As 2024 wraps up, our facilitation team is sharing their standout moments. From mysteriously missing catering and questionable gong skills to a surprise bush trek under the stars, 2024 had its fair share of laughs, twists, and unforgettable memories.
The City of Melbourne views affordable housing as crucial infrastructure for maintaining a liveable, inclusive, and prosperous city. With a projected shortfall of 23,200 affordable homes by 2036, immediate action is needed to address this long-standing issue. While there is broad community support for affordable housing, acceptance often wanes at the neighbourhood level. To tackle this, a People’s Panel of 39 diverse community members was established to represent local perspectives.
A support facilitator studying psychology, our first team member based in NSW and a brand new participant recruitment coordinator... meet the newest additions to the MosaicLab team: Polo, Polly and Gus! Learn more about this trio of terrific team members and gain some insights into who they REALLY are through their answers to our fast five questions!
How should we plan for the new energy future while providing affordable services that meet changing customer and community needs? Two representative ‘Voice of the Customer’ panels in Queensland answered this question. Randomly selected, everyday customers deliberated and agreed on recommendations that electricity distributors Ergon Energy Network and Energex used to prepare Regulatory Proposals for the Australian Energy Regulator (AER). Delve into a tale of two deliberative customer panels, and gain ideas and insights you can draw on for your next project.
We believe in supporting emerging and underserved people and communities to have deeper conversations that lead to stronger democracies. ML Giving is the new name of the not-for-profit part of MosaicLab - a banner for the work we do that gives back. We’re focussing on furthering community inclusion and action beyond just getting input and instead moving into enabling local decision-making. Explore the principles ML Giving will operate under, and the kind of projects and conversations we’re supporting.
Conflict - generally feared and constantly mismanaged, it’s one of the biggest challenges you will face in engagement. It’s also the most common challenge our subscribers submit to us. If you anticipate conflict, outrage or emotion ahead, this article is for you. Inside - how to avoid the three biggest errors we see made (and they are made a lot) and some simple, yet effective things you can do instead to navigate the situation instead of making it worse.
Fires, floods, a pandemic, wars and economic stress – humans everywhere are living through or witnessing a multitude of distressing events at once. It’s a time to connect with and support each other, even if we fear emotionally charged topics or feel uncertain how to approach them. Here are nine skills you can use in everyday conversations with family, friends and colleagues to help you and them process these events, bear heavy emotions and move forward together.
It takes time, effort and resources to achieve best practice engagement at the best of times. And right now it’s not the best of times. We’re hearing from many that engaging at all (let alone engaging well) is difficult.
Your organisation may be grappling with how to respond to the crisis, facing reduced revenue and budget cuts, responding to increased demand for community support and services, and wondering how to sustain it all long term. Local government bodies are also working to comply with the enhanced engagement requirements set out in the Local Government Act.
So we’ve announced two new service options designed to help you engage robustly, cost-effectively and appropriately.
How do we really ‘hear’ each other and have a collective experience when we engage online? Register now for the third session in our popular, new ‘continuous connections’ webinar discussion series.
Grab your free spot, learn new skills and connect with engagement professionals around Australia and beyond we explore how to achieve a shared experience online that’s similar to a face-to-face workshop.
Facing community crises at any time is difficult. When there are ‘concurrent crises’ it makes it even more challenging and complex to respond and engage.
Community members can feel disturbed, frightened or anxious. At the same time, organisations are also grappling with how to adjust, change and continue to move forward. There is value in continuous connections.
For those who missed our first ‘continuous connections’ webinar, we’ve pulled our top 10 tips for engaging through difficult times & working with high anxiety into a free, downloadable resource.
Registrations are now open for the second session in our new, free discussion series. Responding to popular demand, we’ll be exploring the dilemma of how to connect with people who aren’t online and/or groups that are ‘hard to reach’.
Much more than your standard ‘webinar’, these interactive, facilitated sessions are a chance to connect with other communications, engagement, planning and project management leaders and professionals. Together, we’ll collaboratively explore current engagement challenges and opportunities, share resources and provide key takeaways and tips.
MosaicLab is launching a new, fortnightly webinar series in April 2020. We want to support organisations and engagement professionals to navigate and continue to engage in a rapidly changing world.
Join us as we collaboratively explore challenges, opportunities and tips around meaningfull engagement with your staff, stakeholders and communities during this uncertain time.
In session one, we’ll delve into an engagement dilemma: Connecting with communities during COVID-19 without appearing ‘tone-deaf’.
MosaicLab is here to support you and your team as you change and readjust in response to COVID-19. To help you acclimatise, we’ve put together two exclusive, new engagement service options.
We can work with you to help transition your team to working from home through an interactive, online, facilitated strategy session.
We’ve also launched a new training and coaching package - working with individuals or groups to support you to engage and connect with people appropriately through a time of anxiety and upheaval.
Late last year we published the first post in a two-part series on dealing with this ‘subscriber dilemma’. In part one we explored how to plan for conflict, outrage and emotion when you know it’s likely to arise. Today, in part two, we’re providing 10 tips for working with high emotion in the moment – when you didn’t expect or plan for it at all.
This post tackles a big, scary dilemma – conflict, outrage and emotion. We’re often asked for advice around this topic, because it’s something that worries many people in the engagement space - even experienced practitioners and facilitators.
Partly, this fear is underpinned by a lack of ‘tools’ or skills. So, we’re going to give you some tips to help you prepare for and/or work with conflict, outrage and emotion in a meaningful way.
Because it’s a big, difficult topic, we’re going to address it in two parts: Part one (this post) is about how to plan for it, and in part two (next month) we’ll talk about what to do if you walk into it unexpectedly.
