Inverness Town House
Wednesday 25 June 2008, 18.30 – 21.30
The Highland Council is carrying out a public engagement on the five possible sites for a potential new Highland Gallery and Museum in Inverness. Previous engagement information from November 2007 to January 2008 can be found at: www.citypartnership.org.uk/Highland-Gallery-and-Museum-g.asp. Current information on this most recent public engagement can be found at: www.highland.gov.uk/hgm.
The five possible sites are:
The facilitated Engagement and Visioning Workshop will follow a ‘World Café’ style of engagement, www.theworldcafe.com. This is a conversational process designed to foster dialogue, active engagement and constructive possibilities for action. The idea is to:
- Set the context and clarify the purpose of the exchange.
- Create a hospitable space.
- Explore questions that matter.
- Encourage everyone's contribution.
- Connect diverse perspectives.
- Listen for insights and share discoveries.
- Record key ideas on index cards.
At the public engagement workshop, each proposed site will have a table assigned to it. The table will have a Facilitator (Table Host) whose role it is to enable the free flow of discussion in a civilised and constructive manner.
- Speakers in a conversation have the responsibility to focus on the topic and express as clearly and quickly their thoughts about it.
- Listeners to a conversation have the responsibility to listen to what a speaker is saying with the implicit assumption that they have something relevant and important to say that adds meaning to the table’s conversation.
The Table Host will guide the table conversation around questions that matter and will ensure that all participants are encouraged to contribute to the discussion, listen to what others have to say and record their thoughts and key ideas (text or graphics) on index cards and place these in the centre of the table for others to see and comment on (these cards will be retained by the Table Host and will be gathered together at the end of the session for the workshop storybook).
Each table will also have access to information about the site it represents and there will be Highland Council officers on hand to answer and deal with any technical or policy questions. A sixth table will deal with the overall concept of and vision for, a new Highland Gallery and Museum.
Participants will be encouraged to move onto other tables (sites/topics) during the course of the session, so that by the end they will have visited and contributed to all six tables if they wish.
The timetable for the workshop is as follows:
18.30 Arrival and introduction – guidelines for the evening.
18.45 Start of table discussions.
[2.5 hours – workshop participants will be encouraged not to remain at the same table all evening, but to visit each of the six tables, spending ideally no more than 25 minutes at each table. The table host will welcome new guests as they arrive at their table and briefly share the main ideas, themes and questions from the ongoing conversation, encouraging the new arrivals to contribute their own ideas and comments]
21.15 End of table discussions.
21.15 Whole workshop conversation so that patterns from the evening can be identified, collective knowledge can grow, and possibilities for action can emerge.
21.30 Close of public engagement workshop.
There will be light refreshments available throughout the workshop (coffee, tea, water, soft drinks, and biscuits/nibbles).