This report is the result of a SPICe Academic Fellowship in which Dr Cara Broadley, Research Fellow at the School of Innovation and Technology
at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA), explored how to gather evidence in diverse and creative formats from participative and deliberative activities, and effectively build this into the body of evidence upon which Parliamentary Committees base their scrutiny and use to inform their recommendations to the Scottish Government. The research has been carried out in partnership with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe), the Participation and Communities Team (PACT), the Parliament Communications Office (PCO), and Clerking Teams in the Committee Office. We would like to thank all participants from the Scottish Parliament for their time and contributions to the research. The Fellowship was supervised by Ailsa Burn-Murdoch (SPICe) and Laura Black (PACT), who provided guidance and oversight throughout the research process. This marks SPICe’s first fellowship in collaboration with GSA, highlighting new opportunities for design-led research to contribute to parliamentary scrutiny and evidence gathering beyond the social sciences. In addition to putting forward a set of co-design concepts for tools
to enhance committee scrutiny, the report sets out a roadmap and underpinning principles to disseminate and embed creative approaches in the work of the Scottish Parliament in session 7 (2026-2031).