**Wondering Whether to Run a Community Assembly With Your Local Extinction Rebellion Group, or to Collaborate with Others?**
Running an assembly as a Local Group is easier and faster to organise, but it means that the question you will be discussing will only be relevant to your XR members; there will not necessarily be community support for your recommendations and decisions.
If you invite potential ally organisations and reach out to new ones to **co-create your question** for deliberation, you will get wider participation and better representation of the wider community, which is the best possible outcome.
An added benefit of co-creation is that other groups can share the workload involved, helping organise.
Also promoting your assembly to their member meetings and followers of their newsletters and social media gives you wider **reach**.
Remember that choosing to be collaborative from the outset means you’re likely to attract a more diverse audience and participant numbers can give greater weight to decisions made when bringing recommendations to eg your local authority, etc.
The most powerful outcome of an assembly is that **people with opposite opinions can come together, have a reasonable conversation together and enjoy the magic of the process**.
By reaching out to the wider community you are working on two levels; firstly, you are building a consensus on issues that matter to local people and secondly you are giving them a feeling of how a different kind of democracy can work for them.
**Do We Run a Community Assembly on a Local Question, or a Wider Issue?**
Here are some example questions below. Any variation of these will open up the discussion, because it invites all voices with an open question:
- How can we do something about climate change together in our community?
- How might we reduce our energy bills collectively?
- How can we nurture nature in (community / village / town, etc.)?
- How can (name of locality / town / county) make sure that everyone in our community can access healthy, affordable food for the long term?
- How might we rely less on fossil fuels in (named local area)?
- How might we as a local community respond to our colonial past?
- How can we make sure that our community is represented well by our politicians?
Trust the People recommend you begin your question for discussion with, e.g. “How can we…”
You might find that it is easier to get community members or local organisations excited about discussing a topics that matter to them; this also helps maximise your numbers taking part. This doesn’t have to be a local issue, but could be, e.g. sewage pollution, locally and in general. If your organising group is committed to running an assembly follow-up, you should consider that a strong question will make follow up easier.
The benefit of these questions is that they draw local communities closer to action. They can also lead to discussion around XR’s third demand, in particular, why a citizens assembly on climate and ecological justice could provide a template for wider democratic involvement of the people in decision making processes.
Assemblies can also attract the attention of local politicians; some organisers make a point of inviting local politicians to participate on an equal footing with their constituents. Building those relationships can help open wider conversations too, including the concept of citizens assemblies.
**Will The Assembly Be A One-Off Or The Start Of A Campaign?**
Many organising groups can be quite small, so organisers might feel like setting up and promoting a one-off Community Assembly is a pretty big challenge, let alone running a series of follow-ons. This is why it is important to think about your goals from your assembly, such as recruiting for the next one!
It is completely fine to organise one Community Assembly, then take a regenerative break to think about your next steps. Do try to share the outputs from your assembly with those who took part, however. This should be a giving back to the community, keeping them in the loop and incentivised to support the next assembly.
Alternatively, a Community Assembly can be a great way of kicking off a local campaign, or building networks. You can collate all suggestions and ideas from participants in your assembly, then commit to following them up with those present and anyone else interested. For instance:
- if local flooding is a concern, an action the community can take, without relying on the council to work on mitigation, is to organise a tree planting afternoon;
- if food poverty is an issue, set up a community fridge;
- if you are unhappy about services offered by your local authority, run a small rally outside your local council offices that engage officers and the public.
Follow on actions will take more consistent effort, but:
- will strengthen your networks;
- make your assemblies feel much more meaningful and effective to the whole community;’.
- show people what democracy can achieve.
**Do You Want To Facilitate Local Action Or Influence Local Politicians?**
If you want to follow up your Community Assembly with a **campaign**, there are three possible approaches.
Some believe that the whole point of Community Assemblies is to **take power into our own hands**. Acting locally to address local problems helps build resilience in our communities; this equips us to deal with what lies ahead. As all of our local authorities and councillors are failing us, strengthening our community will be needed more than ever in the future.
