Grassroots to Global Toolkit
Grassroots to Global DIY toolkit - please see HERE for this in document form which you can copy and edit for your situation.
Fàile! Welcome! Please use this document to help start your own Grassroots to Global ‘G2G’ process.
Just make a copy and create your own, locally applicable edit. Use ‘find and replace’ (in edit on the top control bar) searching for @ to change our contact details for yours) - we’ve also highlighted dates and other situational details in the guide below in red so you can easily change them. Please let us know if it’s useful - we’d love to hear from you! This document contains:
Introduction and Overview
Climate Changes Everything
In the face of worsening global catastrophe this is a proposal for a way to fundamentally change our collective decision making processes so that we can make better choices around this and other crucial issues. Climate change has the potential to destroy human society and even to drive us to extinction, it is clear that fundamental change is urgently needed to political decision-making processes that have failed to rise to the challenge.
Of course, climate change is just one symptom of a now global system of domination that impacts on our lives in many ways. In most societies there are huge and increasing levels of social inequality, held in place by violence that is both implicit and enacted, but which also happens within each of us, often unconsciously. It is only by addressing the system as a whole at every level, including the personal, through creating the conditions for us to collectively find another way of living together, that we stand a chance of making the kinds of changes now demanded of us by our planet if we want to stay here.
G2G is a strategy for moving towards creating those conditions. We aim to build from our communities towards a truly global process where we trust ourselves and one another to identify the fundamental things we need for a good life, the reasons why this can’t currently happen, and what needs to change so that we can share the world in a way that enables everyone to live healthily and which rebuilds the health of the ecosystems we rely on.
At its heart this is an argument about legitimacy: where should power lie - and can a more direct and inclusive democracy operate effectively and be made much more difficult to co opt and corrupt than the systems we have inherited? We are used to thinking that collective decisions only really count when they’re made within elected parliamentary processes, but as our governments repeatedly fail to effectively tackle the biggest threats of our time, we need to show that there are other ways to make legitimate collective decisions. Ways that have much higher standards of fairness and transparency, based on a much more accurate understanding of what it is to be human,and standing a much better chance of making the transformational changes needed.
We want to show that we, the ordinary people of the world, are capable of creating decision making processes that are at least as legitimate as those of our governments. We contend that using processes that focus on the thinking and wisdom of ordinary people, few of whom have any vested interests aside from being able to live a good and healthy life with families and friends, enables us to be more confident that these processes have not been co opted by other interests.
This is an argument that only needs to be won in the hearts and minds of the public. Which doesn’t mean that it will be easy. People are increasingly losing faith in mainstream political processes and are looking elsewhere, increasingly towards the apparently anti-status quo positions of ‘strong men’ without necessarily seeing the spiral of violence that inevitably comes in their wake. Trauma-aware deliberative processes are an alternative to the far right perpetuation of trauma, and are ways which can genuinely enable us to make empathy-based collective decisions. We need to re-democratise democracy and develop fully inclusive ways to use it collaboratively to find ways to meet everyone’s real needs and to stop harming the natural systems, so that they can restore themselves.
In Scotland this process (for more of an overview of the whole G2G idea read this - and see the image below) began from 1-1 conversations → we are now moving towards ‘People’s Assembly’ meetings where people discuss the big issues that are impacting their lives, develop ideas about how we could do things in ways that meet all of our needs better and which regenerate our places instead of trashing them → and we then aim to move towards creating a citizen-led Citizen’s Assembly with a proper randomly selected sample of society (‘ordinary’ people without vested interests).
We are keenly aware that this process will look very different in different places, and that it is already unfolding in many different ways. But if this is the place where you are joining the stream of change, we are proposing some core principles that will ensure that whatever form the processes sparked by this take, they will be aligned where it matters. So here are some...
...Core Principles
This G2G process is about:
Build a new whole system - which will make the old system obsolete. In contrast, working within the existing system to change it is a very understandable and honourable approach - but that is not what this project is about.
