We spoke to Donna Anderson, Participation and Democracy Officer and Youth Work Lead for North Ayrshire Council about the youth-led PB processes happening in North Ayrshire. For key points you can read more here: https://www.demsoc.org/blog/youth-led-participatory-budgeting Podcast hosted by Annie Cook at Democratic Society [email protected] 

Carl Whistlecraft and Diane Sims from Kirklees Council and #NotWestminster talk to us about creating place-based local democracy. This conversation was carried out as part of our Public Square programme, investigating how citizens can be more involved in local decision-making. We want to connect people working on this endeavour, share the learning out there, and celebrate what is already being achieved. Have a story you want to share? Please get in touch.

Audio recording of the first Democracy Debate on "is COVID-19 all bad for democracy?," held online on 14 January 2021.

Noreen Blanluet of Co-production Network for Wales talks to us about Coproduction and her experience supporting change in Wales. This conversation was carried out as part of our Public Square programme, investigating how citizens can be more involved in local decision-making. We want to connect people working on this endeavour, share the learning out there, and celebrate what is already being achieved. Have a story you want to share? Please get in touch.

Peter Macfadyen of Flatpack Democracy and Independents for Frome shares his experiences of how a small group of councillors can take the confrontation and formality out of local politics and build successful collaboration with the local community. This conversation was carried out as part of our Public Square programme, investigating how citizens can be more involved in local decision-making. We want to connect people working on this endeavour, share the learning out there, and celebrate what is already being achieved. Have a story you want to share? Please get in touch.

As part of the "Dreaming Democracy" series to capture learning on participatory budgeting, we spoke to Yves Cabannes, Emeritus Professor of Development Planning at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit from the University College London who has worked across the globe advocating and setting up participatory budgeting processes about the work going on in Lisbon, in particular youth climate PB.  Factsheet Lisbon Green PB: http://local.climate-kic.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Factsheet_CFL_LisbonGreenPB.pdf  Check out some of the work Yves has been doing here:   Cabannes Yves, (2006) Children and young people build participatory democracy in Latin American cities, Environment & Urbanization. IIED, London https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956247806063973 Cabbanes Yves, (2019) The contribution of participatory budgeting to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals : lessons for policy in Commonwealth countries. Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance, 21: 1-19. Sydney: UTS ePRESS, https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/cjlg Cabannes Yves, Another City is Possible with Participatory Budgeting. Montreal, Black Rose Bookshttps://metropolitiques.eu/Reclaiming-the-Right-to-the-City-Through-Participatory-Budgeting.htmlhttps://metropolitiques.eu/Reclaiming-the-Right-to-the-City-Through-Participatory-Budgeting.html  Podcast by Annie Cook at Democratic Society Music by Ben Sound 

As part of the "Dreaming Democracy" series to capture learning on participatory budgeting, we spoke to Coryn Barclay, Research Consultant and PB path finder at Fife council. Since September last year in 2019, Fife’s first instance and large scale test of mainstreaming PB is “Let's talk about transporting people.” https://our.fife.scot/transportingpeople/ Fife Council is 1 of 19 winners across the UK of Nesta's 2020 Democracy Pioneers Award. Coryn is also writing a Pioneers blog on the Fife PB work, which will be out soon! Fife’s Participatory Budgeting story Fife have been using a PB approach since 2010, dispersing around 1 million pounds in small grants. There’s now a commitment to 1% in mainstreaming PB across Scotland. For Fife, this equates to around 7 million pounds through PB annually and Coryn says they’re not going to get there through small grants alone. Read more about Fife PB story 2010-2017 here.  5 top tips in integrating an online PB tool like Consul Promotion and awareness building.  Because it [Consul] is sitting on another platform elsewhere, you need to direct people from where they are -for instance Facebook or other channels.  Changing people’s expectations on how they interact with the council and creating a co-operative space that is more about dialogue and deliberation and a two-way conversation, rather than contacting the council to complain about something. Pose questions positively online and you will get people engaging in a positive way. By doing this, Fife hasn’t had any issues with moderation. Thinking about equity of the voting process, you can create other methods to do that in-person such as fill in a form and hand it in, to provide options for people.  Have a look at their site “Let’s talk about our Fife” here. Top 3 PB learnings If using a digital tool for the first time, keep it simple and don’t try and be too clever with that. Think about how online extends or compliments your offline engagement processes so it’s not a replacement for it. Give it a try, learn from it and improve for the next time. For each of the iterations there are things you can use and adapt. For example, one of the things Fife has learned over time from public voting processes is to have people available from the funding team to follow-up on proposals which weren’t successful.  Podcast by Annie Cook at Democratic Society. Music by bensound.com 

