These 3 case studies highlight different ways that you can be more mindful of natural stakeholders, and how you can bring nature into project activities and decision making. This not only includes nature, but also helps you to consider a growing cause of social inequality – with many areas affected by floods, green spaces, farming, and other environmental factors.
Indirectly representing natural stakeholders
Together – Policy Lab, DEFRA Futures, and Moral Imaginations – formed The River Roding Interspecies Council. Colleagues from each organisation, as well as the local community, each represented one of the many natural lifeforms that are part of the river.
This approach helped project participants to develop empathy for the lifeforms. Not only the ones they are familiar with or which society represents positively, but also those which people are often less familiar with.
It also highlighted the interconnectedness of different natural stakeholders including humans, by different species having discussions with each other.
Fieldwork and working on site
The River Cities Network promotes “ecologically and socially inclusive revitalization of rivers and waterways and the landscapes, cities and neighborhoods that co-exist with them”.
A social scientist, two architects, and an environmental engineer took a transdisciplinary approach to understanding and representing an urban river. They spent time moving up and down the river, looking at it with different themes in mind.
This then gave them a more nuanced understanding of the river, which supported their thinking about how conflicting activities could be resolved, and how citizens could form a new relationship with the river.
Including local interest groups that are close to nature
This example highlights just how many active groups dedicated to natural parts of a bioregion there may be in any given place.
Over 20 groups were identified in Cambridgeshire, that have members who have a strong understanding of a particular part of the local nature. These include Nature Recovery groups, community groups, river and catchment area organisations, the National Trust, Wildlife Trusts, conservation partnerships and trusts, and farmers groups.
More details are provided in the report on Natural Cambridgeshire, and a full list of the local organisations can be found in Appendix 1
Source
Exploring Padova’s Fluvial Heritage: Insights from a Transdisciplinary Experience – River Cities Network (RCN)
The potential for local environmental governance: A case study of Natural Cambridgeshire – Journal for Nature Conservation
This case study shows you how bringing artists into your policymaking process can have beneficial effects on your policy and policymakers.
They ran a pilot initiative called MANIFEST, which invited 3 UK artists to contribute to policymaking.
Impacts
They found that the artists’ work affected policymaking in a number of ways:
- Promoting policy innovation
- Exposing unnoticed aspects of policymaking
- Uncovering human elements in the policy system
- Allowing for and prompting reflection
- Visualising policy issues, which helped engagement
- Improving the wellbeing of policy professionals and stakeholders
What they learned
Policy professionals were:
- enthusiastic about the chance to see how the artists worked
- inspired to be more creative in their own work
- Interested in using artworks to help make decisions (in consultations, workshops and across government)
The pilot took place in 2023, and they began a second round of
Source
There are methods that can help you understand the context outside your organisation. And these can also be a way to start thinking about the future, as well as how to work towards the best possible future.
STEEPLE analysis
You can use a method like STEEPLE as part of a wider piece of work called strategic foresight.
STEEPLE stands for:
- socio-cultural
- technological
- economic
- environmental
- political
- legal
- ethical
For each category, think of what could go wrong, and what could go well, in big and small ways.
Start off wildly pessimistic. Write down everything from minor hiccups to complete catastrophe.
Then be radically optimistic. Imagine small wins as well as the most outlandishly successful scenarios.
| Socio-cultural | Technological | Economic | Environmental | Political | Legal | Ethical | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pessimistic | |||||||
| Optimistic |
Alternative analysis approaches
If you don’t need to go into as much detail as STEEPLE, you can skip categories you don’t want to consider.
For example, PESTLE misses out the legal and ethical categories. But for inclusive innovation, we think it is important to not miss out ethics!
Strategic Foresight
If you want to do a more detailed analysis of the present and future, then you can use a method called strategic foresight. It can be applied to both projects and policy.
Strategic foresight is a method to help you make:
- informed best guesses about the future
- better decisions about what to do about it
Strategic foresight has 3 main stages, each of which can have multiple steps:
- Understand the landscape and decide on your preferred vision for the future
- Decide what to do and how to do it (interventions and strategies)
- Make a roadmap, and contingency plans for when things go wrong
Further source reading
This method helps you understand which people and organisations you might need to work with to get the best results.
