Peter Bradley (Nottingham, Speakers' Corner Trust): Last Friday Nottingham became the first city in the UK to adopt a Speakers' Corner since an Act of Parliament paved the way for the original in London's Hyde Park almost 150 years ago. It's first of what Speakers' Corner Trust hopes will become a national network of locally-run initiatives promoting public debate and active citizenship.
Indeed, last Friday's ceremony in Nottingham's Market Square was the centrepiece of a Day for Debate across the city. The sceptics warned that the age of the public meeting is long gone. But the young women who attended Listening to Mothers ended by setting up a self-help group; seven different faiths, chaired by a Muslim woman, came together to explore Common Ground in a city centre synagogue; the Best of Both Worlds brought together the younger and older generations to explore each other's values and lifestyles in a packed Council Chamber while Future Gazing attracted another large gathering to discuss the ethical implications of scientific progress. Then Nottingham Forest and Notts County fans buried their differences to debate the Future of Football and the day ended where it began, in a community centre, with residents discussing Getting the Best Out Of Our Neighbourhoods. Maintaining the momentum will be challenging, but this was a good start.
SCT's case is simple: politicians cannot tackle the challenges we face on their own and pretending otherwise simply accelerates the downward spiral of failed expectations and public disillusion. None of the demands of the modern world can be met without the kind of open public debate which is the lifeblood of healthy democracies and we start from the premise that if citizens are not engaging with each other, they're hardly likely to be engaging with politicians.
Of course the internet is a powerful medium for information, opinion and exchange. But it has limitations too. While it can connect us to people on the other side of the world, it can also isolate us from our neighbours; though it provides countless forums for comment and debate, its anonymity and unaccountability can also undermine genuine engagement.
So our initiative aims to get people, literally, to come back down their garden paths and engage with their neighbours in a face-to-face exchange of ideas and opinions about the issues that matter to them. That experience can be not only empowering and enjoyable but it's also the best way to develop the understanding and sense of common purpose which underpin successful communities.
Last Friday's opening ceremony featured several fine speeches but none more timely than that of Adrian Lunga, the Zimbabwean human rights campaigner who, with elections due in that country next month, spoke of the importance for those who are denied them of the freedoms which many in this country now take for granted.