Trust and support people - working to include everyone who wants to be involved in the process of decision making. At its core is the trust that small groups of human beings who are feeling safe and connected are able to be empathic and intelligent and - given time, good information and good facilitation - will tend to make wise decisions.
Decolonise processes - paying acute attention to the ways in which we will inevitably reproduce the dominator system within and between ourselves (resource under construction), being kind but firm with ourselves and one another in resisting and remedying that and drawing on traditional ways, new thinking and science to use and create evolving processes. Ones which take into account the realities of the human condition, and of our widely varying cultural backgrounds, and which are inclusive, empathic, fair, transparent, morally legitimate, emotionally intelligent, decolonised and culturally diverse. This can’t be done all at once, or only by one group of people, so this method is emerging and evolving over time.
Acknowledge trauma - acknowledging that every one of us has some degree of trauma, both personal and cultural. This trauma can be triggered within us in an instant and often so unconsciously that we don’t even notice it happening. In that state, we are unable to feel empathy and should not be making decisions on behalf of others. Finding ways to support our self awareness around this and share practices for returning to ourselves once we have tripped into our trauma needs to be at the core of the processes we develop.
Prioritise relationships - at every stage: speaking to random strangers, mapping organisations and then having conversations with them, creating spaces for people to talk and listen to one another, these all contribute to processes where othering is much more difficult. Real connection and relationship is key to decisions that work.
People’s and Citizen’s Assemblies
At the moment, we are working with these two models as examples of established ways of involving a much wider range of people than we would usually expect in mainstream social decision making processes.
People’s assemblies are wide, public engagement processes, which attempt to call in as many people as possible to contribute to thinking through issues (usually framed around a single question) and propose solutions to them. These are really useful for engagement, education, developing ideas and making sure that as many people as possible are contributing to developing new thinking about how a consciously designed social system could work.
Citizen’s Assemblies are much more formal processes. Groups of between 70-100 people (or more) who are:
randomly selected out of the population you’re working with (so across e.g. a city or country) and then with people chosen out of that group according to criteria (age, ethnicity, etc) so that the final 70-100 people are representative of the population at large
presented with evidence from people with solid experience across the spectrum of opinion on the topic
facilitated to deliberate and reach decisions together
Citizen’s Assemblies are useful for deeply considering issues and generating good decisions. These processes are usually set up by governments via steering groups, which should have representatives from across the spectrum of interests in the issue and who should work together to ensure that the assembly is thoroughly and reliably informed on the most important aspects of the issue by high quality ‘expert witnesses’, including those with lived experience of the issue being addressed. Without deeper and broader social movements pushing for genuine transformation, such processes can be captured, e.g. by government-leaning civil servants, and either diverted into innocuous discussions, or its outcome placed on a shelf. The process can work when there is creative tension and co-creation between government and civil society
We see these two formats as potentially working well together in that People’s Assemblies can generate a range of bottom up solutions to an issue and then a Citizens’s Assembly can come to a decision on how to go forward based on these and other evidence that they consider, in particular by considering the Peoples Assemblies proposals, in the light of their wider impact on society. We anticipate that both of these formats will evolve as people from different cultures use them, and we welcome this creativity, challenge and diversity as part of an essential decolonising process.
How this is working so far in Scotland
This process began in March 2020 and is ongoing - we will update this resource periodically as we go along. Here’s what we’ve done so far...
Stage 1: listening
Listening to those who are different to us, avoiding reacting when we don’t agree, but digging deeper to understand how the system has impacted on them and their lives to lead them to their current views.
The purpose of this was to hear and understand how people make sense of the impacts of our system on their lives in a range of ways.. We were listening for how all these impacts tie together, as we move towards a shared understanding of how the current system works, how it could change and what we need to put in its place. We wanted to get better at listening for, and talking about, the connections so that our communications - and invitations to things like People’s Assemblies - would make sense to as wide a range of people as possible.
