In the context of our escalating social and ecological challenges, it is easy to find fault with our elected representatives. If you are reading this blog, then you are likely to have ideas about what needs to be done. Perhaps you are already working on specific issues and have suggestions for policy improvements or areas that should be better resourced. Our challenge both to ourselves and to anyone interested in Scotland’s future, is to swap frustrated solution seeking for open curiosity.
The Scottish Government’s 2023 review of the National Outcomes presented an opportunity for a group of interested organisations to take up this challenge.[1] As a diverse group, convened by Carnegie UK, we were forced to push ourselves beyond our organisational boundaries and to ask ourselves some hard questions. For example, if we were tasked with designing a process to review Scotland’s National Outcomes, how would we make sure that all voices are heard? What steps would we take to give everyone both the agency and ongoing opportunity to participate meaningfully?
This provocation resulted in a decision to pool our time and resources to explore what robust citizen engagement might look like in the Scottish context.[2] We wanted to make our contribution both practical and inclusive, so we agreed to design and test a model for engaging diverse communities in high quality conversations about wellbeing. The result was a flexible, open-source tool which we have called Conversations for Scotland. This resource is centred on deeply listening to what really matters to the people of Scotland whilst also providing a credible link to policy.
The initial results were analysed by Northumbria University and were included in our joint response to the Scottish Government’s call for evidence as part of the National Outcomes Review. It is too early to provide any definitive conclusions, but one striking finding was the number of factors that people highlighted as being important that are not currently represented in the National Outcomes (for example, the pressure of modern life and the impact of artificial intelligence).
We are encouraged by the positive response so far, but we now need to scale and amplify the impact of this work. Our aspiration is to enable 100+ conversations in diverse communities across Scotland over the next 12 months. We will also strive to connect the outcomes to ongoing policy dialogues; ultimately this must be a continuous and reciprocal national conversation. Please do contact us if you would like to get involved.
[1] The group of organisations was led by Carnegie UK and included Dark Matter Labs, Foundation Scotland, Northumbria University, Oxfam Scotland, Public Health Scotland, SCDC and WEAll Scotland.
[2] We are using the word citizen to represent the inhabitants of Scotland rather than as a statement of nationality or legal status.