We were delighted to get together with over 20 members of the communities of practice from the Adult Literacy for Life (ALL) Office and the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) Plain English Training project.

For over two years, staff from a host of organisations such as the National Disability Authority, Age Action, Citizens Information, and the Department of Finance have been completing either the Canadian Simon Fraser Plain Language Certificate or UK (United Kingdom) Plain English Diploma.

In NALA, we led two communities of practice for the course participants to help them support each other on their respective courses.

Today was an opportunity for both groups to meet and discuss:

• What worked well in their courses
• Their ideas to develop an accredited plain language training course in Ireland
• What are the next steps in their organisation to further use plain language

We had a packed agenda where we heard from participants on their course and guest speakers.

Course participants

• Grace McGetting from Citizens Information spoke about how important it is to review sources deeply, write in plain English and collaborate with peers when developing content for the website.
• Ashling Johnston from An Cosán discussed how to get buy in from everyone in the organisation whether they are writing or not. Ashling was very persuasive about human rights and social justice as key parts of the mission. (Do check out Ashling’s Padlet to see innovation in practice.)

Guest speakers

• Mike Gogan, Head of Tone of Voice and Customer Language at AIB (Allied Irish Banks)

Mike spoke about how to win hearts and minds across a large organisation and the need to get support from senior leadership. He suggested to not be afraid to have the hard conversations and always support writers to put themselves in the place of their readers if you challenged when making changes. He mentioned the human rights element of clear communication that is key when trying to develop the culture.

• Tony Higgins, Head of Content at the Arts Council

Tony shared his journey as a plain language champion and how he has put together a Content Governance Framework with his colleagues to help guide them when putting together their content. He mentioned the importance of stressing the public sector duty to communicate in plain language. In the Arts Council, they use content design and service design techniques to help them to meet the needs of their clients.

The two and a half hours flew by for this participant!

Thanks to all our participants and guest speakers for giving so generously of their time.

Thank you to Helen Ryan and Edith Conway in the ALL Office for all their organising along the way.

And thank you to Yvonne McKenna in the ALL Office and Colleen Dube in NALA for bookending the days and providing direction, encouragement, and praise!

Together, we plan to continue to lead a plain language movement in Ireland, so that we can support plain English champions along the way.

Search on LinkedIn for the NALA Plain English Network if you’d like to join!