This report describes the design and outcomes of the citizen workshops organised in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Spain.
During the autumn of 2018, three thematic deliberative and envisioning citizen workshops in the areas food (Czech Republic), energy (Spain) and health (the Netherlands) formed the first step of the co-creation process. The goal of the workshops was to inform citizens on nanotechnologies and possible future application areas in order to facilitate their reflection on wishes, needs and concerns. The citizens’ inputs formed the basis for understanding social needs and values, and for working with professional stakeholders to align future nanotechnology applications with these societal values and needs.
Video impressions of the workshops are available on the project website and on YouTube.
Read the full GoNano report- D3.2 Briefing report from the citizen workshops
In summary
The three pilot partners organised a series of face-to-face citizen workshops in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Spain in October/November 2018. The goal of the workshops wasto inform citizens on nanotechnologies and possible future application areas in orderto facilitate their reflection on wishes, needs and concerns. The citizens’ inputs form the basis for understanding social needs and values, and for working with professional stakeholders to align future nanotechnology applications with these societal values and needs.
Workshop design
The participants of the citizen workshops were guided in a process of envisioning and co-creating suggestions for the early stage of nanotechnology research and innovation that would live up to their needs.The aim of the workshop was to enable the citizens to come together, to consider and commonly reflect on specific nanotechnology applications. The outcome would thus be an overview of citizens’ needs, values and concerns related to future nanotechnologies and their application in the areas of food,energy and health. The figure below shows the pahses guiding the organisation of the citizen workshops.
Prior to the workshop,all participants received an information package. Participants worked in small groups and with the help of a moderator throughout the day. The moderator’s role was to make sure every participant wa sable to contribute to the debates at the tables, to take notes, and to make sure key points of discussions were recorded in the online tool. In terms of the composition of participants, organisersworked with the aim of collecting 48 participants from different backgrounds based on various demographic criteria (gender, age, education, economic activity, place of residence).
Workshop findings
In general, the discourse from the citizen workshops reproduced well-known repertoires of optimism and concern: public perception studies consistently show that European citizens are cautiously optimistic about nanotechnologies.They have positive expectations; however, they also have concerns about the risks to human and environmental health and to societal well-being ingeneral. Throughout the three workshops, citizens highlighted the need to engage in dialogue on the impacts of nanotechnologies. A number of characteristics of the technology application correlated with the strength of the need to engage in dialogue:
1) The more widespread or the closer to a person’s body a technologyapplicationwould be, the stronger theneed the citizens expressed for dialogueand information
2) The less obvious a technology application’scontribution was to solvinga societal need or challenge, the more questions the citizens would have about the application. E.g. participants could understand nanotechnologies in health applications as a solution to aspecificdiseasemore easily than the preventative benefits of modified food
The results from the citizen workshops point both to desirable ends (reduce the use of food and energy; increase health and well-being; make water more available to more people, especially people in the third world) and to important needs that should be safeguarded in implementation (avoid harm to environment and humans; avoid polarisation in society;ensure accessibility and affordability; ensure nanotechnologies develop under public scrutiny and in dialogue with societal stakeholders and publics; support a circular economy; reduce waste;increase recycling;ensure sustainability;safeguard privacy and security, ease of use and maintenance).
Read the full GoNano report- D3.2 Briefing report from the citizen workshops