Felt Democracy: Telling stories about a more regenerative government

Despite the cold and rainy weather here in Melbourne, Australia, CPI Australia & New Zealand’s experiment in telling different stories about democracy has left us energised with the thrill of a successful event, and still sitting with some of the unexpectedly imaginative outcomes from the day.

We worked with Regen Melbourne to host a workshop as part of Melbourne Knowledge Week (narrm ngarrgu). This was part of an ongoing curiosity between our organisations to explore where democracy and regeneration could come together and what thinking this intersection might inspire. Throughout the week leading up to the event, we had a series of panel discussions about how we get to a more regenerative Melbourne. The premise for the Saturday in-person session was that we had now arrived at this more sustainable, equitable, and just Melbourne 2030.

This was a bit of a bold move!

It asked session hosts to think of ways to help people actually experience some aspect of what it is like to be in better relation to each other and the natural world around us. It was also a big ask for our participants, which included around 50 people from government, for-purpose organisations and the wider public sector. Rather than showing up and listening to speakers or discussing ideas over fun activities, we were asking people to be fully present and to lean into different ways of thinking about what regeneration actually feels like.

How might people “feel” what democracy is like in a more regenerative Melbourne 2030?

This is such a generative question. Changing the focus of the session from producing outputs like a road map or a new model of governance and instead, offering an experience, suggested a more playful opportunity to engage people. It required a move away from activities that privilege people with a knowledge of how these systems work and a vocabulary for the mechanisms of government, in order to surface common aspirations and lived experiences. It also necessitated a session design that would allow people of different ages to come together and be able to share ideas for the future and be immersed in the process of storytelling.

Felt democracy

How did we do it? We designed a set of felt shapes for, “felt democracy.” These symbols included the basics of storytelling, like people, children, plants, and animals. They also depicted objects that come up in discussions about government like desks, podiums, voting boxes and microphones and cameras. We provided cut out arrows and string for the system thinkers in attendance and shapes that could be used to provoke ideas, like peace symbols, a piggy bank, a trans rights flag, a nuclear power plant, and a forest fire scene. The latter is especially relevant here in Australia, where our government has a history of being reactionary instead of prepared on matters of climate change and bushfire preparedness. We also included some keywords engraved on felt tiles from Policy Lab’s “Government as a system” toolkit, for the more verbal and literal thinkers.

The theory behind the making

These felt shapes were reminiscent of fuzzy felt, the classic children’s toy used to create scenes or stories. They drew upon socialised ways of being together in collaborative and playful ways, where people are invited to contribute equally to an emerging vision of what could be. Beyond being fun and inviting, the use of visual shapes can help externalise and inspire ideas and support collaborative problem-solving. Especially when catalysed by the creative potential of metaphors and storytelling, this method of co-creating visual stories can help participants not only understand each other but also encourages deeper reflection upon their own understandings and mental models. Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Design has a great case study and further reading about this method.

As I started making this set, (a process that consisted of many hours with Illustrator, laser cutters and helpful technicians, as well as my favourite design resource), I kept returning to a question from CPI’s storytelling report. It asks, “how can we tell stories in ways which encourage the listener to not just hear, but actually connect to a different view?” Because I came to this question with a background in design and a strong personal preference for iterative processes of thinking through doing, this question also made me wonder:

“How might we make stories in ways which encourage people to connect to different views as well as potential future(s)?”

Collaboratively imagining a different, more regenerative government

My hunch that these felt shapes could help facilitate this connection, as well as imagination about what could be, was confirmed throughout the day. One group, in particular, stands out. They created a scene with a politician stuck in a gridlock that had been inspired by the group’s discussions about incentives and lobbyists. This politician was paralysed by competing, conflicting demands as well as the pressure of the media and elections. One of the other groups had united around the idea of involving animal and plant voices in planning processes, and the groups were laughing at the differences between the two scenes and discussions that had been taking place.

As a different group member started commenting on the unlikelihood of a pigeon being considered in ‘real’ decision making, a woman in the animal voices group quietly moved her label of “service” to the politician in the gridlock. In doing so, they visually and metaphorically gave the person a platform and changed the pattern representing the gridlock.

“Oooooh” went up around the room from those of us watching. Someone else who had been in the ‘animal voice’ group pointed out that if a politician was coming from a position of being in service, they’d also be able to listen without feeling it was getting in the way of action. They moved the “listening” piece of felt from being something that was part of the noise and pressure, to a new space outside the old model they had made. Instead of finishing their presentation, the group started re-creating their model in real-time, with input and ideas from the other participants.

Soon they had created a story where politicians run for office based on their track record of service. To get elected they have to demonstrate their ability to not only listen to the needs of various communities — including the more than human voices — but also have transparent agendas and action plans.

These action plans would be informed and constantly improved based upon the continual listening that would be happening. Communities would be engaged and empowered because they understood who was making what changes and fighting for which initiatives or projects.

In essence, this reimagined democratic process created action-learning cycles for politicians and communities, while also effectively removing the piggy bank from the gridlock of hidden and paralysing forces. I was amazed at how inspiring this was, and judging from the smile from the man who had started the session by saying he wasn’t really sure what democracy had to do with his interest in engineering, I wasn’t alone.

Where next?

Don’t get me wrong, there is still a lot of work to do. This preferred future story about participation and accountability isn’t going to happen overnight just because we came up with this idea in a workshop session. But, I think there is real power in shifting our thinking through these hands-on, engaging sessions with others in our communities. The group that had been exploring what listening looks like beyond a human-centred approach was able to bring this expanded appreciation for what listening entails into a different conversation. Similarly, these re-framings enable us to think, act and imagine differently.

The event also suggested the value of exploring how materials can help us come together to tell different stories. By including certain elements, (like the pigeon) we were able to influence what was seen as acceptable and within the bounds of the conversation, influencing what became part of the stories about this future democracy. The session reminded me of the famous provocation by feminist speculative fiction author and professor emerita Donna Harraway, “It matters what matters we use to think other matters with…It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”

As we think about the stories we tell about democracy, government and the future, I think it is important to be intentional, perhaps even pedagogical in our approaches to storytelling. Using materials to scaffold conversations in careful and intentional ways might be one part of enabling our shift towards a more regenerative Melbourne and democracy, as people learn from and with each other, and from the promise and potential of the scenarios they make.

Takeaways

As our final session of the day came to a close we were invited to mix and mingle and share a takeaway from the day. Several people shared with me that they hadn’t thought about democracy like that, in terms of what it actually looks like. Someone shared that between the panel discussions and now this collaborative making they had a renewed sense of optimism about the future and what could be done.

But I’m still curious. In these “unprecedented” times of growing distrust in civic institutions and escalating and intersectional crises, do we have a moral obligation to set aside the playful and the creative for the sake of problem-solving? Or do we need to play now more than ever to work through tough times with convection and optimism? What is the value in coming together in these ways with other small groups of thoughtful committed citizens?

Thanks for spending this time with my thoughts! I’d love to hear some of your own so comment below and watch this space as I continue exploring where there is room for playful creativity in the work of re-imagining government together.

Alli