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.
Jemena Electricity Network has been implementing a comprehensive engagement program for the organisation's 2026-2031 Regulatory Proposal, employing a multi-dimensional approach to allow customers direct influence over proposed future pricing and services. MosaicLab codesigned and lead the facilitation of the process, that included a deliberative panel and brings diverse customer, stakeholder, and industry perspectives into the decision-making process.
As part of the development of Ausgrid's 2024-2029 regulatory submission, two randomly selected customer panels deliberated over a collective 10 full days. The panels, facilitated by MosaicLab and Gauge Consulting, considered how Ausgrid should look to the future while remaining fair to customers today. Ausgrid's three-year engagement process allowed customers to influence what Ausgrid spends customers money on, giving them a rare insight and influence over the cost of electricity, an issue that directly impacts the lives of everyday people.
Our new world of online conversations can raise challenges. Every meeting no matter how small or informal needs a lead person, whether that is a chairperson, a facilitator or simply the person who initiated the meeting.
There are many meetings for which a member of the group can take up this role. But when is it wise to appoint an external, independent facilitator? This post explores the five reasons you should give this role to a skilled facilitator.
The OECD has just released a global analysis of deliberation called Innovative Citizens Participation and New Democratic Institutions – Catching the Deliberative Wave. MosaicLab along with many other deliberative practitioners around the world contributed to this significant piece of work by providing our list of over 25 deliberations that we have facilitated in Australia. Thirteen of these deliberations were included in this OECD database.
In recent months, we delivered a series of internal engagement programs for Monash City Council, Greater Shepparton City Council and Melton City Council to help build the momentum for engagement internally. Councils have been working on Community Engagement Policies, Council Plans, Frameworks and capacity building programs and have seen the value of engaging a diverse range of staff in this work.
In this blog, some of our council colleagues and facilitators provide their learnings from the internal engagement processes.
We’re very pleased to announce that, together with partner Dr. Lyn Carson of Deliberative Designs, we have won the 2018 IAP2 Australasia Core Values Award for Research. We feel very honoured to have had this exciting work recognised in this way.
To celebrate, we’re providing everyone with all the digital resources and materials that have been produced to date as a result of this work. Providing these resources to others is in line with our commitment to enhancing the quality of deliberative processes, and our aim to encourage quality engagement practice everywhere.
(continue to the bottom of this post to access all the resources).
This one has been a long time in the making. Finally, we can announce that our latest 'Deliberation Ready' video is here. This edition is particularly exciting because, for the first time, we've interviewed participants from across multiple deliberative processes.
Together, these 10 citizens share their unique perspectives and provide candid, first hand reflections on their journey - the challenges, the surprises, the highlights and more.
A brand new year brings a brand new opportunity to think about what we want to achieve over the 12 months ahead. We've been discussing our goals for 2018, and have decided that, this year, our resolutions are all about learning.
Here's five of our knowledge goals for 2018... what are yours? Share at least one thing you want to learn this year in the comments section below.
MosaicLab's co-founder Nicole Hunter recently took part on a panel of esteemed guests discussing potential futures for democracy across Australia and the World. The panel formed part of the University of Canberra Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis (IGPA) Smart Governance Conversation on Desirable Futures series.
The evening saw a very interesting conversation take place around democracy in Australia and beyond and ideas for doing it differently in the future. If you weren't lucky enough to make it on the evening, today we're sharing the official video of the panel discussion.
A Research and Development Note detailing the process and outcomes of a recent study we worked on with Lyn Carson of Active Democracy and the newDemocracy Foundation has been published.
The study considers the question - How can we enhance the ability of randomly-selected citizens in mini-publics (such as citizens’’ juries) to understand and evaluate expert evidence?
Recently, we posted an interview with Lyn Carson of Active Democracy and the newDemocracy Foundation, who is working in partnership with MosaicLab to research what happens when critical thinking skills, techniques and concepts are introduced to participants in a deliberative process.
Today, in Part 2, we're talking with MosaicLab co-founder Nicole Hunter, an experienced facilitator with extensive experience in deliberative engagement. Nicole, alongside MosaicLab's other two co-founders Keith Greaves and Kimbra White, has been working to integrate critical theories into real, on-ground processes.
