FS67 - Public Dialogue with Suzannah Lansdell

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: podcast@iaf-englandwales.org

 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 c