The significance of public dialogue

“Public dialogue allows citizens, people, members of the public, people like you and me, and broader than that, to come together, to learn about an issue, to talk with specialists in that issue, to engage with each other in that space, and to consider a whole range of diverse perspectives.”

In this week’s episode, our CEO Chris Wigley is joined by Henrietta Hopkins, the Director, Insight and Innovation at Hopkins Van Mil. Henrietta is an expert Lead Facilitator and designer of deliberative dialogue research with a particular interest in bringing creativity to public and stakeholder engagement and capacity building.  Chris is also joined today by Suzannah Kinsella, Senior Associate at Hopkins Van Mil. She designs engagement activities that help people to influence policies and services in informed and constructive ways. They have both have been involved in a number of specialist dialogue projects run by Hopkins Van Mil, including The National Food Strategy public dialogue and Public dialogues for the Royal Society on gene editing, and neural interfaces.

Today, the group talks about public dialogue, genetic technology and the exploration of the potential for a newborn sequencing programme Hopkins Van Mil has been working on. They discuss how newborn sequencing can help understand the prevalence of rare diseases and develop treatments and how public dialogue allows people to learn, engage and talk to specialists.