What Made Scaling Particularly Complex?

While the results from social R&D year 1 contained in this report are hugely encouraging, delivering something as ambitious and complex as Participatory Canada has brought considerable challenges and robust learning. This section outlines some of the key challenges and learning from the perspective of the Participatory Canada core team as they worked to support the Participatory City approach as it was tested in three cities.

- Nat Defriend, Participatory City Foundation

Early thinking about scaling assumed that the Canadian prototypes would likely follow a fairly linear process, approximately replicating the stages the UK team went through in getting the project established in London.

The reality was that co-design, co-creation, and scaling demanded far more from the Participatory Canada leadership than had originally been planned for, especially in the research and development phase, and this primarily because of the context of COVID-19. The level of adaptation required to fit the evolving situation with the pandemic was underestimated, and the development in each city was complex. Supporting the three prototypes as well as the initiative in Barking and Dagenham during COVID-19 increased the complexity.

The core team recognizes that kickstarting new initiatives with the Participatory City approach will always be complex, particularly in the start up phase. There are no shortcuts to the deep learning necessary for this phase to be successful. The prototypes provided an understanding of the learning required, as well as of the learning infrastructures that must be in place prior to undertaking further work. The team identified 6 primary challenges that made scaling particularly complex:

The pandemic had wide ranging and deeply disruptive effects on all aspects of this social R&D phase. It’s impossible to disentangle the challenges faced from prototyping something new from the challenges faced because of the pandemic.

As a result of the disruption caused by the pandemic, we should ask to what extent did we test a participatory platform? COVID-19 restrictions limited the prototypes to such an extent that in some instances they were a far cry from the original hopes and expectations. On top of the burn-out, fatigue, the emotional and mental distress caused by the pandemic, the prototypes were frequently pivoting to work within changing restrictions and regulations. Both the prototype teams and the Participatory Canada core team had to constantly adjust schedules, tactics, and expectations.

The socially distanced and restricted realities of 2020 and 2021 disrupted the scaling of an approach that is centred on connecting people. Changes and adaptations made as a result of OVID-19 not only shifted prototypes further from original expectations, it also meant that the prototypes were different from one another in ways that could not be anticipated, as each team responded to provincial and local regulations and circumstances.

Regardless, the prototypes created significant understanding and demand for the model among local stakeholders, and generated experiential knowledge for the prototype teams. There are indicators that the approach is valuable to local communities, and that the prototypes are setting the foundation for achieving longer term outcomes.

The approach underlying these prototypes is based on the assumption that close collaborative and generative relationships allow local city teams and Participatory Canada to co-design local initiatives together. This offer the best chance for transferring the knowledge and practices of the approach for these prototypes to be successful in distinctly different contexts. Building this type of relationship faced several challenges.

Relationships suffered a significant loss when travel and in-person meetings were no longer an option. The relationships between Participatory Canada and the three prototype teams and partner organizations were all fostered over video conferencing, emails, and telephone calls. While important, these modalities were far from ideal when it came to building trust and relationships. Additionally, the lack of in-person meetings meant less of the experiential learning, and less of the co-design and co-building that would have otherwise occurred in physical meetings. Team members in the cities joined at different times, and some attended or missed online workshops. This led to asymmetric learning, and to a fragmentation of knowledge.

The Participatory City Foundation brought significant content knowledge about building practical participatory ecosystems. Launching three prototypes simultaneously meant that PCF team members had to navigate many relationships at the same time, while managing their own changing situation in the UK. Developing local relationships is always demanding and needs dedicated time in person for trust relationships to develop. These local relationships extended beyond the prototype teams to organizational leadership, strategic partners, local government representatives, politicians, and beyond. Participatory City Foundation and McConnell Foundation together played an important advocacy role to create the conditions for the teams to deliver the prototype. The remote, online, highly scheduled, agenda-led way of doing this runs counter to how this would be done effectively under different conditions: in-person, informally, and through spreading creative energy and excitement as the learning and the strategies were developed and co-designed.

As a principle, co-design underpinned how team members planned to adapt the Participatory City approach to community contexts in Canada.

Co-designing is a shared endeavour where local teams and Participatory Canada find new ways to fuse knowledge, insights, and networks. The goal is to design a plan which has the best chance of working in context, because of the sources of input. The assumption is that neither the local organization nor Participatory Canada could design an effective project in isolation. It is through this collaboration of resources, models and relationships that a strong project will develop.