What is a stakeholder map?
A stakeholder map is a diagram of all the groups and people who are involved with, affected by or care about a project.
Whether you are designing a policy, process, service or product, making a stakeholder map is a useful thing to do at the start of a project.
This is especially important for inclusive innovation, as it will help remind you of important groups of people who might traditionally be ignored.
A stakeholder map will help you:
- plan a project
- scope out any research you need to do
- gather existing contacts
- develop new connections
- understand who is involved and how
- spot where you might need extra support
You can make a quick stakeholder map in about 15 to 20 minutes. Or you can take an hour to go into more depth, working collaboratively and allowing more time for discussion.
Setting up
Try to do stakeholder mapping as early as you can in a project. If you have existing research that is up to date and reliable, you can pull from this and do stakeholder mapping on your own.
But if you can, it’s best to invite some of the stakeholders you already know about to make the map with you. Especially people from the kinds of marginalised communities that you want to involve when doing inclusive innovation work.
Set up 3 concentric circles and sticky notes in 3 different colours. This can be in-person with paper, or online using a virtual whiteboard like Mural or Miro.
Label your concentric circles, for example with:
- Centre = Must involve
- Middle ring = Useful to involve
- Outer ring = Nice to involve if possible
Give everyone a brief description of the activity ahead of time, so they can prepare.
See our guidelines on running accessible engagement sessions for tips on making sure nobody is excluded.
Filling in your stakeholder map
Start by clarifying for everyone in the session the question you are trying to answer. This can be as simple as ‘who do we need to speak to during this project?’
For each person, group or organisation you can think of, put a sticky note into one of the circles.
Include people who:
- use the service or product
- are affected by any changes
- you need to keep informed about the project
- make decisions about the project
Use prompts like:
- Which groups should we talk to and why?
- How do they help us meet our project brief?
- How can we make sure we talk to people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse experiences?
Review the map you have created
- Is anyone or anything missing?
- Think about the map from the stakeholders’ perspective. What do you notice?
- Does anything need to be repositioned?
- Are you unsure or making assumptions about which circle you’ve put any of the stakeholders in?
Note any insights or questions that arise and use them to help guide your research.
Next steps
- Think about exactly how you will engage each stakeholder.
- Do they need to be collaborators, consulted, or just kept informed?
- How often do you need to talk to them? Regularly, occasionally, or in one-off events?
- How many people from each group do you need to talk to, to make sure you get a diverse set of views?
- This will all feed into your project and research plans.
The methods and case studies under the theme of Policy and Strategy will lead you to create better, more adaptable policies by helping you:
- find the right policy mix
- learn from what works and what doesn’t
- listen to people’s stories
- use simple and clear language, to make sure ideas are easy for everyone to understand, use and develop together.
- make sure everyone who is affected by a policy or strategy has a say in how it is developed and implemented
Definitions
- Policy is an idea or plan for what you want to do about a subject, issue or problem
- Strategy is a detailed plan for how you are going to achieve your policy aims
- Implementation is putting your strategy into action and delivering on your policy aims
Inclusive Policy and Strategy
Take making a community garden as an example. An inclusive innovation approach would:
- Encourage everyone to contribute ideas or set rules so that the garden is designed in a way that benefits everyone (policy)
- Plan how to grow a thriving, sustainable, resilient and regenerative garden together (strategy)
- Have everyone works together to plant, water, and care for the garden (implementation)
To make this happen, we need to:
- set clear goals and check if we’re meeting them
- listen to diverse voices, including people who are often ignored, and let them help make decisions
- experiment and adapt, learn from mistakes, and keep improving
- measure success by asking questions like:
- Did everyone feel included?
- Did we work well as a team?
- Is what we’ve made sustainable / regenerative?
Inclusive policies think about long-term not just short-term change. For example, community hubs (like local gardening groups or organizations) can help champion ideas and make sure they stick.
Further reading
