Lessons Learned per Public Engagement

A

• Achieve success through multi-stakeholder engagement and consensus;
• Activate citizens as a resourceful group of action that could lead to a more innovative and including society;
• Adapt the workshop schedule and structure according to the specifics and program of the stakeholders you want to attend;
• Address a specific subject that concerns multidisciplinary stakeholders;
• Adopt participative methods tested in MARINA in other initiatives including stakeholders;
• Allocate sufficient time for discussions and to involve all participants interests and ideas;
• Allow different perspectives on the subject, which will lead to a common background for further discussion;
• Assign participants to a specific table according togender, type of organization/institution, type of expertise in the field, main interest in general to ensure multi-disciplinarity;
• Attract different stakeholders in order to have a homogeneity and complementarity of the group, to obtained complex inputs;
• Attract participants by sending invitations via e‐mail, followed by phone calls;
• Attract private investment and develop national projects;
• Awareness and education are fundamental in changing mindsets;

B

• Be aware of the motivational factor that workshop participants may feel because they like the fact that an interdisciplinary group representing all society's niches is invited to brainstorming for resolving the problem;
• Be aware that it is challenging to persuade people to participate in workshops;
• Be inclusive in the words used so that non scientists participants can understand and contribute to the discussion without being overwhelmed by scientific language;
• Bring people and particularly the young on the location where they can have transformative experiences that they will seek to relieve throughout their lives;
• Bring researchers from ‘non-conventional’ areas related to Deep Sea Mining;

C

• Choose a method which will produce a large amount of data on a topic in a short time;
• Communicate broadly and raise wide awareness about the specific initiative to anchor change;
• Connect all stakeholders through education and communication;
• Consider a discussion phase that is long enough for all participants to be fully aware of all the implications of the proposed ideas without adding to much overall time to the duration of the workshop;
• Coordinate and develop industrial, academic and political linkages to boost funding around marine biotech;
• Create a friendly and relaxed workshop atmosphere for participants to have lively and open discussions;
• Create a relaxing but effective work experience and joint decision-making with the world café methodology;
• Create a seafood producers organisation in France to reduce the gap between the producers and consumers;
• Create decision-making processes that are participative, transparent and allow for public deliberation;
• Create links between participants for future partnerships;
• Create the opportunity to network and discuss, in order to identify the key marine and societal challenges for the Wave Energy Sector;

D

• Define the date, finalise the hot topic and have communication material two months ahead;
• Describe the workshop topic with clear and concrete examples of the subject using storyteling;
• Develop a clear understanding around MSP and what its implications are for all stakeholders groups including offshore wind;
• Develop a network of common interest;
• Develop a partnership between different stakeholders;
• Develop a stakeholder engagement plan;
• Develop and organize more actions similar to this workshop, in order that different stakeholders meet and discuss their ideas more often and get used to think outside their boxes;
• Develop attractive places dedicated for pop-up events hosted by harbour industries;
• Develop information exchange systems between government, industry and the universities.
• Develop messages that make the problem tangible for everybody for instance by translating facts and figures into something simple and impactful;
• Develop more partnerships with the Media and NGOs in order to reach bigger audiences;
• Develop new models and ways of collaborating on climate change in order to create common knowledge and more awareness of climate change in public mind;
• Develop new tools and infrastructures of research on marine resources, particularly in inaccessible depths, but also for monitoring the marine environment, stocks of biomass or still unwanted algae;
• Develop societal awareness about water and advantages of use of renewable energy sources in general and offshore wind farms in particular;
• Develop tools for engaging citizens in urban development and communicate them broadly to inspire local communities;
• Develop webinars for cross-sectoral stakeholder engagement;
• Don't interfere too much with the topic which participants chose to focus on, it mostly depends on individual needs/experience and knowledge;

E

• Educate the public at large in their individual role in marine conservation and sustainability (Public Engagement, Science Education);
• Empower all stakeholder groups to co-create sustainable value propositions that reflect societal needs and sustain healthy marine environments thanks to RRI dimensions;
• Empower citizens beyond data collection, in decision making and governance;
• Enable workshops participants to create networks and communities of interest to further research and identify solutions for the studied issue;
• Encourage and promote marine involvement for all stakeholders;
• Encourage researchers to voice their opinions on marine issues in the media focusing on economic, environmental and social needs to enable the uptake of new technologies;
• Encouraged all the participants to work on all the solutions during the session;
• Engage all nterested stakeholders in harbour development;
• Engage participants to apply RRI principles in daily work and daily life;
• Engage participants via emails and phone calls, since it has been proven as the most effective means of recruitment;
• Engage stakeholders from different sectors of activity;
• Engage the public, involve governance bodies at various levels to generated ideas with ethical components, are sustainable, inclusive and of social justice;
• Engage young potential "citizen scientists" in schools to promote the issue at hand;
• Ensure a good representation of professionals (industry related to the topic, policy makers, journalists) to have a balanced dialogue;
• Ensure that all voices have an equal footing in the debate during the workshop;
• Equip urban open areas for open debates where local communities can meet frequently in order to exercise the rights guaranteed by Aahrus convention to develop sustainable decisions in a collective and legal manner;
• Establish cooperation among diverse stakeholders (researchers, innovative businesses, politicians and citizens) even when it's challenging;
• Establish transparent, efficient and effective democratic mechanisms amongst all involved and throughout all the phases to create trust;
• Explain the method used to the participants as clearly and in a shorter time;

