How to play the governance game

Report at Designing for Civil Society on how we developed and played a governance game, with instructions. There's also a report on a session at the same conference to develop communities of practice - fast.

Neighbourhoods, governance and games

I'm looking forward to the conference on neighbourhood governance and community engagement organised for CDF by Kevin Harris next month. If that sounds bit challenging, but be assured that Drew Mackie and I will aim to liven things up with our Neighbourhood Governance Game. As Kevin reported previously, we had a lot of fun with a dry run last November, when groups invented semi-fictitious neighbourhoods and then planned improvements together .... or not very together.

As a simulation it was uncannily realistic. The policy people struggled with the slight vagueness of their brief and worked away at trying to clarify it without going to talk to the service reps or the residents’ groups. In one locality, the service and community groups began by swearing undying mutual support but before long had drifted apart. The community group in this case struggled very realistically to agree on things. At the other locality, the reverse happened: they began deciding independently what they were going to do, but in due course came together harmoniously and creatively. And on one side we had this exquisite example as participants worked on the timeline: in one locality in the fictional year two, the residents came up with a stack of initiatives (orange post-its - click on the image to enlarge) while the agencies' sole initiative was ‘Progress report and evaluation.’

Drew and I have since produced a brief report, which you can download as a zipped pdf here, including my favourite observation:

One participant honestly reported at the end: “we found it so difficult managing internal stakeholders we never got round to talking to external ones; we started consulting people at the end of the process as a way to generate consensus, not the beginning as a way to frame the task. Personally I was appalled by own behaviour - I started off accusing my colleagues of slipping into policybabble rather than plain english, and yet happily charged through to the end of the process without once asking anyone in the other room what they thought”.

The conference takes place at the Resource Centre, Holloway Road, London, 14 March 2006. As Kevin says:

The event will be chaired by Carol Hayden, Associate Director, Shared Intelligence. Speakers include Mark Hitchen, ODPM Neighbourhoods Team, providing an update on the government proposals; the Young Foundation's Paul Hilder giving an update on the Transforming Neighbourhoods programme; and Susie Hay, regeneration and participation consultant, discussing the importance of informal networking at local level.

On that form, the rest of the conference will be both lively and enlightening. Bookings and enquiries: Cheryl.Roberts(at)cdf.org.uk, 020 7833 1772. There's a leaflet here.

Playing through double devolution

The go-between wears out a thousand sandals, according to a Japanese proverb. In deepest Holloway last week that fate befell those playing the role of councillor in our game simulating the government's new neighbourhoods policy.

As conference organiser Kevin Harris reports, the game aimed to simulate what will happen in a few years when "double devolution" takes hold, and public service delivery moves down the ladder beyond councils to offer more contracting opportunities to nonprofits, and more opportunities for active citizens.

Drew Mackie and I were relieved when participants readily agreed to move from presentations to interaction, to form groups, and develop descriptions of fictitious (but pretty realistic) neighbourhoods. To spice things up, they threw in plenty of problems and then passed the challenge to another group, while inheriting someone else's neighbourhood. After that, their task was to come up with ways in which different agencies, organisations and community groups would plan and carry out improvements. It was a revised version of our first run last November. As Kevin reports:

The first version of the game had been uncannily realistic but we had struggled to integrate the policy role. On this occasion we diluted it but Drew introduced a role for ward councillors - and it was fascinating to watch how, in two of the three groups, the councillor ended up being a butt for complaints from the community groups and systematically ignored or by-passed by the service agencies. Watching one group was like watching a game of tennis, and reminds me that I've often been puzzled as to why anyone would want to become a councillor. It just doesn't seem a pleasant way to spend one's evenings.

Earlier Kieran Drake, from Neighbourhoods and Citizen Engagement at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, had provided a full briefing on how policy is developing, and explained the enhanced role councillors might have. They would move from the back benches to the front line, becoming leaders of communities and empowered advocates, while calling on support from council officers running neighbourhood management. You can download the presentation here, together with others from Gabriel Chanan and Paul Hilder.

