In an era where public trust and engagement are essential to a thriving democracy, how can we ensure that every voice is heard in the decisions that shape our society? The Scottish Parliament has set ambitious goals to be a modern,dynamic parliamentary democracy, with citizen participation at its core. To achieve this, the Parliament’s 2021 public engagement strategy aims to increase the reach and diversity of its engagement, boost public knowledge and confidence in the democratic process, and enhance its reputation as a relevant and trusted institution.

Building on these strategic aims, PARliament Engagement is a collaborative research initiative ed by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre(SPICe) and the Participation and Communities Team (PACT) as part of the Scottish Parliament Academic Fellowship Scheme 2024/25. The research is being developed and carried out by Dr.Cara Broadley, Research Fellow at the School. of Innovation and Technology (SIT) at Glasgow School of Art, and explores how creative,participatory, and visual methods can strengthen parliamentary scrutiny.

Background and Context
The Parliament’s commitment to citizen participation is evident in its robust committee inquiry process. These inquiries are crucial to the Parliament’s role in legislation and governance, serving as a fact-finding,deliberative, and reporting mechanism on Scottish Government policy and legislation. The time and resources available for these inquiries can vary significantly, affecting the extent and quality of evidence gathering.Traditionally, evidence has been collected through ‘calls for views’ and oral evidence during formal committee meetings, typically involving expert witnesses and stakeholders. However, this approach tends to favour established voices,potentially sidelining diverse lived experiences.

Recognising these limitations, the Parliament has been building expertise in participatory and deliberative approaches. A dedicated team now facilitates in-person and online engagements, making parliamentary scrutiny more accessible to the wider public. While this shift has allowed more individual voices and lived experiences to influence policy discussions, challenges remain in capturing and integrating evidence from these participatory methods into formal briefings and reports. The traditional hierarchy of evidence – where formal, verbal evidence is often valued more highly – persists, as noted by the 2017 Commission on Parliamentary Reform.

The PARliament Engagement project seeks to address these challenges by exploring how creative, participatory, and visual methods can stimulate and re-present accounts of lived experience and deliberative dialogue as robust evidence for parliamentary scrutiny.

• Exploring Participation: Investigate current and historical approaches to public participation within Parliament, identifying barriers and successes.
• Engaging Underrepresented Communities: Develop principles and practices for Parliament to engage with people and communities that are less often involved in scrutinising the effectiveness of legislation.
• Gathering Evidence: Propose innovative approaches for rigorously collecting and using evidence in parliamentary scrutiny.
• Prototyping Tools: Develop, test, and evaluate new tools within the parliamentary scrutiny system to enhance engagement, participation, and deliberation.

Methodology
The PARliament Engagement project will employ Participatory Action Research (PAR) as a flexible and inclusive methodological approach that surfaces contextual issues and experiential knowledge. PAR promotes pluralism and creativity, allowing for the involvement of less formally organised groups and seldom heard communities in meaningful dialogue, ideation, co-creation, and evaluation. Recognising the capacity of creative methods to improve the depth and quality of dialogue around policy implementation and mechanisms for community-led decision-making, the project builds on SIT’s research in the context of design and policy and develops methods and approaches from the field of Participatory Design.

The research will begin with ethnographic shadowing of staff members within the offices that deliver and promote consultations to understand how evidence is gathered and communicated throughout the committee inquiry process. Observational drawings will be used as prompts for reflective semi-structured interviews,helping to map scenarios and create briefs for further exploration.

Participants will then participate in a series of co-design workshops to conceptualise alternative approaches and practices for documenting and disseminating evidence of engagement, participation, and deliberation. The workshops will also explore how innovative modes of communication such as storytelling, visualisation, and generative making can be used to capture lived experiences, and how these canbe effectively analysed and integrated into formal reports and presented as robust evidence to committees. The research will culminate in the co-creationof prototype tools and proposals, which will be piloted and evaluated within the parliamentary scrutiny system.

‍

Expected Outcomes and Impact
The PARliament Engagement project aims to significantly contribute to the Scottish Parliament’s ongoing efforts to institutionalise deliberative democracy by 2026. The outcomes will include a toolkit designed to support politicians and practitioners in using creative methods in parliamentary scrutiny. This toolkit will align with the Parliament’s strategic goals,offering practical recommendations for improving the quality and inclusiveness of scrutiny dialogue.

In addition to the toolkit, key reflections and findings from the project will be shared through a blog on SPICe Spotlight, offering insights into the research process and its broader implications. A final research briefing will summarise the role and value of evidence from creative methods policy scrutiny, contributing tothe Parliament’s engagement strategy and enhancing public confidence in the democratic process.

‍