I wrote about how we had to take the power back and let citizens’ create a conversation on democratic renewal it was obviously timely. It was a sentiment a lot of other people shared. It was interesting to get a few negative responses, these seemed to fall into two categories: first, it’s for the politicians to decide on the process (which is plain stupid) and, second, that at best it won’t work and at worst it will simply alienate people even more (that’s all too possible and why the process has to be right). Overall the response was to agree and others shared my feeling of urgency, notably Demsoc and Involve. I was also involved in an interesting discussion organised by Ben Metz over at the Bigger Boat for Open Government. So, conversations are progressing. And they’re interesting. But this isn’t the time to have conversations in silos, in corners or amongst people who all agree. The need here is for an open accessible process that allows us to co-design how to get people involved. Not answer the question, not even start the conversation. Just start the conversation about what it could look like! So Democratise has got together with Demsoc, Involve and the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster and we’re organising an event to start the conversation. We’ve called it: Developing the space for a public conversation about democratic reform. It’s free to attend but the event isn’t passive. Once we’ve framed the conversation and the scope of the idea, it’s over to everyone in the room to work through how this could work! The event is at the University of Westminster on Regent Street on November 3rd. Find our more and register if you’d like to join us!]]>
Developing the space for a public conversation about democratic reform
