New democratic models Archives | Rethinking Poverty

New democratic models

The Democracy of Consumers is dying. Now we must build a Democracy of Citizens

By Jon Alexander

21 Apr 2022

This piece on a ‘Democracy of Citizens’ is #8 in the ‘Visions for the Future of Democracy’ series curated by Involve for its 15th anniversary. We have asked authors to...

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Beyond the framework: the co-benefits of deliberation

By Jez Hall

31 Mar 2022

A new paper examining Shared Future’s Leeds Climate Change Citizens Jury highlights the co-benefits of deliberation, writes SF Director Jez Hall. Local authorities wanting to achieve meaningful carbon reduction, are increasingly turning...

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Levelling up: policy frameworks for collective wellbeing

By Pippa Coutts

24 Mar 2022

Levelling up is never going to be one size fits all. To support the development of areas that currently have poorer economic and social outcomes, we need to recognise...

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How can local people take action on things that matter to them?

By Tiffany Lam

23 Mar 2022

How can local people build control and take action on things that matter to them? Our research shows that there are five main components of collective control: social connectedness;...

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Developing a shared framework for a hopeful future

By Hugh Eliis

03 Mar 2022

In November 2021, a group of ten people gathered together in Letchworth Garden City for two days of conversation. We began with a clear sense of our collective failure... Read More

Steps towards a better world

By Barry Knight

03 Mar 2022

Written at the outset of the pandemic, #BuildBackBetter showed how being forced to slow down had made people want a different future. Having a profound sense of vulnerability made... Read More

Democratising Innovation Policy: a report from Nesta & Citizens UK

By Rethinking Poverty

01 Mar 2022

In December, Nesta and Citizens UK published their new report, Democratising Innovation Policy: How community organising can help build a more inclusive economy.  It states that innovation policy has... Read More

Levelling up White Paper: you can’t level up from Whitehall

By Sarah Longlands

24 Feb 2022

The Levelling up White Paper was finally published last week.  But despite 332 pages of what was a rather chaotic document (part text book, part policy, part analysis), when... Read More

Democratic wellbeing: a new report from Carnegie UK

By Rethinking Poverty

21 Feb 2022

Carnegie UK published their report GDWe: A spotlight on democratic wellbeing last month. Gross Domestic Wellbeing (GDWe) is an alternative measure of social progress to the dominant measure GDP, as set... Read More

Plymouth Octopus is a cosmolocal CAN in action

By The Alternative UK

18 Feb 2022

As we know from long experience, Plymouth is a world-class powerhouse of social and civic enterprise – and it’s richly demonstrated in the Plymouth Octopus latest newsletter. POP (as... Read More

The brave: delivering community wealth in Scotland

By CLES

03 Feb 2022

At the close of the 2021 Community Wealth Building Summit, we reflect on remarks by our opening keynote speaker Tom Arthur MSP and the work that CLES has undertaken... Read More

Lessons from a citizens’ jury on climate change

By Maria Lucien

19 Jan 2022

With COP 26 starting in Glasgow on 31st October 2021, we have brought together the recommendations from six citizens’ juries and assemblies run by Shared Future over the last... Read More

Community power campaign says We’re Right Here

04 Jan 2022

The politics of localism is shifting and developing, at all levels. We hear about a new national campaign being launched in the last few days. The We’re Right Here campaign is... Read More

Kendal underlines the importance of community-led climate change action

By Peter Bryant

23 Dec 2021

The Kendal Climate Change Citizens’ Jury, commissioned by Kendal Town Council gave us at Shared Future, as the facilitating team, an opportunity to reflect on the importance of instituting... Read More

You can’t achieve levelling up without a Green New Deal

By Miatta Fahnbulleh

16 Dec 2021

This is an article on levelling up and the Green New Deal from the fourth issue of the New Economics Zine. You can read the full issue here. ‘Levelling up’... Read More

Democracy Pioneers amplify young voices in the climate conversation

By Katy Rubin

03 Nov 2021

Katy Rubin reflects on Democracy Pioneers, a project she facilitated for Shared Future to engage Glasgow’s policymakers on climate change through the medium of theatre. On 14 September, eight young... Read More

5 Routes to Community Power

By Adam Lent and Jessica Studdert

02 Nov 2021

Adam Lent and Jessica Studdert look at the practical ways to make community power an everyday practice, not just a long-term ambition. How can community power be embedded in... Read More

Berlin and the community land trust

By The Alternative UK

21 Oct 2021

In this week’s German elections, Berliners voted with a resounding majority (56.4%), supporting a bill to expropriate 226,000 homes from private landlords, and take them into public ownership. It’s... Read More

Democracy in flux: Reflections on a decade at Involve

By Tim Hughes

19 Oct 2021

Today is my final day at Involve, the public participation and democracy charity, which naturally brings with it a time of reflection after 11 years spent at the organisation, and... Read More

What will the end of the Universal Credit uplift mean for wellbeing?

