By Maxine Fromm.
How can transdisciplinary researchers best organise workshops that create a collaborative space for different stakeholders? What practical planning is required? How can organisers meet the challenges of translating a project idea into concrete workshops?
This i2Insights contribution offers four practical lessons gathered throughout a dialogue series on a just industry transition between Dutch representatives from industry, non-governmental organisations, academia and ministries, which was organised by the Sustainable Industry Lab.
Lesson 1: Planning should start from your stakeholders’ needs
As Lisa Andrews and colleagues noted in their i2Insights contribution, Three lessons for mainstreaming transdisciplinarity, you need to ‘reach stakeholders where they are’ and take into account their knowledge levels, interests and agendas. Who your stakeholders are and your workshop objectives will affect:
- the way in which you contact and bring together stakeholders,
- how the workshop/s is/are structured,
- project timeframes,
- how long and where the workshops are held, and
- if, and which, preparation documents need to be drafted.
When reflecting on our stakeholder groups at the start of our project, we quickly noticed that each group has their ‘own language’ when discussing the just industry transition. Rather than immediately bringing all stakeholder groups together, we first conducted separate workshops for each group. This allowed each group to articulate their perspectives in their own terms, and us to gain insights into key differences among the groups. Given the value-laden nature of our justice-centred topic, we also decided to hire a professional facilitator who has a background in engaging and managing participants. Relying on external help also relates to lesson #3 below, which highlights that different expertise can help to plan and run successful workshops.
Putting this lesson into action
As a first step, dedicate some time to analyse your stakeholders’ needs in-depth. Questions to help this analysis include:
- Which interests and projects do your stakeholders pursue? How can you address these in your overall project, specific workshop, communication, etc.?
- Which communication channels and styles are most suitable for your stakeholders?
- What are the relationships among the different stakeholder groups? Is there potential for conflict? If so, how can you address this? Is external help necessary?
- Which levels of knowledge about the issue do your stakeholders currently have? What is necessary to bridge different levels of knowledge?
- What will work best for your stakeholder groups in terms of timelines and workshop locations?
Lesson 2: Clear, appreciative and proactive pre-workshop communication with stakeholders can lead to more engagement
How you communicate with stakeholders before the workshop can play a key role in building trust, fostering continued engagement and expanding your stakeholder network. In our project, proactive snowballing from our initial stakeholder groups led to new contacts, and we received a variety of ideas and suggestions for our sessions by actively inviting diverse input from stakeholders. Relating to lesson #1, it is important to consider your stakeholders’ needs here: their time constraints, communication preferences, levels of familiarity with the topic, etc.
Putting this lesson into action
- Communicate concisely, emphasise the value of your stakeholders’ contributions and highlight the potential benefits participants will gain, such as access to project outcomes.
- Proactively follow up when necessary: stakeholders may have busy schedules and other priorities, so be prepared to follow up once, or even twice.
- Even when responses are negative, ask if they can recommend other individuals, colleagues or groups who may be interested.
Lesson 3: Transdisciplinary workshops benefit from transdisciplinary organisation and input
Organising transdisciplinary workshops can significantly benefit from including individuals with diverse expertise in the planning process itself. It can bring in new perspectives, working tools and methods. Throughout our project, we worked with many individuals from different backgrounds, such as a professional facilitator, academics from different fields, and a design studio that supported creative visualisations of our workshops. Many ideas regarding creative exercises, suitable materials, and effective ways to engage with stakeholders emerged from these diverse viewpoints.
Putting this lesson into action
- Proactively reach out and discuss your ideas with academics and practitioners from different backgrounds.
- When discussing your ideas with others, always ask who else could be relevant to talk to; this helps to create a network of valuable contacts.
Lesson 4: Transdisciplinary workshops require detailed, yet adaptive, agendas
It is helpful to create an internal programme plan and break the workshop down into exact time slots. The plan should not only focus on the content you want to discuss with participants, but also detail all practical arrangements and materials. It is also important to establish priorities for each agenda item and determine what needs to be achieved and what is secondary, in case something unforeseen disrupts the programme.
Putting this lesson into action
- Develop an agenda, and for each agenda item clearly indicate: the start and end time, the purpose of the activity, the facilitator or speaker responsible, the room set up (group tables, plenary, etc.), any materials or equipment (handouts, laptops, etc.) needed, and which data will be created (written reflections, audio recordings, etc.).
