Training
Clarity and confidence in free speech practice
Actsure training supports lawful decision-making at the intersection of speech, risk, and institutional responsibility.
Actsure’s training programmes are designed for real institutional dilemmas: controversial speakers, polarising ideas, student protest, safeguarding concerns, and regulatory scrutiny. Each programme is grounded in law, pedagogy, and governance and designed to be usable by staff across roles, not just specialists.
Each training programme addresses a different dimension of free speech practice, from dialogue and inquiry to legal duties and institutional decision-making.
Actsure is built on a collaborative project between academics at the universities of Cambridge and London (SOAS).
The Communities of Inquiry Approach
Communities of Inquiry is a well-established approach for engaging with complex and contested issues in higher education. This approach has been developed through the research and practice of Professor Alison Scott-Baumann at SOAS University of London, and refined over twenty years of field testing and evaluation through extensive delivery across schools, universities and public institutions.
The approach supports universities to handle difficult, contested, or sensitive issues through structured, facilitated dialogue. It is designed for academic and institutional contexts where disagreement is expected, viewpoints diverge, and the ability to sustain open inquiry matters.
What the Communities of Inquiry approach supports
- Open discussion of complex or divisive issues without escalation or shutdown
- Constructive disagreement grounded in evidence, listening, and mutual recognition
- Supporting staff and students to engage confidently with difficult questions
- Institutional capacity to manage sensitive conversations consistently
- Deliberative skills that support academic inquiry, student engagement, and civic reasoning
- Training in facilitation
How Communities of Inquiry is used
The Communities of Inquiry approach is not about limiting discussion, nor about encouraging unstructured openness. It is about creating the conditions in which difficult discussion becomes possible and productive, even where participants fundamentally disagree.
Communities of Inquiry can be used in teaching contexts, staff development, facilitated workshops, and institutional conversations where issues are sensitive or contested. It is particularly effective where institutions want to maintain open inquiry while supporting clarity, care, and confidence in discussion.
About the Communities of Inquiry
Peer acclaim for the Communities of Inquiry approach is increasing exponentially and has led to invitations to deliver sessions for universities, medical schools, The British Council, St George’s House, Windsor Castle and Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park. International interest has led to three visits to Lund University Sweden, culminating in collaborative work with staff to meet the students’ specific needs, and the approach is now arousing interest in Germany with groups working on historical trauma.
Professor Alison Scott-Baumann has developed this approach by combining her expertise as a continental philosopher (using research on the ethics of language use and modern pragmatism) and her professional practice as a local authority psychologist.
Actsure offers the Communities of Inquiry approach as a standalone training programme, delivered through the Actsure platform. This enables institutions to access the approach in its full integrity, while drawing on Actsure’s wider work on free speech practice where appropriate
