium Partners
