The doors have closed on the final Street Voice Citizens’ Jury, and the Street Voice team are now hard at work, bringing together four days of fascinating discussions and deliberations into a Report for Oxfordshire County Council.
The final session of the Jury on Sunday 3rd July kicked off with a short word from Claire Taylor, Corporate Director (Customers, Organisational Development and Resources) at Oxfordshire County Council, who reiterated the importance of the Jury’s work and how it will be received by the Council.
The jurors then set to work, revisiting the themes identified in the previous session, and discussing each of the proposals in detail, to ensure that the wording accurately reflected the jurors’ wishes. Then ensued a process of registering the jurors’ preferred proposals and noting those which didn’t get their support. Enter, a large pile of coloured sticky dots and gold stars to facilitate this!
Once the process was complete, the Jury then spent time discussing in particular those proposals which were particularly important to some, but had divided opinion, guided by our independent facilitator Paul Kahawatte in a process of convergent facilitation. By exploring the sticking points for individual jurors, the priority proposals were amended in small but significant ways, to be acceptable to all jurors.
With over 160 proposals in all, generated over the 4 days, the Street Voice team have brought together core information into an initial report for the Council. This initial review of the process will be discussed at Cabinet this coming Tuesday 19th July, as item 16 on the Agenda. This is an open Council meeting, starting at 11.30am, and all can join online using the link here.
The Street Voice Final Report, with full recommendations and evaluation, will be presented to a dedicated Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting of the Council, that will be held in September (date to be confirmed). All jurors have been invited to attend this meeting, a sure endorsement by the Council of the importance of their work and the value of this process to Council decision-making. Citizens’ Juries and other deliberative democratic processes surely have a role to play in contributing to creating sustainable cities of the future.