We spoke to Pam Crosthwaite, Capacity & Empowerment Officer at North Ayrshire Council to learn more about PB in North Ayrshire and for some PB tips so get listening if you want to find out more.  Pam & Andrew mentioned the Alcohol and Drugs Partnership PB which ended up being moved online due to Covid-19 restrictions.   Article regarding the results: http://nahscp.org/2020/06/26/funding-boost-for-projects-to-reduce-drug-related-deaths/ Results on Consul: https://nay.communitychoices.scot/budgets/4/results You can also check out the Shaping North Ayrshire site here: https://nay.communitychoices.scot 4 top tips on creating a good PB process Give enough time; allow time for applications and each process because otherwise it can feel a bit rushed.  Partnership working; working with other local authorities and working in partnerships can be helpful. It was really helpful just to talk through some of the issues. The partnership approach has been really beneficial, for example, working with the health and social care partnership and working with the green health partnership, through doing this we’ve been able to piggyback to some of their events and distribute the money via other approaches, it's probably something we would have never done before. Work in slightly different ways and training staff; by getting community staff to invite community members to meetings; the knowledge and information they bring is so useful so working in a different way can improve relationships and can have a really positive outcome by utilising that community knowledge. Keep repeating the work; the main lesson is if you can just do it, you need to keep doing it.  Podcast by Annie Cook

We spoke to Andrew Fox, Digital Project Manager who set up the Shaping North Ayrshire, Consul site in North Ayrshire Council.  Consul is still fairly new to Scotland and is being continually developed, so get listening for some top tips on using a digital tool to do PB and engage the public online.  Andrew mentioned the Alcohol and Drugs Partnership PB which ended up being moved online due to Covid-19 restrictions.   Article on the results: http://nahscp.org/2020/06/26/funding-boost-for-projects-to-reduce-drug-related-deaths/ Results on Consul: https://nay.communitychoices.scot/budgets/4/results You can also check out the Shaping North Ayrshire site here: https://nay.communitychoices.scot    6 top tips on setting up your site  Simple testing and playing around with the site; will help you understand where things pop up on the main page. Custom Content blocks- certain aspects you would rather hide you can change and be done within the tool. Can make small modifications if you are digitally minded but supplement to what’s already there and be realistic. How will it be supported? don’t reinvent the wheel within your organisation - use existing processes such as working with people who are familiar with moderating or being administrators of a site. Think about who needs to be involved - content owners, site developers, team leaders and senior managers. Registration; use the smallest amount of registration required, capturing the least amount of data. Fears of public participation & misinformation; there’s often a fear about public participation and a fear of misinformation being shared online but if it’s not open then you lose out on all the positives and benefits from using community knowledge, so it’s good that this tool can also be used for clarification (where the council can respond to questions & comments).  Encouraging engagement; upload meaningful content, set clear outcomes, and be consistent with your brand so not to confuse people. You can engage people by thinking about the message that will resonate the most. It's important that they also see it's also being steered by them which will keep them engaged, larger sums of money will also motivate people. Don't do too much engagement at any one time so not to overwhelm people from what you're trying to do.  Connecting sections of the site; you can ask questions to the public, for instance through the debates section of the site and this feedback can then be fed into collaborative legislation or "creating policy section" section.  Podcast by Annie Cook

Annie Cook from The Democratic Society chats to John Alexander, Scottish National Party councillor and the current Leader of Dundee City Council to talk about all things Dundee, participatory budgeting, the role of elected members and Scotland.  Music by Hamish Cook, Creative Commons license.