We started by gathering a group of people who were interested in this to make sure we could complete quite a few interviews. People only need to do one or two interviews each in order to help the process, but once started many didn’t want to stop, as there’s a fascination and real enjoyment to connecting with people in this way. We held introductory sessions and developed the interviewer’s guide (below) to help orient people and make sure we got interview notes in a form we could use. We also held really useful weekly feedback and processing meetings to begin sharing and making sense of what we were all learning.
You need to find your own way to read and make sense of the interviews - with our 100 it was a big task and we shared it out between members of our core team. Remember that you’re looking for the stand out issues, and the way that people are talking about them, so that you can frame invitations to public events in accessible, exciting, engaging ways. We wanted to make a report document, but really struggled to encapsulate the range of what people had said. We may still do this, but felt that using the information was more important than writing about it.
Please don’t get bogged down in too many concerns about if and how your process is rigorous enough: trust your guts. If you’ve spoken to so many people that you’re rarely hearing anything new in terms of the impacts on their lives, you’ve probably done enough. This is NOT the same as an academic process. We’re not aiming for perfection, just an attempt to get a wide and deep sense of the realities of peoples’ lives and their thinking on that. The ‘proof’ will be in how successful your call to events is, but those participating - both those listening and those being listened to - find the process rewarding and enlightening
Stage 2: mapping your territory
Making sure that your call goes out across the widest possible range of people in your chosen area - and in ways that are accessible to them and that speak to the things they care about.
Again this is not a conventional mapping process, but more of a social network survey. We chose to begin with groups who are usually marginalised in our culture and are in the process of mapping organisations (as well as people we know) on the frontline of work with the elderly, disability, homelessness, poverty, recovery, women’s rights, youth, anti racism and lgbtqi rights. This is not done for the sake of having a map, but as a way to become aware of and connect with people who often get missed when it comes to making decisions. We will ask questions like:
What would make this process feel unmissable to the people you work with?
What kind of support might people need to attend?
What is likely to put people off about what we’re planning and how can we address that?
If you’re starting in localities rather than going straight to the national level (as we initially intended to do - only to be headed off by two cities independently deciding that they wanted to do People’s Assemblies locally first!) you’ll need to do this here too. The point is not to only invite these groups and organisations, but to ensure that those who are often left out of social decision making processes feel as welcome as possible.
Stage 3: local to national People’s Assemblies
Well facilitated and informed gatherings of anyone who is interested in an issue or a place to bring together their best thinking on what’s wrong with our current way of doing things and what might work better.
We are in the process of connecting with people from across Scotland who want to run People’s Assemblies (PAs) in their areas as a precursor to running national level events. It’s really important that people are supported to dialogue well and safely with one another. We plan to offer training for local facilitators in deliberative democratic and relational techniques as well as supporting peer learning and sharing of resources between participating communities. We will make all the resources we’re developing for this available as soon as they’re ready.
Stage 4: national citizen-led Citizen’s Assembly
One of the core issues this process exists to address is to contest where and how legitimate decisions are made. Citizens Assemblies (CAs) have become popular with governments as a way to deal with difficult issues - either because they give the veneer of acting on an issue instead of taking action, or because a government genuinely wants the help of citizens in dealing with seemingly intractable problems, with that intention often evidenced by a willingness to genuinely co-create the process with civil society and others, in a prefiguring of the sharing of power a genuine Citizen’s Assembly entails . In relying on the decisions of a group of people without vested interests CAs are clearly head and shoulders ahead of our current democratic structures. But our experience with the CA on climate change in Scotland and what we’ve heard from similar processes elsewhere is that they can still be co-opted in the planning phase. If Governments’ hand pick those who are on the steering group and those who design and facilitate the process, as well as strongly control the amount and type of input the steering group has and maintain a high level of influence over which experts are chosen, when they input and for how long, then this embeds a a process of co-option instead of a process of co-creation .
