The launch of Citizen Power: Peterborough

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Comment by Leo Romero on April 3, 2010 at 3:35pm

Added two more suggestions in my post, including what to do to protect this community from spammers, such as the guy whose blog post has been sitting on the main page for about a week now.

Comment by Leo Romero on March 29, 2010 at 4:31am

Just posted a blog note: A request and some solicited advice. Suggestions not nearly as substantial as David's below; mainly technical.

Comment by Benedict Dellot on March 16, 2010 at 3:57pm

Cheers David,

As per usual budgets take precedence so we don't neccesarily have the immediate scope to create new project strands as it were. But! We do want to involve people in all aspects of the project and will be actively encouraging suggestions within a framed debate. For instance, within the sustainable citizenship project strand we are planning to organise a way for people to come up with their own ideas of how to encourage sustainable living. These ideas will then be taken forward and some of the best ones implemented in collaboration with our project partners.

In general, each of our project strands want to encourage and provide individuals and communities with the capabilities needed to address issues themselves. i.e. self-empowerment. All of our project strands aim to encourage participation, innovation and attachment. For instance, using the area-based learning curriculum to place learning at the heart of the community will provide children with a strong attachment needed to effectively engage in their community. Or, as you know, we can use social media to provide people with the tools to make participation more accesible.

What do you think?

I'd like to get a debate going on like this in the social meda group forum on mobile tools by the way. I'll let you know when we get to that stage!

Comment by Benedict Dellot on March 15, 2010 at 11:06am

Hi David,

Challenging comments as ever! We're in the process right now of elaborating on how each of the project strands will deliver on the core aims of the project and how we will be involving Peterborough citizens throughout the whole process. You're absolutely right that the only way for the project to be successful is if we co-produce the project early on from a grass-roots level - NESTA's recent Mass Localism paper shows how effective this approach can be for innovation and crucial buy-in.

The report due to be published a week today marks the end of the scoping phase and the beginning of the real work. Once we've completely sorted out the basic structure for each of the project strands, then we can really build momentum on the ground with regular deliberative, information-sharing events in Peterborough. Along with that, we hope that this site will provide a truly transparent way of going about the project - all publications/documents/notes/videos etc will be published on the site with open comment for everybody. We'll shortly be adding a number of discussion forums to each of the the project group pages and will be spreading the word about the site so that everybody can add their input.

It is a challenging issue but I hope that answers some of your queries. Like I said, once we've finished outlining our basic structure for each of the different project strands, we should be able to get the ball rolling and build some momentum on the ground!