When working to partner more meaningfully with consumers and communities, finding ways to balance participation matters. While panels are one way of sharing knowledge, they can be one-directional or even exclusionary by nature. Not everyone wants to speak straight away. Not everyone feels comfortable raising a hand. The Fishbowl provides multiple ways to engage.
Recently, at Health Voices Victoria’s Your Voice Matters workshop, around 12 consumers and 6 researchers tried something a little different. The focus of the session, delivered in partnership with the Western Alliance, was building confidence to partner in health and instead of ‘experts’ sitting on a panel and sharing their expertise on this topic, we used a Fishbowl conversation.
What we liked most about the approach was the way it shifted the dynamic. Rather than positioning some people as experts and others as listeners, the Fishbowl creates opportunities for everyone to contribute as a knowledge holder, whether through sharing experiences, asking questions, listening deeply, or building on someone else’s ideas.
How it worked
The physical setup:
- We set up six chairs in an inner conversation circle, with one chair always left open.
- The inner circle talked while the outer circle listened and reflected.
- When someone wanted to contribute, they could move into the open chair and join the conversation. As people joined, others could move out and make space. Movement between the circles was encouraged and expected.
- Questions were placed in a bowl and could be drawn at any time to start, prompt, or redirect the discussion. Participants were also invited to add their own questions for the group to explore.
The shared expectations:
- You could move between listening and contributing as often as you liked.
- You were in control of your participation.
- There was no pressure to speak.
- You could join, share, step out, listen, and rejoin whenever felt right.
- The conversation was allowed to flow naturally and respectfully.
What emerged was a collaborative storytelling process where lived experience, professional expertise, curiosity, and reflection sat side by side.
A little about the origins
The Fishbowl discussion method has been used for decades in education, community engagement, evaluation, facilitation, and participatory decision-making. It is designed to support active listening while creating structured opportunities for dialogue and shared learning.
More recently, adaptations such as the User Experience Fishbowl developed through Liberating Structures have been used to help groups hear directly from people with lived experience and to create more equitable conversations. Rather than relying on a few voices speaking on behalf of many, the approach invites people to move in and out of the conversation as contributors, observers, and question askers.
For consumer and community engagement, that’s a powerful shift.
Sometimes the most valuable contribution isn’t delivering a polished answer. It’s sharing an experience, asking a thoughtful question, or making space for someone else’s voice.
Find out more about Health Voices Victoria
Health Voices Victoria connects communities, people with lived experience, researchers, services and decision-makers, to create better health outcomes through meaningful engagement. You can learn more about us and our work here.
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