Recruitment to the Furness Climate Change Citizens' Jury started with 5000 letters sent out randomly to households across the borough, with a phone number and weblink for people to register their interest via the Sortition Foundation who have experience of this kind of process.
The Oversight Panel then looked at the demographics of the local population and pulled out which were most important for our jury: gender, age, ethnicity, disability, climate concern level, geography and indices of multiple deprivation. Using these demographics it was calculated how many people would be needed for each category to have a statistically similar mini-population. As there are not as many younger people (15-19 year olds) or ethnically diverse people in our population, the Oversight Panel agreed to increase both to 2 people from 1 in order to have more chance of their voices being heard.
The responses were sorted by Shared Future into our mini-population and we now have 22 people on the jury. Shared Future are facilitating the jury sessions, they also ran the Kendal citizens jury and the Lancaster citizens jury. The jurors will receive £250 in vouchers for their time.