We want to contest the assumption that CAs gain their legitimacy by being convened by governments and instead insist that transparency, thoroughness, inclusivity and fairness should be the yardsticks by which they are measured - and that citizen led CAs can be just as legitimate - if not more so, than government led ones.
Stage 5: going international - towards a global Citizen’s Assembly
Processes similar to this are already happening in many different forms in many different places. These look very different depending on where people are starting. We’re currently meeting with people from other countries and backgrounds to share information and talk about how this project should develop, to learn together and develop culturally diverse processes that ensure that when we meet as a global assembly, everyone from every culture feels welcome.
We’re working towards an International learning event in the first half of 2021 to grow this idea, and to enable a much wider range of people to join the conversation and shape what the next steps towards a fully global process should be. We are very open to changing our trajectory, depending on these conversations with parallel processes, including conversations about how a global assembly can happen, and what the nature of the problem is that it would be called to address. In the international learning event in 2021, we aim to focus on:
(1) Politics and decision making - Even the most democratic governments seem caught in an electoral cycle that means that their decision-making is not able to be based on empathy and the long term,
(2) Economics and how we meet our needs - Even the most redistributive of our current economic systems seem caught in a profit-driven economic growth mindset that cannot afford to take into account broader impacts; and
(3) Media and how the stories we tell shape our world - Even the so-called free press and open internet seem to advance the interests of those whose short-term focus has enabled them to become incredibly wealthy and through that control much of the political and media space.
For now we are moving towards creating a Global Citizen’s Assembly in 2022, not as a way of impacting on existing national or international government processes, but as a way of enabling the citizens of the world (meaning, everyone) to take the decisions governments have proven incapable of taking. This is not about a Global Assembly deciding a blueprint people must follow, but about switching off the engine of the bulldozer that is bulldozing our world, so that we can enable all localities, cultures and places that - no longer being bulldozed - can instead bloom in diverse and mutually supportive ways.
***G2G INTERVIEWER HANDBOOK***
Thank you very much for agreeing to be a G2G interviewer. These guidelines aim to be a good point of reference, reminders and pointers to the other essential bits of this project. Here are some useful links:
G2G Project outline - overview of the whole process as it stands just now
G2G outline in one page - proposed 4 stage timeline
Interviewer prompt sheet - a 1 pager with all the questions on it
Interviewer note sheet - to make sure you include everything needed
Introductory presentation - for reference
Doodle - for finding a date for your conversations with people
Zoom - for online meetings
NB: Please send a record of your conversation/s to engagedlistening@gmail.com (insert local contact here, but do feel free to send results to us too) as soon as possible after you’ve completed your notes
Contents - click to jump to each section
Building our shared understanding
The basics
THESE INTERVIEWS ARE NOT ABOUT PERSUADING OTHERS: THEY ARE ABOUT LISTENING TO THEM. Even - in fact especially - if we don’t agree with them.
We have found that something magic often happens when we leave our own opinions to one side for a while and really listen to what others have to say - genuinely trying to understand why they think the way they do. Giving space to another person, with an attitude of genuine curiosity and an assumption that even if we deeply disagree with what they’re saying, we are able to really get why they think how they do, has an effect like no other.
Although we are using the questions below (which may develop as we go along), we don’t just want to get answers to them. More than that, the intention is to have deep conversations with people who ‘aren’t like us’, to put our personal concerns to one side and to really cross the bridge to another person’s reality and (either at the time or in later reflection) make the connections between the big issues that impact on them and the ones that we’re aware of.
Through a distilling process, these conversations will help us frame the invitation, structure and content of local, regional and national Peoples’ Assemblies looking at system redesign later this year.
For those whose level of concern about ‘their’ issue is very great, it can be a big ask to put this to one side. If you’re finding this difficult, alongside the three questions for others, we have an additional three questions for you to ask yourself before, during and after your interviews.