Others say that in a climate and ecological emergency, it is most important to **pressurise politicians to resource large-scale positive action**. Seeing that their community is ready to take bold and urgent action will spur others and our politicians on. This is potentially powerful, given politicians’ power to enact legislative change; they can take recommendations from your assembly to your local council or unitary authority to implement them.
If MPs (English Parliament) / AMs (in the Senedd) / MSPs (Scottish MPs) attend your assembly, it will be easier to pressurise your local representative to back certain legislation in your nation’s legislative chamber. For instance, you can engage them in discussions around the [Climate and Nature Bill](https://www.zerohour.uk/), a [Citizen’s Assembly on Climate and Ecological Justice](https://rebeltoolkit.extinctionrebellion.uk/books/citizens-assemblies), or a [House of Citizens](https://www.sortitionfoundation.org/replace_house_of_lords_with_house_of_citizens).
The third option combines both approaches and will take more effort to organise. It would engage people in follow up activities and future assemblies if you add refreshments and a get together at the end.
# Creating a Team
“I can’t change the world on my own, it’ll take at least three of us.”
- Bill Mollison
Below, we have listed a few working groups that may help you get a community assembly off the ground. They constitute best practice, not a minimum requirement. Your local group may feel that so many working groups are well beyond your capacity so don’t let this guidance discourage you! It doesn’t take an army of volunteers to put on an assembly!
This is the role that you need to establish very early on in your project. At least one person in your local group should lead communications with other organisations. While it will be helpful to brainstorm in your local group around potential assembly topics and locations, you will need to discuss all of these things early on with other organisations and be open to their suggestions if you want to collaborate with them. Unless you have a political or lobbying team, this will also be the role that contacts local politicians and invites them to the assembly. On Rebel Toolkit, you can find resources for local alliance building to inform this work.
If you end up up working together with other organisations, you can explore sharing certain costs.
Just like you would do outreach to promote a Heading for Extinction talk, we will do outreach to spread the word about our assemblies. At the end of your assembly, you can invite attendants to join your local group or get involved in a local campaign in which case this team will have to prepare how people can join and what tasks they can take on. You will need an outreach and integration crew later in the project once you are clear on assembly time, location, topic, etc.
More information about Outreach and Integration.
The role of this group is to promote the assembly through the media. That could involve your local group’s own online channels and newsletter, but you could also try local press outlets or ask allied organisations to promote the event in their newsletters and social media. On top of that, this team will coordinate taking pictures of the assembly and capturing them on your social media.
If you would appreciate any support with your local media work, feel free to contact media@rebellion.earth and they can put you in touch with your regional/national Media & Messaging rep.
For each Community Assembly, you will need at least one facilitator, ideally two. Facilitators maintain radical inclusivity, active listening, and trust so that all voices are heard and valued equally. They keep the discussion focused and structured and prevent it from becoming unwieldy which is absolutely crucial for a successful assembly.
Recommendations:| Category | Unit Price | Notes |
| Venue Hire | £300 | Book your venue for at least four hours to allow for set up, the process, socialising and clearing up. |
| Food | £200 | Invest in anything else that will make your event more appealing and fun. |
| Outreach Materials | £100 | Leaflets and posters are essential. There are templates for leaflets on the Rebel Toolkit, or find inspiration for other outreach methods. |
| Flip Charts, Stationery | £25 | Taking notes during the Assembly that can be seen and read by everyone is essential to highlight the outcomes of the discussion. Markers, biros, post-it notes, egg timers all help to have ready. |
| BSL Interpretation / Language Translation | £160 | You may want to create a registration page for your Assembly, where people can flag their accessibility needs. There’s no point in paying for an interpreter if no one will need them, but radical inclusivity is a pillar of assembly success in being representative. |
| Hearing Loops | £80 | Consider creating a registration page for your Assembly, where people can flag accessibility needs. There’s no point in paying for a hearing loop if no one will need this. |
| Creche Provision | £250 | Your volunteers may be able to provide this, without paying for professionals. However, you should consider safeguarding protections. Arts materials for kids, while their parents participate in the Assembly |
| Arts / Entertainment | £350 | Supporting local arts projects brings a different dimension to deliberation and makes people feel part of something fun. |
Relevant teams: Alliance Building, Outreach and Integration
Before you attempt to bring a community together in Assembly, you need to actually familiarise yourself with that community. This will help you to select an assembly question that matters to the people around you, and to design an assembly event that is appealing to your local community.