It all sounded fine in theory, but then things don't always turn out the way the policy makers hope. Games are one way of testing out what may happen. In this case it seemed that councillors could end up being pulled in two directions, trying to build bridges but just as likely to get in the way. Is that a mixed metaphor? I'm not sure, but it was all pretty hilarious since people managed to have fun exploring the future of Slaghampton.

Kevin highlights the complexity of what the government plans:

Presentations and discussion at the conference, as well as the game, confirmed that this agenda packs a hugely complex set of issues. The scope and power of agencies, the formality of neighbourhood agreements with service providers, the skill-levels of councillors, the worries about burn-out among activists, and so on - all sorts of unanswered dynamics and tensions. To their credit, the ODPM have long-since recognised the importance of strengthening local government and enhancing the role of councillors.

While there were clearly a lot of tough issues, I found some support for the way things may develop. I asked two people from what could easily become opposite sides of the fence what they thought. Folake Segun works for Croydon Voluntary Action, and Theo Fasoyiro for Croydon Council. They were very positive about the new policies and the benefits they may bring. However - and this to me is the key issue - they emphasised that it is because the public and nonprofit sector have a good working relationship at present. Where different sectors don't get on so well the new arrangements are going to be pretty challenging, and the role of councillors particularly so. In that case, start ordering sandals now.
More pictures here

Telling the lifestory of a local forum

Neighbourhood forums are one of the methods for local participative democracy promoted by UK central and local government - but what do they mean in practice? We found out by inviting people to invent a place, create a forum, and tell its lifestory - all within an hour.

As Kevin Harris has mentioned on his Neighbourhoods blog, we both ran a little storytelling game this week on the theme of how to set up a local forum. It went really well, proving to me anyway that an hour's conversation among a few interested people can provide as many insights as a manual that probably won't be read much anyway.
The occasion was a Quest Trust networking event, and the reason for the particular game was that UK central and local government is pushing hard their local:vision policies for more effective citizen engagement in neighbourhoods.
One mechanism for this will be establishing neighbourhood forums to discuss local issues and action.

There'll be a national framework, and neighbourhoods charter, and locally citizens could have a chance to deal with issues like anti-social behaviour, delegating budgets to ward councillors, model byelaws, and neighbourhood contracts with service providers.
The think tank Demos has produced a learned pamphlet on Everyday democracy, and a Conservative group is promoting Direct Democracy with an agenda including local decision-making. Participative democracy is very fashionable, probably because of rising concern among politicians that people are losing interest in the non-participative kind.
Our challenge at the Quest event: how do you help people plan some practical action, and bring the policy ideals down to earth? We used a technique developed by my colleague Drew Mackie, and quite simply asked people to tell the story of a forum.
First of all, as a group of ten people, we invented a local ward - with roads and rail, schools, church and mosque, homes good and bad, greenspace and grot.... inevitablely call The Sink.
We then split into two groups each with a poster-sized sheet of paper divided horizontally into sections: starting, setting up, developing, running.... and just talked about it. Although people hadn't worked together before, the groups rapidly pooled their experience to come up with a narrative taking the forum from initial inspiration through to the very real challenges of accommodating different views and interests while dealing with the complexities of local government and public agencies.
Kevin and I spiced things up a bit by throwing in some crisis cards: bad media coverage, demands for a representative constitution, forum chair runs off with a grant....it was a lot of fun.
As Kevin reports, one of the issues to surface was that it is unrealistic to think that just living in the same place is enough to bind people together into a forum. People respond to the issues that affect their lives, or form linkages with people who have similar interests.
As one person remarked, you may be able to pack a meeting with people when the residents' parking plans change, but find only a few next time for business as usual.
We had some good ideas about how to deal with this by forming smaller interest groups that could report back to the forum, and a lively discussion about dealing with the 'loud mouths' who can take over events and turn other people off. On the other hand, without the enthusiasts you can soon run out of steam....
Kevin and I will be developing the game further with Drew, so do get in touch if you would like to know more or try the game for yourself.
More games on this site