Processing spaces: a format for more constructive community discussions
Discover essential trust exercises that help people open up and discuss sensitive topics
Discover essential trust exercises that help people open up and discuss sensitive topics
Suella Braverman's recent appearance on BBC Question Time is a good example of what happens when you don't set the right conditions for a discussion about something as delicate as identity and immigration.
The studio lights, a panel mostly made up of politicians, tight time limits, and pointed questions. It's a recipe for a politicised and adversarial debate built for soundbites, not for nuance. Not for making anyone feel any better afterwards.
What if there's another way?
There's a neat idea coming out of the News For All project, published by journalist, researcher and community organiser Shirish Kulkarni, who is currently a news innovation research fellow at Media Cymru and founder of Inclusive Journalism Cymru. The project included a range of partners, notably including the Welsh government and Welsh public broadcaster S4C.
He carried out research in Blaenau Ffestiniog (a Welsh-speaking former slate-mining town in north Wales) and worked with 14 community co-researchers over a year to test a specific question: "what conditions does this community need to make sense of its own life together?"