The BIG questions for your interviewees...
We are open to you using these questions, adapting them or using your own. If you use other questions, it’s really important that you keep a note of them and include it in the record you send us.
Pre-question: What would you like to keep from this coronavirus period - and what would you hope never to experience again?
1. Aside from coronavirus, WHAT do you see as the biggest challenges facing the world? (how do they affect you & yours?)
2. WHY is this problem happening? (who benefits from it, and is anything being done about it?)
3. If we were serious about tackling this problem, HOW would we? (where would we start?)
PLUS AFTERWARDS three practical questions...
Would you like to share your contact details (email preferred, but anything is fine) so we can share any findings from these conversations and share information about events like Peoples Assemblies?
If yes, please include contact details in your notes - these will be stored separately to your other notes to protect people’s privacy.
AND - IF APPROPRIATE...
Would you be interested in interviewing people for this project yourself? If so please share contact details and/or email engagedlistening@gmail.com
ALSO three questions for yourself if you feel you need them...
BEFORE: What do I need to do for myself to feel ready to put my opinions (or judgements, preconceptions, prejudices etc) to one side while I’m speaking to this person?
DURING: What else do I need to know to fully understand why this person thinks the way they do (these questions might help)?
AFTER: How does what has been said connect with other systemic impacts (violence, climate change, inequality etc)
When? Who? Where? What?
When: The engaged listening projects runs through Spring-Summer 2020.
Who: We want to reach out and speak to others face to face. For many of us, making an approach like this to strangers (or in other ways to those close to us) can be quite a challenge at any time and the coronavirus lockdown brings new challenges.
Where: Given the coronavirus situation, we are hoping to recruit people to have conversations through partnering with other organisations, sending chain emails and placing ads on social media. For these online interviews, people who are willing to host conversations will be put in touch with people who’re up for being interviewed by email to make their own arrangements about time and platform. Zoom and jitsi are reliable video conferencing platforms, but you and the person you’re talking to can make your own choices.. People may well relish a conversation with a new face in these times.
What: To sum up: what’s really crucial in these conversations is:
You’re not trying to change anyone’s mind - just to dig deeper into what’s really impacting on them
You’re listening as keenly and deeply as you can
You share your conversations with others (see here) to feed into a pool of knowledge about what people really care about and what social changes they think would make the world better.
Listening
“It is easier to be clever than to listen. There’s about 3 layers of listening: there’s ordinary listening; there’s deep listening; and there’s shockingly profound listening. You have to listen to the sound of people’s voices, to what they’re really saying and what they’re not saying. Listening is profound attentiveness.” Ben Okri
The quality of your listening is crucial to this project. Good listening goes in two directions - paying attention to the person talking in the deep way that Ben Okri outlines - and also paying attention to your own responses, resonances and reactions and using them as information too. This practice exercise recommends a 20/80 split in your attention, but for your chosen conversations it should be more like 50/50.
Some of the resources in this Better Conversations Guide will be helpful, specially:
Listening is an everyday art and virtue, but it’s an art we have lost and must learn anew. Listening is more than being quiet while others have their say. It is about presence as much as receiving; it is about connection more than observing. Real listening is powered by curiosity. It involves vulnerability — a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. It is never in “gotcha” mode. The generous listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one’s own best self and one’s own most generous words and questions.
AND
As the conversation gets going, and others bring forth their thoughts and react to those of others, keep an ear to helping people speak for themselves — not on behalf of a group, and not lapsing into the jargon of issues and advocacy. This is how we’ve been trained to speak in groups, in public, and getting out of this mode takes some practice. But there is a profound difference between hearing someone say, This is the truth, and hearing someone say, This is my truth. You can disagree with another person’s opinions; you can disagree with their doctrines; you can’t disagree with their experience. The opening question will help set a tone. But if and as people walk across the line between speaking for themselves and moving into abstractions and issues, you can gently coax them back with questions like these:
Tell me what you mean when you use that word?