- Assign clear priorities and include potential adaptations, especially to reduce time spent on agenda items if required.
- Relating to lesson #3, discuss your plan with individuals from different backgrounds to test whether your agenda is feasible and engaging.
Concluding questions
If you’ve run stakeholder workshops, what lessons did you learn that you would pass on? Have you experienced additional challenges that are not addressed here?
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was used to improve grammar and spelling in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)
Biography: Maxine Fromm LLM is a PhD student at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Her PhD focuses on the just industry transition in the Netherlands, which she investigates through a transdisciplinary dialogue. This dialogue is organised as part of the Sustainable Industry Lab, a transdisciplinary initiative that brings together diverse stakeholders to unlock and synthesise knowledge. Her research interests include stakeholder-centred and transdisciplinary research methods, particularly in the context of addressing complex sustainability and justice-related issues.
Acknowledgement: Dr Sanne Akerboom supervises my research at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development.
This is a really helpful guide! I found the advice regarding the pre-workshop communication especially helpful to engage with the initial stakeholder group find and involve new contacts that could contribute and and provide new input. I also really appreciated the explanation on transdisciplinary design for the workshops by bringing together academics from other fields, using a professional facilitator, and a design studio to provide engaging visuals. I am wondering if this diverse input contributed to any particularly unique workshop activities such as art-based methods?
Best,
Will
Thank you! I’m glad to hear you found the guide helpful.
In terms of the workshop exercises, the diverse input indeed led to more creative approaches. While we didn’t use arts-based methods in the traditional sense (like drawing or visual arts), we incorporated several creative activities that focused on written formats and narratives, such as storytelling and reflective prompts. The aim was to encourage imaginative, personal perspectives while still generating material that could be clearly structured, interpreted, and analyzed. Collaborating with practitioners and receiving feedback from different perspectives was very valuable in achieving this balance.
Best,
Maxine
Thanks for sharing this interesting piece, and for citing our work in a previous blog! I think the points you mention are all very relevant and useful tips to work through, however, I know in practice it can sometimes be tedious to collect input before a session from all relevant stakeholders. I think to ensure that, a certain level of motivation, time and resources is needed from the stakeholders / actors in question. Did you come across this challenge in your work? How does the Sustainable Industry Lab ensure engagement and motivation of stakeholders to participate? I have seen that this is a very context dependent challenge!
Thanks, Lisa
Thanks a lot for your comment! You are definitely right that participants will not always have the time or motivation to engage prior to the workshops. A lot is indeed dependent on the context. In our case, stakeholders generally seem to perceive the content of our dialogue not only as societally relevant but also personally relevant. Many of our stakeholders are working on content-related projects for their own work or feel personally confronted with questions that they can discuss during our workshops. This, of course, contributes substantially to the engagement of participants, and I can imagine it is significantly more difficult to receive input from stakeholders who are less closely connected to the content and outcome of the project. However, I also believe that this initial interest can be actively nurtured over time. How best to do that again depends on the context, but based on our experience, I believe demonstrating genuine interest in the participants’ contributions and creating channels to foster ongoing collaboration is key. Approaches we have used to this end include providing online platforms through which participants can access and share relevant materials and input, discussing the participants’ own work (in and outside the context of the workshops), incorporating their ideas into our dialogue, and offering opportunities for co-creation and joint projects that extend beyond the workshops. That said, we of course also do not manage to receive input from all relevant stakeholders, and there have been ups and downs in terms of engagement throughout the dialogue. So we are definitely still continuing to explore how best to engage and motivate stakeholders.
Thanks for your reply! I definitely recognize a lot of what you say – but indeed, it takes time and nurturing. Thanks again for sharing.
Thanks for such useful insights, Maxine! I will definitely come back to this page when preparing a workshop for my own research – particularly when I need pep-talk for recruiting engaged participants!
I’d be interested in hearing whether you have any tips or experience with organising workshops in a purely digital setting (zoom/teams/etc). I’d imagine that most things you write here would still very much apply but that it’d be much harder to moderate and know whether or not participants truly are engaged.
Best,
Max
Thank you, I’m glad you find the insights useful and hope they’re helpful when you’re putting together your own workshop!
As for digital settings, that’s actually an area I don’t have direct experience with myself, so I’d be really interested in hearing how others have approached it too. I can definitely imagine that many of the same principles still apply, but that aspects such as maintaining engagement would require some different strategies or tools.
Best,
Maxine