Citizen Journalists: Journalists or Citizens? »

To-day we have naming of parts.
What should the growing number of people who blog, tweet, share film, pictures and stories about their locality be called?  This ‘naming of parts’ probably wouldn’t matter much except government has identified there is value in what they do and, broadly, wants more of it.  That means finding a title [...]

Joining Up Citizens that Care »

Blogging on news of the launch of the Civic Society’s Street Pride campaign for 2010, Kevin Harris makes a really good point about the need to join up the various initiatives that aim to encourage communities to care for their streets.  I’d add ‘public open spaces’ as well: in Birmingham we have the excellent BOSF [...]

2 of 3 Feel They Can’t Influence Local Decisions »

Government’s Citizenship Survey results published today reflect some familiar trends but there are also some surprising findings that support new thinking on empowerment, active citizenship and community cohesion.
The figures for April-June 2009 published today show that in England:

fewer people (about 1 in 3) feel able to influence local decisions
there’s been an even steeper decline in [...]

Six Fallacies in Neighbourhood Working? »

I came across this set of ‘common fallacies’ in Neighbourhood Working (in a report I wrote in 2007 on Diversity in Neighbourhoods) – a sort of collection of mistaken ideas about neighbourhoods and communities I’d been observing for the previous 15 years:

neighbourhoods are places which are small enough to assume that everyone who lives in them is basically [...]

Democracy? It’s a Thought. »

Parmjit Dhanda – MP for Gloucester – ambushed Gordon Brown yesterday during a meeting of the Speakers’ Conference set up last year to explore ways of making parliament more representative.  Mr Dhanda, who was born in London just 38 years ago to parents from the Punjab, India, pointed out that before Mr Brown became PM, [...]

Cities of Value? (and 4 questions for young people) »

I went to the Cities seminar organised by Birmingham-based development education charity TIDE last Thursday.  The aim was to gather perspectives on change in cities  from teachers, industry, local government and voluntary organisations.  

There were some interesting presentations.  Given the links to our storytelling method (SDM), I was particularly keen to hear about Izzy Mohammed’s work with youth [...]