Nick Mahony

Nick Mahony is a researcher and member of Community Organisers; he’s also Co-Founder of Movement for Cultural Democracy; Development Coordinator for Raymond Williams Foundation; and researcher at Municipal Enquiry, a new collaborative project founded with the aim of supporting alternative forms of local power, participation and democratic control.

“We were the people who started talking to each other”: unexpected solidarities under forced devolution

An account of recent experiences of community organizing in Tottenham, North London, from conversations and an on-going collaboration between two members of Community Organisers.

By Moussa Amine-Sylla and Nick Mahony

/ 6 Jul 2020

“We were the people who started talking to each other”: unexpected solidarities under forced devolution

No seat is unwinnable: how Labour activists set out to reclaim Tory strongholds and defy predictions

In North London’s Chipping Barnet, pop-up alliances and an emerging ecology of democratic campaigning came together to renew participatory politics.

By Nick Mahony

/ 30 Jun 2017

Renovating democracy: combining conventions with festivals to assemble the public

Don't miss the new festival for democracy, DemFest, on 13-14 May.

By Nick Mahony and derek tatton

/ 5 Apr 2016

Taking responsibility for Friern Barnet Community Library

“Barnet claims to know what people want. But if you go into some of the libraries in Barnet, I would have to say that they probably don’t know what people want.” Nick Mahony talks to the Chair of Trustees of a library saved by occupation for the community in north London.

By Joanna Fryer and Nick Mahony

/ 2 Apr 2014

Organising today: stewarding and responding to ‘the people’

38 degrees aims to bring people together to take action on the issues that matter to them. As part of our series of interviews with practitioners, Participation Now researcher Nick Mahony talked to Becky Jarvis and Rebecca Falcon at the 38 Degrees office in London about their work.

By Rebecca Falcon, Becky Jarvis and Nick Mahony

/ 31 Mar 2014

Introducing ‘Participation Now: meet the practitioners’

Participation Now is a new Open University web platform that hosts an accessible and expanding collection of over 120 of the most creative examples of contemporary public participation and engagement initiatives. Meet 'the Practitioners'.

By Nick Mahony and Hilde C. Stephansen

/ 29 Mar 2014

Participation Now: patterns, possibilities, politics

At one end of this spectrum we have started to place initiatives that offer to rationalise public engagement and make the participatory self-organisation of publics more efficient. At the other end, initiatives seem more focused on enriching processes of engagement and participation.

By Nick Mahony and Hilde C. Stephansen

/ 23 Jan 2014

Volatile, stable and extractive participation

At a conference on the theme of ‘Participatory Cultural Citizenship’ in Aarhus, Denmark last November, Participation Now asked keynote speaker Chris Kelty about questions posed by his current research project: Who gets to decide what participation should be like? Who should be deciding? How might

By Nick Mahony, Hilde C. Stephansen and Chris Kelty

/ 6 Jan 2014

When is citizen participation transformative?

When is participation empowering and transformative? What is the relationship between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ modes of participation? At a conference on the theme of ‘Participatory Cultural Citizenship’ in Aarhus, last November, keynote speaker Leah Lievrouw shared her thoughts on this with Par

By Nick Mahony, Hilde C. Stephansen and Leah A. Lievrouw

/ 6 Jan 2014

Participatory public engagement: reshaping what it means to be public?

In exactly what ways can participation and public engagement address the contemporary crises of democracy, expertise and legitimacy? Participation Now will provide a public platform for researchers, practitioners, students and citizens interested in finding out.

By Nick Mahony and Hilde C. Stephansen

/ 20 Nov 2013

Creating publics, opening democracies: introducing the week

Calls for democracy echo around us, but what kind of democracy are people calling for? Some focus on the accountability of government to represent the people, while others are demanding new forms of access to democratic participation. Both of these demands hinge on another idea: publicness - that

By Nick Mahony, John Clarke, Susan Pell and Liza Griffin

/ 1 Oct 2012

Public crises, public futures

We need to develop new understandings of public action, public culture, public space and the public sphere and what impact it has on these when people see themselves as in crisis.

By Nick Mahony and John Clarke

/ 23 Feb 2012