Participation isn’t a one-off project. It is altering how local government works. That’s why the City of Malmö (Sweden), one of the Speak Up partners, is developing a long-term approach to grow its capacity for participation. To achieve this, they organised three experimental learning sessions across three months that brought together staff from different departments to exchange ideas and lessons. The sessions were organised because Malmö realised that complex societal challenges can’t be handled by governments alone anymore. Local government needs to start working together with inhabitants to understand and solve issues. To do this effectively, they also need to be able to trust each other. For Malmö, this means shifting from occasionally including participation in their work to adopting it as a continuous part of their work.
Session 1 - From why to how!
Held on the 21st of January, the first session gathered staff from different departments to explore the reasons for increasing participation. The participants concluded that including participation increases trust between the inhabitants and the government, and makes it easier and nicer to work together, which is why it is so important. This conclusion was followed by a brainstorm session that resulted in a large range of potential approaches to increase participation. The participants also discussed how they can build trust and openness by making small, but solid, changes to include participation in their regular workday.
Session 2 – From how to what!
The second session, on the 12th of February, was organised in collaboration with Samskapa Malmö, a network that brings together public organisations, inhabitants, cultural institutions, universities, and local initiatives. This provided an opportunity that brought diverse perspectives together that allowed for collaborative learning and experimentation. In this session, the focus shifted from “how” to “what”: exploring what participation could look like in practice, and what should be changed to create space for participation in everyday work.
Session 3 – From theory to practice!
The third and final session, hosted on March 17th, took a practical turn, which provided the participants with hands-on tools and methods. This includes methods for listening to community needs, formats that support participative decision-making, and techniques that help groups think and act together. The aim was to try and equip public servants with a flexible ‘toolkit’ that they could apply in their work. An important takeaway from the sessions was the importance of training internally. This way, civil servants will be able to feel more confident in leading participation in their departments in the future, which is essential to making participation part of everyday work.
The train-the-trainer method that these sessions followed will allow the participants to teach their colleagues what they’ve learned. While the method and the sessions are still experimental, Malmö has taken a big step towards making participation part of the everyday workday! What is your local government doing to increase capacity for participation?