Practices

The following practices emerged from our interviews and visits as being distinctive to civic work, but showing up in multiple disciplines. These practices should not be thought of as secondary – some are as important to civic renewal as the disciplines themselves. They can also be supported in their own right, such as with training, practitioner meetups, and through codification of what good looks like.

The practices are:

Restorative and healing practice. This includes restorative dialogue, restorative justice-informed methods, and trauma-informed work. It is especially prominent in the disciplines of connectors, stewards, peer practitioners, relational practitioners in public services, peace-builders, among others.
Deep listening. This is a recognisable skill or practice, with its own literature, and one that seems to be present in almost every civic discipline.
Facilitation and convening. This includes the ability to create a space that feels safe enough for people to share what they are thinking, holding groups of people in productive discomfort, surfacing what matters to people, and guiding people to action even when there is no consensus. This is distinct from more traditional approaches to chairing. As a practice, it is especially prominent in civic space-making, organising, power-building, and civic imagination.
Participatory methods and co-design. This practice runs from community-led forms of service design to more formalised methods like participatory budgeting, co-produced research, and the use of deliberative platforms.
Community research and inquiry. This practice comes close to being a discipline in its own right. It seeks to build insight and evidence, for example about a place, at the same time as building community power. It also harnesses and learns from lived experience.

In the table below we have made a preliminary attempt to map the practices onto disciplines, showing where they are most relevant. This should be taken as illustrative; in reality, most of the practices show up at some point or other in all of the disciplines we have described.

Figure 2 Fifteen disciplines and five practices

Proposed ratings, 0 to 2, of how relevant each practice is to each discipline
Discipline	Restorative and healing practice	Deep listening	Facilitation and convening	Participatory methods and co-design	Community research and inquiry
01 Peer connectors	2	2	0	0	0
02 Area coordinators	1	2	1	1	1
03 Space-holders	1	2	2	1	1
04 Community stewards	2	2	0	0	0
05 Bridge-builders	2	2	2	1	1
06 Community organisers	0	2	2	1	2
07 Power-builders and advocates	1	2	2	2	2
08 Peer researchers	2	2	1	2	2
09 Cultural practitioners	1	2	2	2	1
10 Institution-builders	0	1	2	2	1
11 Social entrepreneurs	0	1	1	1	0
12 Institutional wranglers	1	1	1	0	0
13 Relational practitioners	2	2	1	1	0
14 Civic and place leaders	0	2	2	1	0
15 Infrastructure rewirers	0	1	1	2	1

Most relevantRelevantNot marked

Restorative dialogue, restorative justice-informed methods, trauma-informed work.
Most relevant · 5
Relevant · 5
A recognisable practice in its own right, with its own literature.
Most relevant · 11
Relevant · 4
Holding groups of people in productive discomfort, surfacing what matters, guiding people to action even without consensus.
Most relevant · 7
Relevant · 6
From community-led service design to participatory budgeting, co-produced research and deliberative platforms.
Most relevant · 5
Relevant · 7
Building insight and evidence at the same time as building community power.
Most relevant · 3
Relevant · 6

Note: The civic practices we identify can appear in any discipline, but we have made an effort here to illustrate where they seem most relevant.