The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
Hello and welcome to the TCC Weekly – the Friday bulletin for people who know their Mondegreen from their Malapropism.
This week we look forward, in our Engagement Hub, to a new book by Ros Atkins. Why does explanation matter and what does it tell us about community engagement?
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, where intelligence and information embark on a fight to the death each Friday. This week we ask now many people are in space right now.
The art of explanation
There is a mantra that we at TCC Towers have always tried to live by, when consulting and engaging: “Always assume maximum intelligence and minimal information.” People tend to makegood decisions but need the context to make them.
For this reason we can’t wait to read The Art Of Explanation, a new book by Ros Atkins. A BBC news journalist, Atkins has become well-known in recent years for his short primers on subjects in the news – such as this 5 minute briefing on NHS funding. (More of these can be found on iPlayer, covering a range of issues).
This content fills a vital public service. Even our most senior decision-makers do not know all the facts, and often need a briefing or breakdown to make choices. Atkins’ videos do this at a national scale, for a lay audience. In a society which is time poor but content rich, providing the key background information like this can ensure that motivated reasoning and conspiracy theories do not fill the vacuum, when a complex or controversial topic pops up on the news.
All of this is, of course, relevant to community engagement. Consultation invariably involves taking residents or service-users on a journey, from wanting everything to choosing options. And for this journey to happen then accessible context is needed, so that the true costs and consequences of decisions are understood.
The success of Atkins’ short videos demonstrates the public appetite for explanation. And it shows that providing this need not mean browbeating the public. It merely acknowledges that, to properly draw conclusions about major topics, people need the facts.
And finally, Charlie’s Attic, the part of the Weekly where we are bombarded with info of every kind:
