The Strategy Room is an immersive experience that combines facilitated deliberation, interactive polling and collective intelligence to identify the climate change policies that will best help local areas to reach net zero emissions.

It’s a way for people to walk in off the street and, within 90 minutes, imagine together the benefits of a net-zero future, while helping create a strategy for their local area on how to get there.

In the experience, 12 participants sit around a table, each with a tablet device. Working through a structured format, they review video content, discuss and express opinions about measures within three net zero policy areas: travel, heat and food. 

Carefully crafted ‘testimonies from the future’ (performed by filmed actors) draw participants into the scenario, while a facilitator supports the group to share their opinions and collaborate to find solutions that will work best for their area.

The Strategy Room is a first-of-its-kind experiment in innovative public participation and collective intelligence. It aims to bridge the gap between large but superficial surveys and small-scale focus groups or citizen assemblies.

During the experience, anonymised data about participants’ preferred strategies are collected. It also captures how views shift during group discussions. The data on people’s choices is open and available for anyone to explore and for local councils to download and use for decision-making. The data can also be interrogated to better understand the role of co-benefits, demographics and lifestyle factors in shaping people’s preferences.

The experience is entirely portable and can be delivered in any space where 12 people can sit around a table. The data platform will update regularly as more people participate in the project.

Pilot phase councils have made plans to use the data generated through the experience to inform their local climate action strategies, to tailor their future public communications and to advise councillors on measures that receive the most popular support.

Unlike a lot of approaches to public consultation, The Strategy Room is actually fun too! Participants in the pilot gave The Strategy Room 9/10 for enjoyment and came out describing the experience as “super cool”, “really enjoyable” and “I learned a lot”.

The Strategy Room data platform

All the data from The Strategy Room is now available to explore. It can be filtered by local council and by demographics. It will update automatically as more Strategy Room sessions are held.

If you are a local authority and would like to use The Strategy Room in your area, please complete this Google form to express your interest. Nesta will send you follow-up information about pricing and what we can offer.

Who is behind The Strategy Room?

The Strategy Room is a collaboration between Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design, Digital Studio Fast Familiar and UCL’s Climate Action Unit. It has been co-designed and piloted with local authorities and residents and with input from experts in net-zero policy, environmental psychology, and behavioural science.