In the second workshop of NIFI’s Talk. Decide. Act. virtual fall series, NIFI leaders and partners offered participants an introduction to the steps and strategies involved in framing issues for deliberation.

After a brief introduction to deliberation from NIFI’s Executive Director Cristin Brawner, the workshop explored the rationale for deliberative issue framing and the steps involved. Martín Carcasson, Director of the Center for Public Deliberation at Colorado State University, addressed why deliberation works best when issues are carefully framed – drawing from research in brain science and communication theory. Then participants were introduced to the “nuts and bolts” of deliberative issue framing by Betty Knighton, former Executive Director of the West Virginia Center for Civic Life and former President of NIFI. She offered tips for each component of framing issues for deliberation including identifying a suitable issue, performing relevant background research, and deciding when to create a full issue guide or a more simplified set of deliberative questions.

The second part of the workshop focused on an issue-framing case study, demonstrating how these practices can look in a real-life setting and offering an opportunity for participants to ask questions of seasoned practitioners. Herman Lehman of Keys to the City Community Coaching and Chauntina Whittle of the David Mathews Center for Civic Life shared their experiences framing issues around housing for a community forum series in a tri-county region of central Alabama.

A full recording of the workshop is available below. Download the slide deck here.

Thank you to all who attended – it was wonderful to think and learn alongside you! For more information or to suggest particular resources or topics that you would find helpful to be included in a future deep-dive workshop on framing issues for deliberation please contact Cristin Brawner at cbrawner@nifi.org.

All are welcome to join us for the final workshop in this series, ACT: An Introduction to Deliberative Talk-to-Action Initiatives, which will be held December 4th at 2pm ET/11am PT. Registration is free and open now: register here. Hope to see many of you there!