Greater Cambridge Partnership Citizens' Assembly - One Year On workshop

The GCP held a one-year-on workshop which was attended by a number of members from the Greater Cambridge Citizens’ Assembly, the UK’s first ever transport focused Citizens’ Assembly. This was part of GCP’s commitment to keep Citizens’ Assembly participants engaged and updated in the GCP’s work.

The One-Year-On Workshop was convened in Cambridge.

22nd September 2020

Involve

The Involve Foundation is a UK-wide public participation charity. Involve ran the Greater Cambridge Citizens’ Assembly in 2019- facilitating and designing the process by which the assembly members learnt, considered and came to recommendations about the topic.
GCP approached Involve in August 2020 to facilitate a follow up workshop with assembly members. This report is the output from that session.

Participants

53 members of the citizens’ assembly completed both weekend’s work in 2019. At the final weekend assembly members were asked if they would like to stay in touch with progress and pass on their contact information to enable GCP to do this. 46 members agreed to this and were invited to this follow up session.

Thank you to the assembly members who participated in the event:

From Greater Cambridge Partnership:

Beth Warmington, Isobel Wade, Peter Blake and Peter Stanhope

Speakers:

• Andrew Carter, Centre for Cities
• Jillian Anable, Leeds University
• Steve Melia, University of the West of England (UWE)

Facilitation:

The session was facilitated by Suzannah Lansdell, Lizzie Adams, Steve Robinson, and Liz Goold from Involve.

The workshop sought reflections and thoughts from members of the Citizens' Assembly on their prior recommendations in light of Covid-19 and what could happen next. The report containing the attendees’ thoughts and reflections has been published by the workshop’s facilitator Involve and is available below, together with a series of videos and presentations by members of GCP and senior transport academics and experts. The GCP Joint Assembly and Executive Board will consider the findings from the workshop alongside an update on progress implementing the GCP’s response to the Citizens’ Assembly.

AGENDA

• Meeting starts: Welcome, introductions and ways of working for this call
• Recommendations progress and impact of COVID-19 – presentations & questions of clarification
  • Progress to date on citizens’ assembly recommendations – Peter Blake, GCP
  • The impact of Covid-19 on Greater Cambridge – Isobel Wade, GCP
  • COVID-19 opportunities and challenges:
    • Video input: Steve Melia, UWE
    • Reflections: Andrew Carter, Centre for Cities
• Breakout discussion – reflections on recommendations and short term priorities - Citizen assembly members will break into smaller groups with a facilitator for a group discussion.
• Shaping the future - Presentation & questions of clarification
  • Shaping the future – key themes for the longer term – Isobel Wade, GCP
  • Video input: Jillian Anable, Institute for Transport Studies, Leeds University
• Breakout discussion – reflections on longer term directions, opportunities & key messages. - Citizen assembly members will break into smaller groups with a facilitator for a group discussion.
• What next and way forwards
• Workshop ends