By Hannah Ormston

14 Oct 2021

At the Conservative Party Conference last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson remarked that ‘wages are going up faster than before the pandemic began’. These comments were made against the backdrop of... Read More

Powering the just transition in Yorkshire & the Humber

By Rebekah Diski, Alex Chapman & Chaitanya Kumar

06 Oct 2021

The UK faces an uneven decarbonisation challenge, with some regions and industries under particular pressure to reduce emissions. Many of the places and communities most acutely affected are also... Read More

Rethinking Scotland: our systems need to let people in

By Jennifer Wallace & Pippa Coutts

14 Sep 2021

History tells us that periods of great disruption are often followed by periods of massive social change. But last year’s’ flurry of ‘build back’ and ‘build forward’ reports and... Read More

Space to Participate

By Jenny Wood

25 Aug 2021

Children are routinely thought of as our future and take a symbolic place in our culture when considering innocence, hope and imagination. But we also have a societal tendency... Read More

Learning to listen: ‘No sense making about me without me’

By Laura Seebohm

19 Aug 2021

At the start of the pandemic one women told her support worker “I’ve been told what to do for years, this is nothing new”. We know that policy decisions... Read More

Re-think power to build inclusive local economies

By Frances Jones & Eleanor Radcliffe

12 Aug 2021

Thirteen years ago, the global financial crisis prompted human suffering across the world. In the wake of this, community wealth building emerged as an alternative approach to local economic... Read More

Citizens Assemblies: fashionable focus groups or the great hopes of democracy?

By Katy Oglethorpe

03 Aug 2021

Newham citizens assembly Newham, the East London borough: home to the 2012 Olympics, birthplace of Danny Dyer and the most ethnically diverse place in England and Wales. Soon Newham... Read More

Local elections 2021: Ideas for new administrations

By Tom Lloyd Goodwin

29 Jun 2021

Economic recovery from COVID-19 will be a long and painful process. When the pandemic struck, we at CLES argued for a new common-sense approach to economic development based on the... Read More

A New Beginning

By Rosaleen Tite Ahern

17 Jun 2021

The one thing we all need after the pandemic is a new beginning. Change is in the air, whether that be ideological, legislative, or deeply personal. The theme for... Read More

Rethinking Poverty: what needs to change?

By Barry Knight

09 Jun 2021

We have the ideas for change It is now more than three years since Rethinking Poverty began to compile resources to support the development of a good society without... Read More

Vermont democracy conducted at a human scale

By The Alternative UK

13 May 2021

Other than being Bernie Sanders’ Congressional seat, we have picked up at A/UK on the singular qualities of the state of Vermont – as a “laboratory for democracy”, in... Read More

Kendal Citizens Jury on Climate Change

By Shared Future

18 Mar 2021

What should Kendal do about climate change? That was the challenge tackled by a diverse group of local residents of Kendal during the summer and autumn of 2020. Commissioned... Read More

Local innovations to solve the problems that matter

By Pippa Coutts

09 Mar 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic, with its many challenges has tested our ability to innovate. Many of us associate the idea of innovation with bright, new objects or processes, and this... Read More

Accelerating the people-powered shift

By Carrie Deacon and Will Bibby

23 Dec 2020

Across the country in communities, in health services and in local authorities, a change has been happening. From East Ayrshire and Cambidgeshire to Leeds and Plymouth, leading public service innovators have been redefining the relationship between... Read More

How workers can take on big finance and win

By Alice Martin and Annie Quick

19 Nov 2020

The impact of Covid-19 has been a powerful reminder of the leverage workers could collectively hold. Care workers, supermarket cashiers and couriers – usually dismissed as ​“unskilled” – have demonstrated... Read More

Citizens assemblies to #BuildBackBetter

By Caroline Hartnell

11 Nov 2020

When we think about building back better, we are thinking about power and how we make decisions, said Compass’s Frances Foley, introducing a webinar on citizens assemblies called Deliberating and doing:... Read More

Use Covid recovery to get to net zero: the Citizens Assembly’s verdict

By Chaitanya Kumar

22 Oct 2020

In the first of its kind in the UK, a National Citizens Assembly has deliberated and this week produced a detailed set of recommendations to get the UK on... Read More

Deliberating with care for a caring democracy

By Marian Barnes

02 Jun 2020

Sometimes, when times seem unlike anything we have known before, we need to reach for ideas that are not new. The current crisis does not necessarily mean that we have... Read More