Massembly

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An opportunity to join the UK's biggest deliberative democracy event

Saturday 31st Aug, 13:00-16:00
Be part of the biggest community assembly the UK has ever seen! Bring your passion for real change to XR’s Massembly. For people. For nature. For the climate. For the planet. For everyone. It's going to be MASSive!

In the shadow of the feudal symbol that is Windsor Castle, you're invited to take part in deliberating the question: 'How might we take meaningful steps to Upgrade Democracy?'

~~For those unable to attend in person, an on-line assembly is planned. Links and info coming soon.~~

How to take part

At Windsor We'll form groups of six and introduce yourselves. Choose a facilitator, a note-taker and a time-keeper. After an active listening exercise, the facilitator takes the group through the structure for the discussion. One person then submits the groups best three ideas to an online tool called 'Pol.is' allowing everyone taking part in the assembly to then vote on these ideas.

Online from home We’re planning to run a simultaneous online assembly, to enable those unable to attend in-person to participate. If this goes ahead, further details about the online assembly will be made available soon.

What will be needed

Facilitators
Ideally, one trained facilitator per group however, anyone can facilitate as the Explainer Cards give you everything you need if you offer to take on this role. Three facilitation training sessions will be available on Friday 30th AM, PM and Saturday 31st AM in Home Park in the Talks & Training tent.

Note-Takers
Note-takers capture key points on post-its or similar to make this crucial task as simple as possible. Pens and post-its will be provided but bring your own if you can.

Time-Keepers
Keep the discussion on track by working with the facilitator using the timer and stopwatch together on your phone.

Learn more about assemblies
There will be a stall, hosted by XRUK's Citizen's Assembly Working Group and Assemblies Escalation Campaign volunteers. Facilitators will be able to pick up printed copies of the Explainer Cards to prepare for the Massembly.

Radical Inclusion
Participants are encouraged to support anyone in their group who might struggle, e.g. with:

the tech
understanding how to share their perspective
those with quieter voices
having difficulty reading text
hearing each other

The Process
The Explainer Cards guide you through the process. They include the introduction to Pol.is. Participants will need to scan a QR code or click on the link and Pol.is opens in a browser.

Set up and intros (5 mins)
Active listening activity (10 mins)
Topic input [everyone silently reads the 6 topic suggestion cards] (15 mins)
Useful hand signals (1 min)
Initial reflections (30 mins)
Voting on Pol.is [part 1] (15 mins)
Discussion of the Question (40 mins)
Feeding back and further Pol.is voting [part 2] (30 mins)

Toward the end, one person submits the group’s three hottest new ideas to Pol.is. Then using Pol.is, everyone in the Massembly votes on the entire set of new ideas submitted by all the groups.

After Upgrade Democracy, further online assemblies will take place to increase engagement and the most popular ideas will be represented to MPs and become the basis for XR campaigns.

What is Pol.is?

Using your phone, you connect to Pol.is, and individually read and vote on statements about democracy.

Pol.is is a real-time system for gathering, analysing and understanding what large groups of people think in their own words. Pol.is has been used all over the world by governments, academics, independent media and citizens.

Read how, for example, this simple but ingenious system is used by Taiwan to crowdsource its laws

For an overview of key info for Upgrade Democracy