Citizen engagement is a process. It is not limited to the time when participants are actually in the room together. There is much work before and after that. Moreover, citizen engagement processes are in principle open – the recommendations, visions or prototypes created by citizens acquire a life of their own as they start circulating among wider society, organisations and institutions. 

The protocol will help you navigate this long and complex process by offering guidelines to help you design its different stages. As you go through the steps, keep in mind that they are interconnected – you cannot define one without thinking about the others. This means that during the design phase – and even already while you are running the process – some of the decisions might need to be adjusted depending on how the project develops. 

We will distinguish between the participatory 'process' and participatory 'event'. The former refers to all the stages of engagement, from defining the topic to the follow-up. The latter refers to the specific moment(s) when citizens come together to discuss and co-create.

Continue exploring different aspects of the protocol