A Citizens’ Jury (also known as a Citizens’ Assembly or ‘mini public’) is a group of people selected by lottery who are broadly representative of a community. They spend significant time learning and collaborating through facilitated deliberation to find common ground, and form collective recommendations for policy makers, decision makers and the community.

The Birmingham Museums Citizens’ Jury was made up of 26 randomly-selected residents from Birmingham. Recruited to reflect the diversity of the city, they deliberated and heard from a range of commentators (also known as expert witnesses) over the course of some 30 hours. In late January 2025, they presented a set of recommendations to the Board and Executive of Birmingham Museums Trust, who have committed to respond to all of their recommendations.

The legitimacy of Citizens’ Assemblies and Juries comes from both their randomised participation and from their ability to produce well considered, informed recommendations. This means that they are different from most other forms of public consultation, which generally ask self-selecting members of the public to respond to pre-determined policy options based on little information. Citizens’ Juries are an example of deliberative democracy in action, as opposed to representative or participatory democracy.

A defining feature of Citizens’ Assemblies is that Members are selected by a two-stage lottery, known as ‘sortition’ (sometimes also referred to as a democratic lottery or a civic lottery). The group is selected to be broadly representative of a community, which means everyone has an equal chance to represent and be represented in turn.

Tell me more about sortition

There are two stages to the selection process. In the first stage, a large number of invitations (often between 5k-30k) are sent out to a group of people chosen completely at random. Amongst everybody who responds positively to this invitation, a second lottery takes place. This time there is a process - known as stratification - to ensure that the final group broadly represents the community in terms of factors including gender, age, geography, socio-economic differences, ethnicity and disability.

Citizens’ Assemblies and Juries generally meet over 30 hours (or 5 to 6 days) to enable participants to dig deeply into complex issues. Following best practice learnt over many years, in an informal and relaxed setting members are supported to share knowledge, expertise and opinions. They heard from a wide range of perspectives. Commentators (also known as expert witnesses) are the specialists called to provide different perspectives on the topic being considered. The commentators are then closely questioned to draw out all the information needed to make informed judgements.

The group of citizens considers what they have learnt and agree on a set of recommendations for change. Those recommendations are delivered to policy makers, officials and politicians. All recommendations, given in their own words, are ranked through anonymised voting. A recommendation needs 75-80% support in order to be included in the final report.

During the process, the Jury met with the following Commentators to discuss a range of topics:

• Andrew McIntyre, Museum Audience Specialist, “What's happening with museums today?”

• Zak Mensah and Sara Wajid Co-CEOs, Birmingham Museums Trust, “An introduction to Birmingham Museums” and “Budgets”

• Katy Raines, Founder and CEO of Indigo, “Audience esearch into people who don’t visit Birmingham museums and why”

• Professor Suzanne MacLeod, Co-Director Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG), University of Leicester, “How to make a great museum experience for everyone”

• Mark O’Neill, Independent Museums Consultant, “Glasgow Museums and Polarised Perspectives”

• Felicity McWilliams, Curator, Birmingham Museums Trust, Made in Birmingham Exhibition

• Victoria Osborne, Curator, Birmingham Museums Trust, Victorian Radicals Exhibition

• Sara Myers, Creative Practitioner, The Past is Now Exhibition

• Claire McColgan, Director of Culture, Liverpool

• Trina Tiernan, Joseph Chamberlain College

• Nathan Eginton-Cook, Heart of Birmingham Vocational College

The recommendations were presented to the Museum’s Directors and Board of Trustees on 30 January 2025. The Museum Directors and Board of Trustees gave a response to the recommendations, and a full response and plan for delivering on the recommendations will be published by March 2025.

The structure of the sessions ensured that the participants much better reflect the diversity of the local population than a standard consultation. These deliberative processes produce deeply insightful results that would not be achieved through a consultation, focus group or survey. In addition, the process produced a group of enthusiastic motivated citizens interested in taking action.

Social enterprise Shared Future were commissioned to run the process drawing on their wealth of experience in this field, alongside DemocracyNext who supported as an advisor and critical friend to the process. The Jury was supported by an Oversight Panel, who ensured the process was in line with best practice principles.

The are two essential principles that make Citizens’ Juries (also known as Citizens’ Assemblies) ‘work’ are (1) The way that people come together in the room. Jury Members are selected to be broadly representative of their place through a two-stage lottery process, known as sortition; and (2) The space that is created for deliberation. They meet for at least 4-6 days, sometimes more, over a defined period of time (from a few weeks, to a few months) to learn about an issue and weigh trade-offs. They listen to commentators and experts, including those with lived or personal experience of the issue, and to one another, and they find common ground on a shared set of concrete and detailed recommendations.

Citizens Juries help to strengthen people’s agency, recognising that everybody has the dignity and capacity to be involved in shaping the decisions affecting their lives. They build trust between people, and between people and institutions or governments, and they enable action on difficult problems.

Yes. Citizens’ Juries have been proven many times to be able to come up with meaningful solutions on the most challenging social and policy issues. The best known examples are in Ireland, where there have now been four constitutional referendums off the back of Citizens’ Assemblies,, all leading to positive votes for change on abortion, same sex marriage, divorce, and blasphemy. On July 10, for the first time in history, the Paris City Council took up major legislation written by a permanent Citizens’ Assembly, composed of 100 regular people, and passed it directly into law

In all cases, the Assembly proposed not just the recommendation that there should be a referendum, but also the legislative changes that should accompany a vote for change. Having the Citizens’ Assembly take place meant that people had clarity about what the change would entail when they went to the polls, and it also opened up wider public deliberations on these issues, creating new space for societal dialogue on issues that were traditionally polarising.

Birmingham Museums Trust and Shared Future are committed to making the Citizens' Jury as inclusive and accessible as possible. In order to support participation from a representative group of citizens, participants receive £360 in vouchers for their time. Support is available with childcare costs and transportation, as well as translation, digital and IT support, and for a range of access needs.

Healthy museums help make healthy democracies. A recent European Commission study shows that visiting museums and participating in cultural activities strengthens democracy and social cohesion.

Earlier this year, the New Art Exchange in Nottingham announced their VOICE Assembly, becoming the first cultural institution worldwide to have a Citizens’ Assembly a part of the core leadership structure. Last year, two German museums in Bonn and Dresden held Citizens’ Assemblies.

Yes - the recommendations will be publicly launched after the Citizens’ Jury has concluded, with information shared on this website.

The Birmingham Museums Citizens’ Jury has been funded by The National Lottery Heritage Fund, thanks to National Lottery Players, as part of Birmingham Museums Trust’s Laying the Foundations Programme.

There are plenty of resources about Citizens’ Assemblies on the websites of Shared Future and DemocracyNext.