Think: Who makes up the community in question? Where are they? Who are the obvious future participants? Who are the less obvious ones? Which communities are hidden from you? Where are the community connections that already exist happening? Are those connections deliberate or organic/cultural? Who are the influencers, the stakeholders, or the ‘Elders’ within this community?
Whilst we are connecting with the community, we need to connect with ourselves as well. We need to ask ourselves what assumptions we carry about the community we are trying to reach. We must challenge our own blind spots and prejudices at every opportunity, and continue to do so throughout the process.
It is also vital to develop active listening skills, so that when you are engaging with others in your community, you are taking time to understand them, their needs and their wants, rather than trying to push your own agenda.
To help you better connect with your community, take a look at the following modules (downloadable as Google docs) in the Trust The People programme:
In the same phase of your assembly planning process, you want to put your feelers out to local organisations and see if any of them are up for organising an assembly together with you. Working together with other organisations will not only increase the diversity of your audience but will also bring new ideas to the event organising process that you might never have thought of on your own.
Dare yourself to reach out to a group that you have never been in touch with before. XR groups are most commonly in touch with unions, environmental and faith groups or unions. How about getting in touch with a local racial justice or LGBTIQ+ group?
# Framing & ScopeRelevant teams: Your local group and ally organisations
The exact framing and scope for the assembly need to be agreed upon before any promotional work can occur. The destination and legitimacy of the results of the assembly should be discussed and decided upon prior to convening the assembly, and it is important that all assembly participants are made aware of this information before the assembly begins.
If, for example, you are planning to host an assembly designed to bring community members together to discuss issues that are important to them in the spirit of creating community bonds and finding common ground, then the framing and scope are as follows:
Framing: The event is open to all members of the community to provide space for discussion around local issues.
Scope: No decisions are being made, so the scope is limited and does not extend beyond the sharing of ideas and feelings. The ideas and issues generated in the assembly should be fed back to the community through social media and serve as a starting point for future conversations.If you are convening an assembly which focuses on specific issues and where what is discussed will be shared beyond the local community with an external body, such as a council, then the scope would be broader. Say, for example, a local sustainability group advertises an open assembly on their social media channels to discuss how the local council can act after declaring a Climate and Ecological Emergency, then the framing and scope would be as follows:
Framing: The event is open to anyone who chooses to participate to share their ideas on what the council can do.
Scope: The ideas and issues generated in the assembly could be published on the local group’s communication channels (e.g. their Facebook page or their newsletter), and also be emailed to the local Councillors asking them to take the suggestions to the next Council meeting.
Assemblies can also be convened to ask for the opinions of members of a group and to make decisions. Say, for example, a local group calls an assembly to discuss whether they join with a larger group for a day of action or create their own one locally, and they advertise it to all members through every channel of communication, then the framing and scope are as follows:
Framing: The event is open to the members of the group so they can share their ideas on what they would like their group to do in the action.
Scope: The assembly has the legitimacy to make the decision on behalf of that group, and the decision made during that assembly will be reported to the group and acted upon. The assembly, however, would not have the scope to make decisions beyond their own group. If, for example, that same group holds an assembly to decide if they, as a region, should combine with another region in the same manner, then the results of that assembly would be fed into a larger decision-making process that would affect other groups within the region as well.
### Lead with the TopicOnce you have decided on your assembly question or topic, make sure to display it clearly on your promotions materials and the assembly itself for all to see.
A good question is worded such that it is:
Holding your Community Assembly online is potentially a good way to be more inclusive, especially in rural areas, where face to face assemblies could potentially mean tricky travel to an assembly venue, or it might be easier to attend an online assembly for carers and parents.
