At the participatory workshops in our local case study areas we asked participants, upon arrival, to think about  their own participation. These are the questions they were asked:

• What does participation mean to you?
• When was the last time you participated and what did you do?
• What is the single most important influence on how you participate?
• Is there a link between the activities you have been involved in over your life? If so,
  what is it?
• What keeps you from getting more involved in the things that you’re interested in?
• When in your life did you participate most?

Their responses were then displayed on the walls of the workshop room. The responses for the Enfield workshop have been written up in the appendix of the report (p15-18). They provide a vivid picture of a range of participation activities and issues, and really resonate with some of the things interviewees told us when talking about their own story of participation.

Over the course of March we held a series of learning and action workshops in our three field work areas in Enfield, Leeds and Suffolk. These workshops were designed to help us to explore our emerging findings and their implications with representatives from the public, voluntary and community sectors. The workshops were divided into 3 main sections, exploring the ‘what?’ (our research findings), the ‘so what?’ (the opportunities and challenges they present) and the ‘now what?’ (actions to help take advantage of the opportunities and overcome the challenges). In my last post I wrote about the first two steps in this process at the first workshop in Leeds, in this post I’m going to focus on the ‘now what?’ stage.

A group populating their tree with action leaves

In order to help participants think about actions that they could take forward – whether individually, through their organisations, or collectively – we developed an exercise called the ecosystem of participation. Each group (working on a particular opportunity or challenge) were given a paper tree and a short amount of time to explore the deep causes of the issue (e.g. the ‘roots’), identify the resources or assets already available (e.g. the ‘branches’ and ‘birds’) and explore the vision (e.g. the ‘sky’) that they were ultimately aiming for. Each group then populated their tree with actions, which took the form of green leaves. The picture to the right shows a group working on their tree, and the diagram below shows a representation of a group’s completed tree.

Representation of a group's finished tree

Tree mural with priority - gold leaf - actions

Towards the end of the exercise, the groups were asked to identify their three priority actions (which became their golden leaves), present these to everyone and group them onto a large tree mural.

A number of participants commented on the power of working with others interested in similar issues to them – but who they might never have met otherwise – to think through these challenges. Groups at all of the workshops developed some great ideas for action, and we hope that these will be put into practice.

If you would like to find out more about the learning and action workshops and their outcomes, the presentations and workshop reports from Enfield, Leeds and Suffolk can be found in the resources section of the website.

Further to Tim’s post on the participatory workshop in Leeds, we held a full-day learning and action workshop in Suffolk on the 10th of March. It was really great to see such a diverse mix of people from the voluntary and statutory sectors come together to discuss shared challenges and aspirations relating to participation in the county. Although many of the participants and the organisations they were representing face difficult times ahead in terms of budget and job cuts, in general there was a feeling of optimism and pragmatism in the room. People came up with some nice ideas for concrete actions they could take to improve the way they engage with volunteers and the wider public. The workshop presentation is available here and the report will be available soon.

Last Wednesday we held our first learning and action workshop in Leeds, one of our three fieldwork areas. With a group of representatives from the local public sector, voluntary sector and community, we discussed our emerging findings and their implications. The session was extremely productive with lots of interesting discussion, which gave us – as well as I hope the participants – lots to take away and think about. You can find the presentation used at the workshop here.

A second workshop will take place in Leeds on 30 March, but for now the discussion has moved online to OurSociety.org.uk. Anyone is welcome to join the discussion group on how and why people get involved and stay involved in their communities and beyond. If you live or work in Leeds, there are also still some places available to participate on 30 March. Contact me at tim@involve.org.uk if you’re interested.