Participant voices
What is it really like to take part in a citizens' assembly? The most honest answer comes from those who were there. The feedback below comes from the participants of our meetings — taken word for word from the post-event evaluation sheets.
What the participants said
Strangers become a team in a few hours
After each meeting, every participant fills in an anonymous evaluation sheet. In the open-ended answers, the same themes come up again and again: the power of thinking together, listening to one another, and the sense that what you say genuinely matters. Here is some of that feedback — unedited.
Everyone's voice counts — it was really valuable to feel that.
Participants who had been strangers turned into old acquaintances within minutes in the group.
There is far more in our collective knowledge than we would think!
We think in many different ways, yet for the sake of a common goal we are willing to compromise.
It turned out there are all sorts of programmes in the district that I had no idea existed.
Openness, patience, broader thinking — that's what I took away with me.
The quotes come from the open-ended answers on the anonymous evaluation sheets filled in after our meetings. The full evaluations and the meeting reports are publicly available on the Research results page.
Did you take part in a meeting too?
Share your experience — your feedback helps others understand what it is really like to think together about the future of the district. Incoming feedback is published after moderation.