How do we drive energy, urgency and enthusiasm within the CO?
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The pressure of environmental issues is a strong driving force for the involvement and motivation of citizen communities to take action. Citizen observatories, however, suffer from long term involvement and, while acknowledging how complex it can be to keep the motivation, this first section is aimed at helping drive the energy so that these communities can start working on collecting ideas and take the lead to take action. This approach can take place whether the CO has already other pathways that involve data collection or not, as it’s not exclusive of these approaches and it can be done after that step, or after a citizen-science process has taken place. Keeping this in mind, one of the first steps is to foster an environment in which collective thinking can happen, driving the energy towards a proactive participation that can progressively be refined within the community.
The feeling of urgency of these environmental problems, and the motivation to take action are both delicate factors that need to be considered in the context of citizen observatories. This may be due to the complexity of the issues to be solved, or because the differences in how participants of the CO may approach them. In any case, it is crucial to keep an active involvement, and the motivation up so that the members can feel empowered and co-create actions that aim to provide solutions to the environmental problems that concern the community.
The aim here is to highlight the importance of the community, the collective involvement and the promotion of a space in which ideas can be proposed, captured and, later on, developed. We provide some tools that help with these processes, focusing on the fact that these need to happen involving all participants, giving sufficient time for anyone to participate and express their opinions in a safe space. This space needs to nurture creativity and embrace a variety of viewpoints.
Brainwriting encourages open discussions and the exploration of different perspectives. To proceed*,* simply use a big piece of paper, post-it notes, and different coloured pens. A brainwriting session can be collectively facilitated, or one facilitator can be chosen. All group participants are encouraged to write down their ideas that are floating around in their minds within a given timeframe. The group should work in a judgement-free atmosphere, in which all ideas are valid when being expressed. Then through a previously set-out strategy, for example through a voting system, group participants can vote on the most feasible, interesting or impactful ideas. Alternatively, brainstorming can be also done collaboratively and/or digitally in online spaces such as , or .
The problem definition framework serves a dual purpose of not only presenting a problem in a way that enables examination from multiple perspectives but also defining the broader context and related issues. It is especially useful when attempting to direct a team's attention towards the essential problems at hand. The tool is designed to organise the analysis of a specific problem in a time-efficient manner. It introduces a concise set of critical criteria that can be used to articulate and evaluate an issue, making the activity highly effective. Defining the problem prior to defining objectives is an essential step, by doing so, it becomes easier to come up with ideas and determine the objectives that need to be achieved to address the environmental problem effectively.