How to run a citizens’ assembly

Report 30 Jun 2020

Community and place-based action

Democracy and governance

This is the final report of the Innovation in Democracy Programme (IiDP)

This report is aimed primarily at local authority officers or councillors who want to run a citizens’ assembly in their local area.

But we also hope that it can be of use to others who are interested in deliberative democracy: process designers, facilitators, advocates, researchers or anyone else.

While some of the guidance is specific to local citizens’ assemblies, lots of the suggestions apply to regional, national and even transnational deliberations.

The insights we share in this report are drawn from three different sources:

Our reflections on the three IiDP citizens’ assemblies and other assemblies that have recently taken place at a local level.
The ideas that have emerged from the various peer-learning events that we ran as part of IiDP.
The best guidance written by practitioners around the world.

Lots of the advice in this report is illustrated in the IiDP Case Studies report, which is a trove of real-world examples and personal stories co-authored by council staff that led the three IiDP assemblies.