F

• Find a topic which will attract different stakeholders;
• Focus the workshop on a topic relevant for the participants and related to their daily lives;
• Follow up with the participants with periodic workshops using the same methodology;
• Follow-up with all participants with the results regularly and engage them in post-workshop knowledge sharing and networking through an online platform;
• Foster collaboration among companies in the Marine Biotech value chain and social and environmental actors;
• Foster stakeholder engagement, capacity building, behavioural changes and production and consumption pattern shift with Science education;

G

• Give to all of the participants the opportunity to discuss and generate ideas;

H

• Have participants rank the priorities and discuss from the highest to the lowest to co-construct a common vision;
• Have participants trying to think from other stakeholders' position;
• Have proactive public participation from stakeholders, in particular from governance and industry;
• Help participants become active in the workshop by helping them understand the importance of the Marine Hot Topic;
• Hook RRI abstract subjects to a topic related to participants lives and interests;

I

• Identify common working initiatives between municipalities and the civil societies, so that citizens may be actively involved;
• Identify easy-to-implement solutions to attract people and harbour-related businesses in innovative harbour development;
• Increase awareness in the youngest about the (local) marine issues to create a new generation of people that are aware of the problems and want to engage themselves, to take action also through a political career;
• Increase awareness regarding water quality;
• Inform in a wider manner all societal actors about the issue;
• Initiate target awareness campaigns towards all stakeholders through specific media campaigns;
• Invite additional stakeholders and communities to join the MARINA knowledge sharing platform and direct them to the results and materials related to Deep Sea Mining;
• Invite and encourage different stakeholders to participate at this kind of workshops;
• Involve a multitude of stakeholders and implement actions as widely as possible, even globally, in order for adopted policies and solutions to be as relevant as possible, resulting in more support to implement the changes by all sides;
• Involve all the interested stakeholders;
• Involving customers ranked the most favourable cluster with specific actions including the adoption of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) business model;

J

• Joined stakeholder involvement produces ideas with integrated and holistic focus requiring synergy and collaboration;

L

• Look for participants open to dialogue, but who don't usually interact with each other;

M

• Make an inventory of innovations and tools, and facilitate collaboration and networking for the development of biotechnologies in France;
• Make scientific information reliable and easily accessible to citizens and stakeholders;
• Make urban planning and tourism development collaborative and democratic by involving citizens and business in envisioning urban futures and resolve negative environmental impacts;
• Mobilize stakeholders for active involvement;
• Moderate the workshop with an experienced facilitator to avoid "Groupthink" and the "Erroneous Priorities Effect";
• Multiply events where researchers from academia and industry exchange with a broader community to enhance this community and its visibility;

O

• Offer an incentive for citizens in order to attract people to attend the workshop;
• Organise collaborative activities and tools to push RRI forward;
• Organise follow-up workshops by involving more decision makers to anchor change;
• Organize more science dissemination events targeting the general public;

P

• Perform an analysis of publics' behaviours before engaging the public engagement;
• Plan the programme to encourage as much opportunity for interactions between participants;
• Plan the stakeholders carefully to ensure that the right people, stakeholder groups and organisations are in the room;
• Present the topic approached from the beginning of the workshop;
• Promote a greater participation of general public in projects financed by European funds to help filling the gap between science and society;
• Promote best practice cross-sectoral stakeholder engagement processes through webinars;
• Promote citizen science to involve the general public on research;
• Promote public engagement actions to raise awareness to the urgency of deep sea mapping;
• Provide a good incentive / personal benefits to motivate people to attend the workshop;
• Provide Open Access to data for a proactive response to societal challenges;
• Push participants to move beyond exchanging ideas and to start co-creating a vision;
• Put in place a multi-stakeholder dialogue to efficiently reduce plastic pollution;

R

• Recruit participants based on their interest, research, business or private experience in Marine Spatial Planning MSP and or Offshore Energy;
• Recruit participants by telephone to ensure a great effectiveness of recruitment;
• Remember that apart from being scientists, teachers, policy-makers, they are all citizens of coastal cities who want to care for the environment as a private person;

S

• Send a personalised invitation to ensures a better buy-in of targeted participants;
• Start with a roundtable process so that everybody knows each other, and everyone can share their personal perspective of the subject;
• Stimulate and ensure open dialogue among the attendees;

T

• Take actions in order to update the actual legislation;
• The need for a good collaboration and interaction between civil society, policy makers, researchers, business sector and citizens, in all the Black Sea coastal countries;
• Try to approach of potential participants and their engagement in convergent discussions with the future topic of the event;
• Try to obtain clear actions from people from different areas of interest, but with a common purpose;

U

• Use a method that encourages participants to work together in order to have an interactive group;
• Use a method that gives the opportunity to all of the participants to express their opinion;
• Use audience targeted communication for all types stakeholders that is engaging;
• Use both phone and email for citizen recruitment;
• Use citizen observatories through mobile phones to report pollution sites and inappropriate environmental behaviour;
• Use dialog for initiating collaboration among private landowners and municipalities;
• Use methods for involving the active participation of the public and giving them the opportunity to express their opinions;
• Use methods that offer to the participants the opportunity to interact and to have open discussions;
• Use new communications channels and IT technologies as opportunities to engage with communities;
• Use of different communications platforms/technologies to communicate with stakeholders and make data accessible;
• Use the SMART action format to ease the follow up of the workshop;

See also...

RRI Dimension