Democs

Democs was created so that policy discussion can be open to anyone. While traditional deliberative methods, like citizens juries, are limited to a few people, who take part by invitation, Democs can be used by anyone, in their own home, their local pub or a community centre.

Our Democs kits provide:

• information about a topic on a set of card
• an interactive and engaging process to support deliberation in small groups, usually over an hour and a half.

Democs helps people understand the issues before giving their opinion, and ensure that they can make offer policy-makers reasoned, informed and valuable contributions.

We have developed kits on topics ranging from affordable housing and climate change to rubbish disposal and nanotechnology.

Democs has been used in many different contexts:

• Large-scale public engagement programmes: in 2004/05, the Herefordshire Partnership used Democs to consult over 300 people in over 50 games on developing the county’s climate change strategy. 
• Schools: in 2007 we developed a kit on sustainable transport for Transport for London (TfL), widely distributed to London schools
• Conferences: Democs was used by Norfolk Ambition, the Local Strategic Partnership for Norfolk, to explore the question, ‘What will success look like?’at their 2007 annual conference 
• Public meetings: a 2003 Malvern Hills District Council meeting, on GM food.

Democs has been adapted into PlayDecide  – a web-based project to make discussion kits on science topics available for download across Europe.

Currently we are using Democs in Who Sees What? a mass public engagement programme on IT in the NHS.

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