Introduction
Open meetings are meetings arranged for members of the public to find out about and express their views on a particular issue. Attendance is open to any interested member of the public. Meetings are usually held at a public place (school or church hall, local sports centre etc) convenient for people to get to. The issue to be discussed is usually publicised in advance through posters, leaflets, letters, invitations etc.
Public meetings often have very low attendance, and those people who do attend often have a particular concern or view, which is not necessarily representative of the population as a whole.
Open meetings can, however, be a good way of encouraging dialogue between a service and its users, and of keeping members of the public informed. Used carefully, they can complement other forms of consultation.
Points to think about:
Issue: the issue being discussed will clearly have an impact on attendance. More people will come if they are directly affected by or concerned about the issue, or where their interest is attracted. Try to make the material advertising the meeting as interesting as possible, but make sure that people who do attend have not been misled about the content. And have clear objectives for what you want to achieve from the meeting and how you are going to take forward what comes out of it.
Target audience: open meetings are unlikely to attract an audience that is representative of the local population, and may contain more retired and middle-aged people than young people so don't use them as your only method of consultation. Think about your target audience, and organise the meeting at an appropriate time and location.
Collecting information: Think about why people might want to attend an open meeting. As well as an interest in a particular issue, people might be motivated to attend by a sense of community spirit or support for the service. It is worth finding out, a short questionnaire for people who attend could give you lots of information, as much about who doesn’t attend the meetings as about who does. As a general rule, try to collect more information than just numbers of attendees.
Publicity: publicise the meeting as widely as possible to reach your intended audience. As well as posters, leaflets etc, word of mouth is an effective means of advertising. Speak to informal networks, parish councils, community and interest groups etc.
Practicalities: planning the practical side of a meeting can be difficult if you have no idea how many people are going to attend, so you might want to invite people to let you know if they are going to come, so that you have some indication of numbers. If you¹ve only planned for 30 people and 100 turn up, you may have problems.
Meeting structure: think about how the meeting will be structured. Make sure that any speakers know what is expected of them (e.g. how long they should speak), and that the Chair is well briefed and is able to control any more vocal members of the audience and limit repetitive discussion. If appropriate, you might want to think about breaking the meeting up into smaller workshop/discussion groups to give more people the chance to participate.
Reporting: recording views and reporting back can be difficult in open meetings, particularly if there are large numbers of attendees. Make sure that someone takes a note of the points raised (you may wish to tape-record the proceedings). You can ask people to vote on the main issues. But be careful about placing too much weight on these results, views recorded in this way should generally only be used to give an indication of public views. You must make clear to participants how their opinions will be taken forward.
Advantages
- Provides local opportunities for people to comment on matters that affect them directly or indirectly.
- Offers a convenient and transparent way to demonstrate public consultation/build up good relationships.
- Can be used to inform the public at the same time as getting views.
Disadvantages
- People who attend are unlikely to be representative of the local population.
- Attendees' ability to contribute to a discussion about service-wide, strategic priorities can be limited by a lack of knowledge and possible lack of interest.
- Contributions will mainly be about local, topical or personal concerns.
Costs: relatively cheap, depending on how you do it.
Use to: get a feel for public opinion on a particular topic/issue and inform the public.