Live from Snowmass!

Reaching Out
Workshop on Public Participation - 18 August 2005

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Over 20 Snowmass participants attended a workshop and training on public participation, given by of the Perspectives Group, a public involvement firm based in Alexandria, Virginia. The Perspectives Group had previously worked with Fermilab to create and facilitate their highly successful Community Participation Task Force.

Participants learned that the main value of involving the public in decisions is to actually improve the quality of the decisions by making them more sustainable and building public ownership of those decisions. Sarno explained to the group that doing public involvement doesn't mean that you are inviting the public to make scientific or technical decisions, but rather to play a role in sociological decisions, like how the community likes to receive information, or how the community would like a facility to fit into their community.

A core group of participants will return to this workshop after lunch and discuss how public participation may be applied to the ILC.

Workshop manual (pdf)
Final Report from Fermilab Community Task Force (pdf)
From symmetry: Voices:  Public Participation