The original plan was that teams would travel to London and experience the approach first-hand, and then PCF would work closely with local teams to co-design prototypes. The in-person learning opportunities were lost due to COVID-19, and as a result, learning and co-design processes started to blend together. This put the PCF team in a position where they were hosting co-design sessions, while also still having to act as content experts presenting core principles of the approach that had to be integrated.

The co-design process was trying to find a tricky balance of openness and design constraints. It wasn’t a completely open process where a brand new approach was being co-created. There are key aspects of the approach that have been shown to achieve long term outcomes. However, at the same time, the approach had to be adapted to be relevant to each place.

Ultimately, generative relationships were fostered. The prototype teams expressed that the further they got into the delivery of the actual work, the more they understood the interconnected and integrated fundamental elements of the approach, and the greater the benefit of having access to team members in London who could provide coaching, tools and resources.

Navigating ownership and authorship while striving for a culture of open source sharing and co-creation was a challenge throughout the process.

In the original partnership agreements, the intention was a partnership of equals, where parties shared responsibility for the success of the work, respected each others’ contributions and co-designed and iterated together as the prototypes unfolded. All parties were understood as contributing differently to the partnerships, but there were clear and appropriate responsibilities and resourcing for the different elements.

As each team adapted aspects of the approach, including tools, materials, communications and resources, to be culturally relevant to their place, questions about authorship and ownership inevitably arose. Local organizations felt a need to make an approach their own, while at the same time embracing the core principles. Clearly, participating organizations need autonomy, ownership, and agency while also building on the Participatory City approach as far as it has been designed and tested to date.

It is important to note that there is often a sense of competition in the community sector, stemming from that fact that organizations rely on limited resources and funding. At the same time, there is also a culture of sharing and learning across the sector, and a desire to build upon each other’s work without duplicating effort. This tension showed up in this year of prototyping, as it does regularly across the sector and throughout Canada.

Learning from people leading participatory platforms, and accessing tools and resources to adapt and build is embedded in the DNA of the Participatory City approach. This openness contributes to its strength and ability to adapt and improve. Navigating attribution, authorship, and ownership will need to be handled explicitly as more neighbourhoods and cities are added to the mix, and as cross-cultural work grows and grows. Some questions that need to be explored include:

• How might we foster a culture of open source sharing and learning across all participatory platforms and organizations using this approach? • How might organizations or teams be recognized and given meaningful attribution for their contributions, while keeping the spirit of openness and co-creation?

The Participatory City approach appears simple at first glance, and that’s the beauty of it. There is a high level of design used across a wide array of communications, including websites, reports, videos and infographics. Underneath the surface, the Participatory City approach requires systems and behaviour change to be fully realized. At the core of Participatory City are intentional practices for teams working together, for partnering with local governments, and for open source learning and development. As might be expected, these practices are often at odds with dominant systems.

As prototype teams worked to integrate and adapt core elements of the approach to local and organizational contexts, ingrained patterns of working and behaving were at times dissonant with the behaviour change envisaged and required. Building a platform leading to reliable outcomes in areas such as mental health, social cohesion, and wellbeing is complicated, and represents a significant shift for most organizations. Although it may look easy from the outside, the knowledge, skills and capacities to lead this work takes years to develop to the point where it is effective.

Keren Tang, Participatory Canada Program Manager.

In the UK, Participatory City Foundation exists to solely serve the purpose of Participatory City and its mission. In Canada, three previously existing organizations took on the prototypes, because of interest and alignment with existing missions and mandates. Embedding the approach within existing organizations was completely uncharted territory.

In Canada, each team saw Participatory Canada as one of many programs that contribute to the priorities and mission of their respective organizations. Organizational priorities shaped the direction of the prototypes, and organizational culture influenced how the prototype team members worked together.

As the approach is adapted, we can anticipate a creative tension between elements of the approach that have worked in London for many years, and each participating organization’s mandate and culture. Adaptation happened not only in response to local context, but to organizational context as well. These organizational contexts included the lived experience and expertise of the prototype team, as well as the different organizational cultures and priorities. Each city context is unique, and each organization has different levels of experience in community development and engagement, and different aspirations for a participatory platform.

The Participatory City approach demands that the organization’s priority and outcomes be defined by community members. It is assumed that this approach must be adapted on all levels to achieve significant outcomes. This includes the way the team and the organization interacts with residents, with the neighbourhood, with local government and with funding structures.

Ultimately, this should be seen as a creative tension between the approach and each organization’s mandate and existing focus areas. This can translate to organizations’ needing to address internal programming dynamics at the expense of concentrating efforts on resident-centered engagement.