The process of running an online Community Assembly is pretty much the same as one that you would use for an in-person assembly. Breakout rooms can be used for the deliberation phase. Please find more information in the Structure section of this manual. We also have a page about Using Zoom for Community Assemblies, the popular video meeting tool.
#### Communications There's lots to do in advance and afterwards (especially to support any funding bid). We've got your back... If you need support on organising press releases, getting your assembly on XR's Events Map, or getting broadcasts out, if you can get your support request in as early as possible, you have the best chance of getting support. [Go here to request Comms Support](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdkWGKQx2y2694ZUo6oa8sH7zv78qX200wV6_5V0DTr7Ls5EA/viewform). #### Working with the Press An important part of your communications plan for the assembly will be sharing your event with the press. This will include writing one or more press releases, and identifying the press contacts to share those with. To help with this please see the following resources: - Press Release Workshop, [recording of the workshop on XR tube](https://tube.rebellion.global/w/opzR7fvyrpMZxvWxxxWErf) - [Press release PowerPoint used in the workshop](https://rebeltoolkit.extinctionrebellion.uk/attachments/5) - [Workshop notes](https://rebeltoolkit.extinctionrebellion.uk/attachments/6)In the spirit of ‘radical inclusivity’ pillar of assemblies and in accordance with Extinction Rebellion Principles and Values, check the Extinction Rebellion Principles of Inclusivity to ensure the assembly is optimising access across diverse needs.
There are three main phases of a community assembly, these are the input phase, the deliberation phase, and the integration/feedback phase.
This phase can be broken down further into the introduction and input, the latter of which can be of varying lengths according to the purpose of the Assembly.
Ideally, the input phase should be around 30 mins in total. However, if a speaker is attending or it is important for those present to learn about a subject, then the input phase may take longer.
“We value all voices equally in the assembly, as the aim is to hear the wisdom of the crowd gathered here and not to have the assembly dominated by individual voices or groups. We recognise that confident speakers are not always right and that those who are not confident speakers will often have the most useful ideas or opinions to put into the discussion. This is why we value all voices equally and we ask you to do the same. We do not tolerate any calling out, abuse or shaming and should conflicts arise in this way. We welcome all people but not all behaviours.”
This can be as simple as the lead facilitators framing the question for discussion and explaining why the assembly has been convened.
Or it can involve a longer and more in-depth input section such as a live panel of experts, or a video input.
The Input should be balanced and factual – if research is being done to provide context, consider how you will keep it impartial.
A badly planned input can skew a deliberation and deliver unwise answers.
Invite people to take the microphone for two minutes maximum and share their feelings about what has brought them to join the assembly or action that day.
In an open public assembly, this section can be drawn out as long as people volunteer to speak.
It opens the space for people to connect emotionally, but be carful to ensure it is not used as a ‘soap box’ on the issues about to be discussed.
Ideally ask for a woman to speak on the microphone first (It has been shown that this will greatly increase the level of engagement of female participants. The rate of engagement and uptake for males isn’t affected in the same way), and allow as much dead air as is necessary for people to build up the courage to come and talk.
Be strict with timing but ensure that the people speaking are supported and made completely safe in their sharing.
Ideally work with two facilitators so that one facilitator ‘guards’ mic and keeps stack, whilst one sits in front of the speaker with timer and gives ‘round up’ hand signal as they approach 2 mins.
In the breakout groups, it is good practice for the facilitator to restate the discussion topic or question and for the note taker to write it down. This enables people in the group to refer back to the original point for discussion to make sure the group stays focused and on subject.
It is also good to start by going around the group and stating names, and making space for anyone to highlight any barriers to engagement that they may have that the small group can work together to try to work around.
The breakout groups will have a set amount of time to discuss the topic, as outlined by the lead assembly facilitators beforehand – a good amount of time is 25 mins.
10 minutes before the end of the deliberation phase, the lead facilitators should notify the breakout groups that they have ten minutes left, and should request that the breakout group note takers feed back their summary of the discussion to their groups, so that they can identify which key points they will be feeding back to the main discussion. It is also a good idea for the lead facilitators to remind the breakout groups how many points they will be feeding back.