We collaborate with public authorities at various levels of government, as well as other organisations like universities, museums, and corporations, where there is a commitment to doing more than one-off citizens’ assemblies.
DemNext is not a practitioner organisation that delivers or facilitates assemblies: rather, we act as an advisor to administrations or organisations who want to learn how to implement citizens’ assemblies. We want assemblies to be sustainable and for more people in more places to know how to do this, and for the stories of the impact of assemblies to be shared.
We often work in contexts where this will be a first citizens' assembly and there is a lack of know-how in the administration and local civil society organisations on how to do this. DemNext builds up local capacity in the administration and civil society to know how to design and facilitate a high-quality assembly. As part of this, DemNext typically:
- Provides access to learning materials (video tutorials and summary handouts) about the key aspects of designing and facilitating a citizens’ assembly.
- Supports the commissioning body's leadership in setting out the wording of the question (typically necessitates 4-5 calls, and collaborative work on a written document)
- Supports the commissioner in developing the procurement document that outlines the roles and responsibilities of the facilitation organisation.
- Leads the facilitation of a 2-3 day Assembly Design Workshop with key officials and the facilitation team in order to co-design the assembly. This includes decisions on details related to the duration and timings, sortition process, inclusion criteria, engagement with the wider public, setting up the assembly’s governance, the content committee, considerations around internal and external communications planning, and other relevant details.
- Supports the organisers in drafting the content of the invitation letter.
- With a trusted practitioner partner, provides a 2-3 day Training for Facilitating Citizens’ Assemblies.
- DemNext is on tap to provide advice as needed during the implementation by the local facilitation team.
We also provide advice on how to institutionalise in your specific context, based on learnings from other places that have done this before, adapted to the legal, political, and institutional characteristics of a place. This typically relates to what information should be included in a legal text that establishes the assembly, as well as what is required for establishing a permanent secretariat in the administration to coordinate the implementation of future assemblies.
Overall, this entails a rather intensive collaboration for 12-24 months depending on the context. But it also means that after an initial engagement, DemNext will no longer be needed for the assembly work to continue. Of course we will stay connected, and as part of the capacity building we will also intentionally help build connections to the wider national and international network of people in the field.
We are also interested in storytelling about and mainstreaming citizens’ assemblies, so part of our strength has been tapping into our media contacts and producing videos / articles / other content. For instance, for the Deschutes Civic Assembly, we successfully sought coverage in The New Yorker, NPR, a wide range of local and state media, and created a video. As part of our work with Birmingham Museums Trust in the UK, we supported them with the brief, procurement, and narrative for their storytelling video.
As part of a collaboration, we also tap into our network of researchers to ensure evaluation and research takes place, which is especially important in a context where you intend to do things more than once, to learn and iterate. DemNext drafts the evaluation brief, identifies the evaluation researchers, and coordinates their involvement in the project.
Finally, DemNext has been experimenting with how to incorporate technology to enhance the quality of the deliberation, increase the inclusiveness and transparency, and strengthen the link to a wider public with outputs grounded in voice with the MIT Center for Constructive Communication via our Tech-Enhanced Citizens' Assemblies Pop-Up Lab. If it's relevant, we would suggest including a tech-enhanced component to the project.
