RECRUITMENT

Jury Recruitment is the hardest challenge you face in hosting an MCA:  professional bodies charge governments hundreds of thousands of pounds / dollars ( – millions sometimes) – to recruit balanced juries that accurately reflect the different sectors a country’s population. Census data provides all the information that you need to know about those different sectors. You can find the UK’s latest Census data here:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011census/2011censusdata/2011censusdatacatalogue

But our advice is: don’t get too hung up on this. This is a MODEL Assembly – and, as long as you have roughly half male / half female, half under 40 / half over 40 and a mix of different professions and ethnicities – you’ll be fine. You can simplify our draft application form down to a handful of questions. But, you should avoid having too many of one opinion on the issue under discussion:  on PCI’s nuclear weapons pilot, we struggled to balance out the peace campaigners – who were eager to jump on board, with the supporters of nuclear weapons – whom we struggled to interest in debating the issue. (NATO continues to refuse to come to an MCA to explain why they instructed their member states to boycott the UN discussions on TPNW.)   That’s why Recruitment is hard:  it requires a lot of leg-work, persistence, and arm-twisting.

There are many admirable resources to help Citizen’s Assembly planners undertake the preparation and management of their Assembly. For school and community MCA organisers, Extinction Rebellion’s Guide to Citizens’ Assemblies is perhaps the most useful one to read. Even though it’s focus is exclusively on climate and ecological justice, their approach expresses the passion that we share about the principle of engaging citizens in decisions that affect their own survival, and the survival of all life on this planet. XR’s approach is well-thought out and includes excellent historical perspectives on other Citizens’ Assemblies around the world.  This is invaluable background information to anyone planning an MCA.

The Innovation in Democracy Programme of the Dept. of Culture Media and Sport have published a long and detailed booklet: “How to run a Citizens’ Assembly” for Local Authorities. It provides a useful contrast to the XR approach as it shows how governments approach the CA Challenge. The Website: https://www.involve.org.uk/  has many valuable tips and tools from the organisers of some of the largest deliberative democracy events that have happened in the UK.  Citizens’ Assemblies are only one of the approaches that Involve.org is testing. Their Recruitment approach is the one used by most planners: “The people who take part are chosen so that they reflect the wider population – in terms of demographics (eg. Age, gender, ethnicity, social class) and relevant attitudes (eg. Prior knowledge of, or opinions about, the issue to be discussed.)”

Scotland’s first Citizens’ Assembly organisers explain that they will “…randomly recruit more than 100 Assembly members, aged 16 and over, who are broadly representative of the adult population in Scotland today. Members will be profiled against a range of criteria to ensure they are broadly representative according to geography, age, gender, ethnic group, educational qualifications and limiting long term conditions/disability.”

 A Model Citizens’ Assembly(MCA) builds on all this experience. Even though an MCA’s main purpose is educational and many will happen in schools, an MCA Jury must be balanced in exactly the same way as actual Citizens’ Assemblies – and it is, of course, fine to include students under 16: 10-11 year olds should be invited if they are interested. MCAs can be run in school time by getting students to research the feelings of different demographic sections of their community, and adopting their persona in the Assembly – in much the same way as students adopt the personality of different UN Member States in a Model UN. But we feel that this is a bit fraudulent. Instead, we urge you to set up your MCA as an extra-curricular activity in an evening, or at a week-end, and get your students to drag along their parents, grand-parents and other friends and family members to serve on the jury – representing the employed / unemployed, director level / shop floor level, community members etc. Students and staff should encourage others to join the audience to create a grand community occasion. 

Look at the demographics (make-up) of your community – and create an Application Form / Questionnaire that accurately reflects your local reality. That’s the beauty of a Citizens’ Assembly: it can genuinely reflect your community as it actually is – not as some remote government bureaucrat would like it to be!

You can find the actual application forms we used for the Audience and Jury of the original Peace Child International MCA on the nuclear weapons issue: HERE – for the Jury form, or HERE – for the audience form. Whether you are doing the Assembly online or physically, we encourage you to use the FREE Google Forms software HERE.  You will need to create your own forms – and we encourage you to think up new questions that you feel will enrich the learning experience ( – but not too many, or your audience / jury will lose interest and fail to finish filling in the form[s]. Others will find them too intrusive.)  The following list of questions can be used as a starting point:

JURY  APPLICATION  FORM:

• First and Last Name:
• Email address:
• Gender:
• Age:
• Where you live – Urban / Rural
• Household Income per year:
• Net Worth / Amount of Savings:
• Educational Attainment:
• Employment Status: Employed / Unemployed/Student/Retired:
• If employed, which kind of job:
• Political Affiliation?
• Religious Affiliation? If Yes, which?
• Ethnicity – how do you identify yourself?
• Prior knowledge: (eg. How aware are you of the issue?)
• Prior Judgement: have you formed an opinion on the question raised by this Citizens’ Assembly? Yes – No – Don’t Know
• Might you be persuaded to change your answer? Yes – No – Don’t Know
• If you had the chance to ask ONE question before the Assembly about the issue under discussion, what would it be? (up to 50 words)

Audience Recruitment is much easier:  basically – you are offering free tickets to a show. A fun online learning opportunity to meet up with friends, watch sons / daughters / friends / relatives present themselves – and ask difficult questions about an issue that is – self-evidently – of concern. It is easy to over-egg the doom ‘n gloom aspect of the existential threats under discussion. In Peace Child, we discourage this – reminding people of how successful Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream!” speech was – and how much less successful it might have been had he said: “I have a nightmare….” Human beings can solve the challenging problems under discussion: indeed they have to if human life is to continue on this earth. So – focus on the solutions in your promotional material. Make it seem like a feel-good experience for the whole community. And emphasise the intergenerational aspect: in many communities, youth leadership – even youth with opinions – are sometimes frowned upon. A Citizens’ Assembly should bury forever the idea that “Children should be seen and not heard.”

AUDIENCE  APPLICATION  FORM:

• First and Last Name:
• Email address:
• Gender:
• Age:
• Prior knowledge: (eg. How aware are you of the issue?)
• If you had the chance to ask ONE question before the Assembly about the issue under discussion, what would it be? (up to 50 words)