ABCD's 2011 Annual Workshop
Over 40 ABCD members attended this year's Annual Workshop, which ran from September 23rd to the 25th at both the Art Gallery of Alberta and the University's Alumni House. Highlights of the workshop included collaborating with the City of Edmonton to partner in a 2012 deliberation exercise, re-energizing and recruiting members to join Action Teams and brainstorming new themes and deliberation opportunities for the project's upcoming years. Our student research assistants played a leadership role in this year's workshop by overseeing sessions, participating in discussions and taking notes throughout. We were fortunate to have perfect weather to conduct various outdoor sessions and to take the occasional (and well deserved) break. We continued with our mandate to host sustainable meetings by having members attend sessions remotely, reducing paper handouts, and choosing sustainable, local and organic food options for our meals and snacks. A special addition to this year's workshop was having the discussions captured in several hand-drawn murals by professional graphic facilitator, Avril Orloff. Debriefing activities have shown us that project momentum is still strong. The next steps will include connecting with members who were not able to attend, pursuing emerging themes that may become new working groups, and solidifying our partnership with the City of Edmonton. Download our summary report , previously circulated to all ABCD members, for more details on workshop activities.
| Jacquie Dale and Miriam Wyman enjoying an outdoor session |
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Online videos from ABCD-hosted event
| Councillor Don Iveson talks about citizen deliberation |
On Friday Sept. 23rd - just prior to our annual workshop - ABCD, the Centre for Public Involvement and the City of Edmonton, Office of the Environment hosted a workshop-style meeting to go over the benefits of deliberative democracy in relation to implementing the City's strategic environmental plan The Way We Green. ABCD captured the day's presentations, which can now be viewed.
The presentations include:
1) Opening remarks - David Kahane, ABCD Director
2) Introduction - Jim Andrais, Office of the Environment
3) Citizen deliberation for climate and energy - Councillor Don Iveson
4) Deliberative democracy strategies - Matt Leighninger, DDC
5) Nudge, Think, Shove - Edward Andersson, Involve UK
6) City of Gearldton case study - Janette Hartz-Karp, Curtin University
7) Design choices for deliberation - Jacquie Dale, One World Inc.
8) Citizen panel case study - Fiona Cavanagh, CPI
9) Panel Reflections
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Featured ABCD Research Assistant - Greg Powell
Who was that shoeless guy at the ABCD workshop???
Greg Powell began working with ABCD in 2010 while employed at the Pembina Institute as the project coordinator for Alberta Acts on Climate Change. Last summer he traveled to Australia but he couldn't get away from us! ABCD hired Greg to continue working on projects including a detailed report titled, Alberta Greenhouse Gas Toolkit: A Review of Existing Guides and Support Tools that will help maximize the effectiveness of the Calgary led project The Greenhouse Gas Action Toolkit for Alberta Communities (or "Alberta GHG Toolkit" for short).
Greg is currently studying Theology at the University of Toronto and is a research assistant for ABCD's Historical Context Action Team led by Lorelei Hanson, Athabasca University. In his spare time Greg enjoys triathlons and running (with or without his shoes).
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Featured Action Team: Social Change and Policy Outcomes (SCPO)
The SCPO team, led by Professor Laurie Adkin,
has begun an extensive literature review on ecological citizenship and a review of past deliberation processes, including their outcomes and analyses. They will track data from ABCD-hosted deliberations, and hope to resource public opinion polling before and after the deliberations to determine if there are shifts in beliefs regarding climate change and necessary policy actions. Participant surveys, tracking media coverage of the deliberations, documentation of responses from policy makers, government, corporate, environmental community groups and other organizations will also be used to determine the influence of our deliberations. Researchers on this team are interested in how the design variables of our deliberations (i.e. how questions about climate change are approached or how the perspectives of various groups are brought into the conversation) will ultimately affect the participant's views and influence climate change action and policy development. During our 2011 annual workshop it became clear that all other ABCD research will be linked to this team's work in the months ahead. |
Bon Voyage to Stacy Wall
We would like to wish farewell (for now) to Stacy Wall, an ABCD member from the City of Edmonton who will be returning to the United Kingdom to work with the University of Bournemouth and the Health Department of the Local Authority on a project called "Synergies between health and tourism strategies: an organizational ethnography." Best of luck to Stacy in all her future endeavours! |