Digital Environments for Care and Democracy: Youth-led Policy Making and Accountability

Description:

Decidim has recently hosted two participatory spaces where young people have been the leaders and mental health the main issue. During the Mindset Revolution process in Manchester and the Youth Forum in Barcelona, young people have been involved in deliberation and proposal making to reach a set of policy proposals and recommendations regarding mental health.

This workshop aims to create a safe space for young people involved in these experiences to share learnings and outcomes, and to collectively explore how culture can be used to communicate the results to other young people and citizens, using tools like Theater of the Oppressed and Legislative Theater. We will also pay attention to the accountability component and how it can facilitate the follow-up of policy proposals and recommendations.

Objectives

1. Learn about the Mindset Revolution process and the Youth Forum, the tools used and the resulting recommendations and policy proposals regarding youth mental health
2. Explore how culture can help translate recommendations and policy proposals into an accessible format to reach citizens, especially youth and schools
3. Discuss how the design of the accountability component could be improved to include the diversity of elements and how to make it more approachable and user-friendly for monitoring and evaluation

Methodology

The workshop consists of two parts, the first will be a presentation of the work done so far and the second half will be practical. In the first part, young people involved in the participatory experiences will explain the processes and their outcomes. Then, participants will work in small groups to explore and brainstorm on the communication of results using various cultural expressions and its integration to the accountability component. The session will end with a sharing and discussion in the plenary session.

Introduction (15 minutes)

1. Welcome and introductions
2. Overview of the workshop objectives and agenda

Experience Sharing (20 minutes)

1. Explanation of the Mindset Revolution and the Youth Forum participatory spaces by participants, and the tools used to reach these recommendations/policy proposals (Legislative Theatre, Decidim)
2. Policy proposals and recommendations: commonalities and differences

Culture, accountability & communication (45 minutes)

1. Participants will be divided into groups
2. Brainstorming on cultural formats to translate recommendations, reflecting on their simplicity/complexity, impact, cost, shareability and potential
3. Exploring ideas to make the accountability component more adaptable, useful and user-friendly for participatory policy tracking
4. Group presentations and discussion on the outcomes

Wrap-up and Conclusion (10 minutes)

1. Recap of the workshop highlights and key takeaways
2. Evaluation and feedback collection

Workshop conducted by: Marta Anducas, Cristian Palazzi, Enric Senabre (Platoniq Foundation) & Sonia Bussu (University of Birmingham).

Language of the session: English, with translation into Spanish/Catalan if needed.