People's Panel hosted in St Columb's Hall

Derry’s iconic St Columb’s Hall is to host a People’s Panel as part of Co-operation Ireland’s Voice Matters project.

Speaking to Derry Now, Sophia Devlin, the project’s co-ordinator described Co-operation Ireland as a peacebuilding organisation. “We work on a cross-border basis and we work across youth and peacebuilding,” she said.

The People’s Panel, which is meeting this weekend, is focused on providing local input into shaping decision-making in the city. The concluding meeting will take place on Sunday May 14.

“It aims to amplify the voice of local residents so that any programmes developed will be informed by the people they impact,” said Sophia.

“This is Voice Matters’ first foray into democracy. We delivered year one of the project last year and we are delighted to be delivering year two of the project this weekend in St Columb’s Hall.

“The People’s Panel is all about using deliberative democracy which differs from traditional democracy, which we have in place here. It supplements political bodies and elected representatives and provides an apolitical forum for citizens to make decisions that affect their own communities.

“We are really excited about it. We ran a proof of concept event last year and it is entirely citizen led. So, we come into these events and we say to people in certain communities, ‘What would you like to talk about? What are you concerned about in your community?’

“Last year, the big response we got via citizen engagement, by community engagement, was mental health. And that was wonderful. We had subject matter experts in the room, including Neil Guckian, chief executive of the Western Trust and Pauline Flanagan, project manager at Action Mental Health. We also had a fantastic range of guest speakers. We had speakers from HURT  - Have Your Tomorrows, who spoke about detoxification and addiction services, and Stephen Twells, chairman of Foyle Search and Rescue. It was a wonderful event. We had 30 participants,” said Sophia.

According to Sophia, the People’s Panel participants were all randomly selected.

“That is why it is such a labour intensive process,” said Sophia. “We pick certain communities that haven’t a fantastic record of engagement and activism.

“Last year we focused on Creggan, Galliagh and Shantallow because those communities have so much grassroots activism. We went into them and we picked mental health as a topic. From there, we sent out 5,000 invitations to addresses selected from our postal database and 61 registered to sign up.

“We work with the Sortition Foundation, which is involved in deliberative democracy processes; referendums in Australia; and the East Belgium Model, which is a citizens' council on a permanent basis in East Belgium and supplements traditional representation. Paris City Council has recently introduced a similar initiative.

“So, it is the process of Sortition to recruit people. People are randomly selected based on those who register. We over represent for low levels of IMD (Indices of multiple derivation), for women, for disability, and people who wouldn’t normally get into the room to make decisions because we do realise there are barriers to public participation. We then select 30 people to hit our demographic targets.

“We then go into the room with a rough idea of the topics which are going to be discussed based on the top five issues the participants have told us they voted on in the last year and were concerned about. We bring in external facilitators. The participants then engineer principles and overarching recommendations and it is entirely citizen led,” said Sophia.

Voice Matters then goes back and advocates and lobbies for the outcomes generated.

Last year’s People’s Panel report was published in November 2022.

“As a result of last year’s process, I am working with the Western Trust. The People’s Panel number one recommendation was a detoxification and addiction centre in Derry, which is so necessary. The Western Trust subsequently commissioned a needs-based review of substance abuse in the North West and privy to the results of that in a few months, we are hoping that £1 million might be allocated to Northlands Addiction Centre.

“Our topics this year are democracy and civic engagement. We are asking, ‘How can people in the North West have more say in decision-making?’ We are working with Derry City and Strabane District Council to make sure the outcomes will be received well and it has been fantastic. We will also have the Mayor as a guest speaker on Saturday.

“We are delighted to be delivering these events with our partners at the St Columb’s Hall Trust. St Columb’s Hall is a historic location with a rich tradition of civic engagement and is the perfect location for community dialogue.

“This process will involve three key phases: learning; deliberation, and decision-making. One of the outcomes of these events will be the creation of a citizen-led report, which will include a series of recommendations for improving democratic outcomes,” said Sophia.

Co-operation Ireland CEO Peter Sheridan said: “We look forward to welcoming participants to these events and working together to deliver effective, citizen-led change.

“Voice Matters is a key part of Co-operation Ireland’s vision for an inclusive society.”

Welcoming the Voice Matter’s People’s Panel to St Columb’s Hall, Anne-Marie Gallagher, the project director with the St Columb’s Hall Trust said the beloved venue was extremely fitting for the event.

“St Columb’s Hall is the people’s hall, built by local people and sustained by local people over a long period of time,” said Anne-Marie.

“As part of our regeneration process, one of the things which came out very clearly from people when we were looking at uses, was the need for a shared civic space, for somewhere people can have offline (in person) conversations.

“As we were doing our consultation, one of the things that came back time and time again from citizens was the idea that social media poisons debate and Derry, which was once so good at discussion and coming up with new ideas, is suffering because of social media.

“The feeling was social media has really poisoned that pool and people are afraid to say anything online in case people fall out with them because tone is lost. So this idea of offline debate was at the centre of our minds when we were trying to think about what we could do with St Columb’s Hall. People debating with other people, as opposed to a profile on Twitter or Facebook,” said Anne-Marie.

“Such good things came out of in person discussion in Derry over the years,” said Anne-Marie. “We are renowned for coming up with creative ways around things for that very reason, so, with that background, when we heard about Co-operation Ireland’s intention to try this project, what was really attractive for us was that it linked in exactly with the path we wanted to go down.

“Also it chimed with what people were saying to us in terms of not being able to get across what their views were on certain issues, despite a lot of people being very connected with politics and voting and seeing the value in democracy. They just didn’t feel their view was getting through on specific topics.”

The event will be livestreamed via the Co-operation Ireland Facebook page.