Reflections from the Office of Knowledge and Practice

By Nicole Armos

So what is “Knowledge & Practice”? 

Officially, we aim to build capacity for dialogue and democratic participation—which translates to helping people to have meaningful and respectful conversations about complex issues, and to have a greater say in decisions that affect their lives. We conduct research, publish resources, support and lead public engagement projects, and share knowledge and inspiration about ideas that are transforming what democracy can look like for governments and communities.

In the community…

The Centre for Dialogue is helping to launch three “mini-publics”—a model of public engagement where participants are selected by lottery to match the demographic-makeup of the community. The group meets over several weeks to learn and deliberate on a complex issue, before providing recommendations to decision-makers. While not without its flaws, the “mini-public” model is being increasingly used by governments around the world to develop evidence-based recommendations on sticky public issues, ranging from climate change to abortion. Here’s a great description of the concept from Claudia Chwalisz, whose work for the OECD has mapped over 700 such initiatives around the world.

Last Tuesday, 13,500 randomly selected households in Burnaby received invitations to participate in a Community Assembly on their Official Community Plan, and the Renovate the Public Hearings team are fine-tuning invitations for a similar Assembly in the Town of Gibsons. The Office of Knowledge & Practice will be supporting both teams with the design and evaluation of the assemblies

While I knew lottery-based representative recruitment is more inclusive and equitable, I was still struck by the sense of ease and belonging I felt last Thursday when I saw the full diversity of our community reflected at the welcome dinner for the City of New Westminster's pilot Community Advisory Assembly, the third mini-public we're supporting. I chatted with fellow moms my age, as well as seniors and middle school students. There were people who had immigrated to Canada (like my family did) as recently as the last year and others who had lived their whole lives in New West. Everyone I met had a story to share that was in some ways familiar and in other ways unique.

While there have been over 45 "mini-publics" in Canada in the last two decades, the majority have been one-time projects convening around a specific topic for a limited period of time. In contrast, New Westminster is the first Canadian municipality to experiment with embedding a year-long Assembly to provide ongoing advice to Council on municipal priorities. I am honoured to be co-facilitating the assembly’s meetings alongside the Centre for Dialogue’s executive director, Aftab Erfan, and look forward to seeing it unfold this year!

In “the lab”…

Meanwhile, we’ve been busy writing proposals for two research projects exploring engagement in the health sector and with youth. I'll share more details if and when they go live.

100 cups of tea…

It was great to start the year off by welcoming Felipe Rey and Indira Latorre as the new co-leads of Democracy R&D, a global network of practitioners and organizations supporting the development of deliberative mini-publics. Felipe and Indira (co-founders of the Colombian organization Ideemos) joined the network’s monthly coordinating committee meeting to share with us their plans for the networks’ development in the year ahead. It aligns greatly with our office’s work, so I look forward to future collaborations!

Where’s my bookmark…

Fittingly, this weekend I started reading Felipe Rey's new book on representative systems in democracy. While it's currently only available in Spanish, you can catch a sneak peek in his article Representation Reset, where he argues that in our day and age many new actors and institutions are representing public interests and helping to shape public policy beyond parliaments—ranging from social media influencers to civil society organizations and citizens’ assemblies. Seeing political representation as a diverse and plural system calls for us to work to better coordinate, connect and balance the voices in the field and consider whose voice is represented—and whose is not represented in different arenas.

So much of our work is born from unexpected connections and conversations, so if you have read something here that excites you or connects with your work, I invite you to get in touch!