What is a Creative Insight Council?
In a Creative Insight Council (CIC), a microcosm of the community is gathered to explore a difficult pre-chosen issue. Dynamic Facilitation is used in the CIC to evoke choice-creating. In choice-creating people with diverse perspectives and heart-felt passion work together, build systemic understandings, and reach unanimous conclusions. Then the CIC presents its conclusions, which often involve a reframing of the original topic, to the general public. This sparks a new kind of creative, whole-system conversation that builds a bottom-up consensus.
What does it look like?
The Creative Insight Council is a random selection of 12 people like the Wisdom Council Process who are gathered for about a week. Depending on the issue, unlike the Wisdom Council, it might be a stratified sampling where different demographics of ordinary people, non-representatives, are selected. Also unlike the Wisdom Council, the CIC deals with a given topic it and can draw upon experts, stakeholders or leaders. It may take two or three CIC's a few months apart, to fully address the topic, and build the political will.
What is the purpose of a Creative Insight Council?
A Creative Insight Council involves the whole community in addressing difficult issues. It creates a wide consensus on a specific decision and action plan in a way that builds trust. It might be convened by government, a non-profit agency, or a coalition of community groups. This strategy opens new doors of possibility for seemingly impossible issues.
What makes a Creative Insight Council unique?
To understand what the community is thinking on a particular issue one might conduct hearing, a survey, a focus group, or ask a randomly selected group to deliberate among available options. Each of these involves a previously framed problem and defined options. A Creative Insight Council structures a creative conversation where people grow to understand the systemic aspects of the issue and reach new positions that are widely accepted.
Creative Insight Councils are similar to Wisdom Councils in that they both use Dynamic Facilitation to achieve the desired quality of conversation. Also, they both convene a microcosm of people to address key issues and report back their unanimous conclusions. However, the Creative Insight Council works on a pre-assigned topic for a limited amount of time, while Wisdom Councils are ongoing and choose their issues. They fit together. The Wisdom Council Process is ongoing and issue that requires more study. The Creative Insight Council is how “We the People” can further investigate this issue.