Welcome
Film maker Paul Wyatt’s film on how HVM brings people together to inform the future.
At HVM we focus on facilitating engagement so that voices are heard, learning is shared and understanding achieved.
In practice this means finding the right process for people to explore their hopes, fears, challenges and aspirations for the future. We create safe and trusted spaces for productive and emotionally engaging discussions on the issues for which society has no clear answers as yet.
Enabling everyone who needs to, including those with lived experience of an issue, technical specialists, people and communities from all parts of society, to work together as equals to take actionable, better informed and powerful decisions.
What we do
HVM facilitates engagement so that voices are heard, learning is shared and understanding achieved.
The team has extensive skills and experience in preparing for, designing, facilitating and reporting on effective research and stakeholder engagement programmes on complex issues. We support teams to navigate organisational change and to re-think systems and structures. We are skilled at reporting on engagement findings in ways which are useful to decision makers and enriching to policy makers.
Social research
HVM specialises in using social research techniques such as the design, facilitation and reporting on dialogue, focus groups and community mapping to put people's views at the centre of big issues. The team ask questions, observe situations and listen. Emotionally engaging subjects such as wellbeing, health, environment, data collection and use, energy, arts, heritage and our creative futures affect us all but our opinions can get lost or swamped. As expert researchers HVM creates safe, independent and productive spaces for the individuals, stakeholders, communities, and policy makers to share their views on an equal footing. This leads to sparkling recommendations and informed decisions on future policy and current action.
Stakeholder engagement
HVM comprises a team of expert facilitators. As such we plan for, design and deliver stakeholder engagement meetings, workshops and events. We listen to what organisations aim to get out of their planned session and co-design with them a process which will achieve the best outcome for all involved. We provide objective facilitation to ensure the group can focus on what needs to be discussed so that ideas, solutions and decisions can flow from the process.
Training and mentoring
Using dialogue, facilitation and training skills HVM provides mentoring and advisory services which empower teams and individuals. We design tailored programmes for the culture and heritage sectors delivering on-site support for marketing, advocacy, business planning, fundraising and income generation. It is essential that the training offered is context specific so that those involved are empowered to work further on these areas as they take forward the lessons learnt.
Our talking tools include:
Public dialogue, Focus Groups, Community mapping, Depth interviews, Facilitation and Surveys.
Latest project
A National Conversation About Food
In August 2023 the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission published the findings from this important public dialogue about food. The dialogue involved a mini-public - groups of people in Cambridgeshire and Birmingham who worked together in June and July to share their views on potential policy interventions on the food system in the run up to a general election and beyond
This dialogue was a proof of concept phase, for a much larger UK dialogue to run from the winter of 2023 onwards. It’s purpose? To help shift the public narrative around food by amplifying citizen voices on food systems and potential policy interventions.
