In a couple of Saturdays’ time an event called #notwestminster is happening. A group of people who are interested in local democracy will be getting together to talk about how it might be made more local and more democratic.I didn’t attend the inaugural #notwestminster last year, but I heard jolly good things about it so not only do I have a ticket booked, I’ve also ended up volunteering to run a workshop. This blogpost is in part an attempt to rationalise in my own mind what I might cover (taking the lead from Nick Booth).I want my workshop ...
Last Friday I was a local democracy maker.The Local Democracy Maker Day is a fringe event held the day before the ever popular, and never-not-unhashtagged #localgovcamp (which is a sort of self-assembly conference and meetup for local government types). The purpose of the maker day is to chew over some big challenges in local democracy and to work towards some relatively straightforward solutions.The emphasis was on technology as a means to enhance local democracy but there was more to the day than just this. I participated in a group looking at the third challenge, on “digestible democracy” - ...