During our March 2021 Virtual Conference, the IPEN community co-created a toolkit for public engagement. This collaborative toolkit includes a set of principles to guide effective public engagement practice by parliaments. The toolkit is structured around three key questions:
- What is public engagement?
- What is effective engagement
- How do we evaluate public engagement
Now the IPEN executive team has thought of a whole new way of using this toolkit.
We worked with escape room builder Sacha Coward and Digital Creative Agency Code & Wander. Using the principles in the toolkit, we created an exciting online environment where players work together to solve several challenges. These challenges all have different elements of the toolkit embedded in an interactive way.
This virtual game can be used for team-building exercises, as an icebreaker on a team away day or as part of a workshop. It is there for any team that wishes to develop an activity to enhance awareness of effective public engagement – you simply need a minimum of 4 people to play the game. We created this for parliamentary teams around the world to engage with ideas of public engagement in an innovative and exciting way. You may notice some familiar faces from the IPEN Exec team throughout the game!
Visit terranova.ipen-network.org or follow the link below.
Do use it as much as you wish, but do also report back to the IPEN team on what you have thought of the game, feedback would be very welcome, to: IPEN@leeds.ac.uk
The game was developed thanks to the support from an Impact Acceleration Account grant from the LSSI and funding from Research England’s Policy Support Funding.