About Us

This website is a place where we can come together to connect and grow as a community. This site is a space for gathering practitioners, researchers, scholars, policy analysts and policy makers, elected officials, trainers, consultants, artists, activists and students from all of the various streams of practice that exist in this emerging field.

Who are we?  

We’re a community of individuals and organizations dedicated to the creation and sustainability of vibrant communities, businesses, governments, not for profits and learning institutions through the good practice of dialogue, deliberation, collaborative action and decision-making processes.

We believe that thoughtful and participatory planning and collaborative sense making must involve multiple and diverse interests (citizen, expert, civic, business and community voices). Collaborations are vital to wise action in the face of complex public issues and to strengthening democracy. We practice inclusiveness in our C2D2 community and in dialogue deliberation and collaborative action processes.

What do we do?

We model our commitment to positive change in the world by supporting each other through learning together and sharing our learnings and resources to become better change agents. As a learning community, we convene online and at national and regional conferences and gatherings to connect practitioners, organizations and researchers with each other and with those whom dialogue, deliberation and/or collaborative action practices are intended to serve.

Our members are innovators and practitioners of tools and approaches to dialogue, deliberation and collaborative action – not wedded to any particular model, though knowledgeable about many and wise in their application to a range of conditions and contexts.

We are multi-disciplinary and work across sectors -- in government (local, provincial and federal), universities, communities, NGOs and business ventures. The diversity in our membership is a source of creativity and strength.

Our mission

C2D2 believes that finding ways to talk constructively together about challenging societal or community issues can make a difference in our world. Our mission is to increase our society’s capacity to have constructive conversations to enhance decision- making and collaborative action, to improve relationships and generate insight and knowledge – in short, to strengthen democracy.

C2D2 is governed by a Board of Directors who come from a broad spectrum of experiences