Latest
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Published in: Participation NowThe Quantified Self community, lifelogging and the making of “smart” publicsGary Wolf, co-founder, suggests that self-tracking and life-logging data may be about us, but they should also be ours to generate, harvest, access, manipulate, interpret, and use - even sell.
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Published in: Participation NowYou take the high road, I'll take the low road, and we'll see who's more democratic when we get to the other end…Whilst there are many apparent similarities between the rhetoric of ‘Localism’ in England and that of ‘Community Empowerment’ in Scotland, a closer look reveals striking contrasts in the ways that these policies have been developed and what they mean in practice.
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Published in: Participation NowJourney into participation: a viewpoint from the Science Museum, LondonMany institutions, including London's Science Museum, are now looking to invite their audiences to take a more active role in engaging with their sites and collections, rather than being the traditional passive consumers of culture.
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Published in: Participation NowCreating a culture of participationAs part of our series of interviews with practitioners and activists, Participation Now researcher Hilde C. Stephansen spoke to Mikey Weinkove of The People Speak, an artists’ collective that creates ‘tools for the world to take over itself’. Their many projects include Talkaoke, a mobile talk show, and Who Wants To Be?, an ask-the-audience game show.
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Published in: Participation NowBuilding relationships through participatory budgetingAs part of our series of interviews with practitioners involved in public participation initiatives, Participation Now researcher Hilde C. Stephansen spoke to Alison Lamb at Newcastle City Council about Udecide, a participatory budgeting scheme that has been running since 2006.
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Published in: Participation NowEngaging EU citizens in policy makingAs part of our series of interviews with practitioners involved in public participation initiatives, Participation Now researcher Hilde C. Stephansen spoke to Deirdre Lee at Insight-NUI Galway, about Puzzled by Policy, a European Commission funded project that aimed to engage citizens in the policy making process.
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Published in: Participation NowFrom Occupy to online democracy: the Loomio storyFlexibility was important, with people being able to change their position if their mind was changed by a persuasive argument or new information. Democracy is a skill we can practice with people wherever we are.
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Published in: Participation NowTaking 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.
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Published in: Participation NowComplaints Choir: what is it?"This project stays dynamic when people take the Complaints Choir as a tool and make use of it in their own context and modify it. That’s the spirit of open source." Hilde C. Stephansen interviews the founders of the choir for Participation Now.
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Published in: Participation NowChanging public opinion through direct action“Starbucks felt so pressured by the public that they felt obliged to pay £20,000,000 to the HMRC.” Our series of interviews with activists and practitioners who organise public participation initiatives speaks next to Sarah Kwei from UK Uncut, the direct action group that works to raise awareness of tax avoidance and austerity cuts through creative forms of protest.
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Published in: Participation NowOrganising 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.
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Published in: Participation NowIntroducing ‘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'.
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Published in: Participation NowDemocratizing inequalitiesParticipation has become a necessary basis for institutional authority in an era of declining social mobility and government retrenchment. It has become a tool for sustaining hierarchies as much as a tool for transcending them.
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Published in: Participation NowThe myth of the keyboard warrior: public participation and 38 DegreesPreliminary findings after completing an ethnographic study of 38 Degrees suggest that this is a new type of organisation.
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Published in: Participation NowBuilding the middle groundFor my colleagues, nothing short of complete people-driven management would do. On the other hand, the government colleagues I befriended and worked with perceived participation as a necessary evil.
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Published in: Participation NowPublic engagement, a social priority?Living in a perpetual state of fear, people prefer to isolate themselves from what they perceive as the “ineffective” mechanisms of public participation; creating and perpetuating a negative vicious circle.
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Published in: Participation NowInsider knowledgeWhile the literal meaning of utopia is ‘no place’, an OU-topia could be almost any place. Even when physically isolated, an Open University student, engaged in studying, could be part of a ‘public’, involved in learning through dialogue.
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Published in: Participation NowRaymond Williams and 'The emerging landscape of thought and practice'The potential for this project to tap into the many and diverse informal ‘education-for-social-purpose’ groups and activities could extend ‘back to the future’ readings and reflections, making the essential links and connections with the best that is available in established institutions.
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Published in: Participation NowThe democratic potential of activist performanceOne could hardly imagine a better illustration than Putin’s regime for the idea that the Presidency is itself a performative performance, ritualized but only too brutally effective, in contrast with the impotence of the demos.
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Published in: Participation NowScience outreach in schoolsThere were so many questions that I had to stop taking them so that the children could finish school on time.
New in our projects
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Published in: Can Europe Make It?PNL and ‘European Others’ -
Published in: oDRA war of worlds in Ekaterinburg -
Published in: TransformationThe faux revolution of mindfulness
Latest on Brexit
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Published in: openDemocracyUKDon’t feed the Farage trolls
