Situating organisational learning and public participation: stories, spaces and connections

This paper gives one of the first in-depth ethnographic accounts of organisational learning in a public participation organisation, the UK Government-funded Sciencewise programme. It develops the concept of ‘organisational spaces’, highlighting the often diverse spaces found within organisational networks, and positing a co-productionist relationship between these different spaces and the kinds of learning processes that occur. The approach taken affirms the significant and active role of space in organisational learning processes, in a science policy context, as well as demonstrating the importance of connections between different organisational spaces in enabling more transformative learning processes. Two organisational spaces are described based on in-depth ethnographic and qualitative research in and around the Sciencewise programme 2013–2014. It is argued that informal, temporary and experimental organisational spaces have the potential to co-produce more transformative instances of learning, making an understanding of their connectedness to more formal and routinised organisational spaces vital for future research.