Engagement approaches
Multistakeholder participation for impactful research.
This course explores the principles and practices of meaningful participation in research and innovation. From stakeholder mapping through to co-creation and co-assessment, participants will develop the skills to design, implement, and evaluate engagement processes that bring diverse voices into our processes from across research, civil society, industry, policy and the general public. So that science can address real societal needs and deliver genuine value to those involved.
DATE:
2021-07-05
TIME:
17:00
About the programme
Overview
A series of five modules build progressively from foundational concepts through to practical application:
- Foundations: The case for participatory research
- Knowing your landscape: Stakeholders, communities, and motivations
- Designing for inclusion: Reaching beyond the usual voices
- Three methods: Co-design, co-creation, and co-assessment
- In practice: Designing your participatory process
This course can take the shape of a series of online 2-hour sessions or as a series of in-person training modules. It is led by the Stickydot team who have a wealth of expertise in facilitating dialogue and participatory processes around research and innovation, on and offline. The modules draw on existing good practices and theory both within our sector and further afield. They are dynamic and interactive, ensuring plenty of time for discussion and sharing of experiences.
After attending this training, participants will be able to:
- Articulate the case for participatory approaches in their own context
- Distinguish between deficit, dialogue, and participatory models of engagement
- Map and prioritise stakeholders and citizen demographics for their own work
- Design engagement processes that account for barriers to participation and power dynamics
- Explain when to use co-design, co-creation, and co-assessment approaches
- Apply co-creation methodologies with confidence, drawing on real-world case studies
- Build accountability mechanisms that close the loop with participants
Who is it for?
This course will be of relevance to researchers, research support staff, industry professionals, project managers, science communicators, policy officers, and anyone involved in designing or facilitating multistakeholder engagement with research and innovation. Whether you are new to participatory approaches or looking to deepen your practice, this modular course provides practical tools, critical insights, and space for reflection. We will look at participatory methods in the context of research and innovation, but the principles and practices are also relevant to broader contexts across policy, community development, and organisational change.
This training is available on demand. It can be tailored to the needs of specific organisations and can shrink or extend in time and content as required.
Programme schedule
Why engage, and how has the landscape evolved?
This opening module establishes the rationale for participatory approaches and introduces the conceptual framework that underpins the rest of the course. Why does engagement matter for research quality, for democratic accountability, for addressing complex societal challenges? We will explore the normative, substantive, and instrumental cases for participation, and trace the evolution from deficit models (where publics are seen as lacking knowledge) through dialogue to genuine participatory practice. Participants will be introduced to the three modes of participatory practice, co-design, co-creation, and co-assessment, that structure the remainder of the training. Through reflective exercises, participants will locate their own work within this landscape and identify where participatory approaches could strengthen their practice.
Who should be involved, and what will bring them to the table?
Effective participation starts with understanding who has a stake in your research and what might motivate them to engage. This module covers demographic and stakeholder mapping: identifying relevant publics, civil society organisations, policymakers, industry actors, and research partners. Participants will work with profiling tools and apply prioritisation frameworks such as the power-interest matrix. We will also introduce the research on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, helping participants anticipate what different groups might gain from involvement. A hands-on group activity using participants’ own research contexts will ensure the learning is directly applicable.
How do we ensure participation is genuinely accessible and equitable?
Participatory processes often reproduce existing inequalities unless we actively design against this. This module addresses barriers to participation, whether practical, social, or structural, and provides frameworks for inclusive design. We will explore accessibility considerations (physical, digital, linguistic), power dynamics between researchers and publics, and the ethics of engaging vulnerable communities. Participants will learn how to create safer spaces for dialogue and how to recognise when their processes may be excluding important voices. The module also covers fair rewarding: how to recognise and compensate participants in ways that respect their contributions, from material rewards through to co-ownership of outcomes. Through group activities, participants will surface blind spots in engagement design related to their own work, identifying who’s likely to be left out and what barriers stand in their way.
What methods fit different purposes, and how do they connect?
This hands-on module explores the three interconnected modes of participatory practice. We begin with co-design: how to collaboratively define priorities, questions, and directions before you’ve decided what to do. Participants will work through a scenario challenge, designing a co-design process for a realistic context. We then turn to co-creation, jointly developing and testing solutions with relevant stakeholders. Through a detailed case study, participants will see how co-creation unfolds in practice from challenge definition through stakeholder recruitment, ideation, and prototyping. Finally, we address co-assessment: evaluating results together, defining what success looks like, and closing the loop with participants. The module closes by exploring how the three modes connect and how to choose the right approach for different contexts.
Design your participatory process
This final module is almost entirely participatory, giving space to integrate and apply everything covered in the course. Participants will design a participatory process for their own research context drawing on the frameworks, tools, and case studies from the preceding modules. Using a structured template, they will work through key decisions: who to engage, how to reach them, which methods to use, how to design for inclusion, and how to build in accountability. Through peer feedback, participants will review and strengthen each other’s designs, surfacing blind spots and sharing insights from their own experience. The module closes with a final reflection and a chance to make concrete commitments to possible next steps.
Interested to chat with us and explore an idea further?
Don’t hesitate to send a quick message to info@stickydot.eu and schedule a short half-hour call with us, at your convenience.