Put some bones on that idea for me.
Can you tell a story to illustrate that?
Do you have a personal experience that made you feel/think that?
Can you tell me a bit more about that?
I think I’m hearing you say: xxx - is that right?
Recording your conversations
We’re not after a blow by blow account, but more your impressions of what the essence of what was said - or what you think was meant. Please aim to end up with no more that 1 side of A4. You will know how best to record what you want to remember. This doc has a list of all the questions which may be helpful.
You may want to share your record with your interviewee to make sure you heard them right. You’re free to do this or not, as you feel to.
N.B. PLEASE USE THIS DOCUMENT TO RECORD YOUR CONVERSATIONS - so that you include all the details needed. Send a record of your conversation/s to engagedlistening@gmail.com as soon as possible after you’ve completed your notes
Anonymisation of your interview notes
This involves much more than simply making sure the name of the person interviewed is not revealed; we also need to make sure that people who might know that person would not recognise them. Here are some useful guidelines from a friendly researcher :)
Changing Personal Names
My personal practice is to very quickly give all interviewees a fictitious name that feels appropriate but not obviously connected to the person in any way. Turning people into a number never feels right.
Avoid using the same initials and especially if interviewing members of a group who know each other and each of whom might read what you have written and try to guess ‘who is who?’.
If I know a person’s nationality and/or ethnicity and/or religion and gender I try to give a name that is plausible for a person with those characteristics. Ideally everyone should have a unique name - using both a fictionalised first name and surname might help avoid duplicates – you need to keep records to check back what names you have already used.
You have to not only change the person’s name but also if they give personal names of friends and relatives these have to be changed too and you may need to keep a running record so as not to give the same person several different names within one interview. Rather than using fictionalised names you might replace a name with a relationship such as friend 1, nearby aunt, mother etc.
You need to take care doing this not to destroy the meaning – for example, making it impossible for a reader to work out if the interviewee is talking about one particular friend or lots of different friends.
Changing Place Names: I only do this for small and local places. I would not turn Edinburgh into ‘a Scottish City’ but I probably would turn Duns, which has a population of about 2,000, into ‘small town in the Borders’. I might say ‘affluent city centre area of Edinburgh’ rather than a very specific area like Marchmont or Bearsden but it depends on the risk – I might not if there is nothing very controversial and nothing else very identifying. Try not to make the text meaningless though by stripping out the richness somebody will get if they know a particular place. But decisions about place are linked to the next item.
Changing distinctive details and histories: If the whole text is to be publicly available you have to think about what distinctive details there are that can be pieced together and to protect against this. For example, if somebody has a twin brother or a mother who committed suicide or did something else unusual or anyone in their family has a unique occupation like prime-minister, chair of the town bowling club, head teacher of the small town school it might be necessary to leave the very distinct detail out or gloss over– so twin brother becomes brother close in age, mother’s suicide becomes an unspecified family tragedy and head teacher becomes a professional occupation and so on.
Building our shared understanding
Peer support, processing and reflection groups to process and understand more deeply
It is highly recommended that you also bring your experience of your conversations to at least one reflection group. This will allow you to digest your experience, compare it with others’ and begin to distill and understand the ways in which peoples’ experiences connect at a deeper level. If you are on our mailing list you’ll be told about group meetings. If you know others who are doing interviews, you may decide to meet independently with them. If so, please do make sure you feed in any insights you’re having to us via engagedlistening@gmail.com.
You can run these groups however you wish, but do be sure that everyone has time and space to share their learning. This exercise is good practice for engaged listening and could also be a format for how to run a reflection group.
What next?
There will be a process for drawing the learning from the engaged listening period to inform and frame one or more Peoples’ Assemblies in Scotland. If you’re interested in being directly involved in that, please contact engagedlistening@gmail.com