From a big read ear in South Korea to an interactive website in Iceland, the democracy crisis is being met with creativity
It is easy to be downbeat about the future of local democracy: when budgets are being squeezed community engagement teams suddenly seem like a frivolous luxury and the political mood of the country seems angrier by the day.
Despite falling public sector budgets, however, as someone who works in the democracy business I can tell you it feels like a time of creativity rather than decline.
Projects around the country and around the world are trying to promote small democratic conversations between the state and citizen and between citizens.
Here are three initiatives I have come across:
Yobosayo:
A public artwork has been installed outside the city hall in Seoul, South Korea. It is a large red sculpture of an ear, into which people can shout complaints or suggestions for the city council. Those complaints and suggestions are then piped into the citizens' hall, where they are played as a babble of noises out of speakers past which city officials and politicians walk every day. Motion sensors by the speakers notice when people stop and linger at a particular comment, and those comments are then amplified so more people hear them. Comments that don't attract attention are reduced in impact until they become part of the background noise.
Betri Reykjavík:
The website collects suggestions and ideas for consideration by the council, and then allows people to debate and vote on them before they are put forward to the council for consideration. This is a model that was also used, supported by the same organisation, in Estonia as part of a programme of constitutional reform called Rahvakogu, or "People's Assembly".
What is particularly interesting about the Reykjavik example is its reach: in the first year more than 10% of the population of Reykjavik put forward a proposal, and 43% visited the website.
Lambeth council's new website:
Lambeth has two websites, and the new website it is creating called Lambeth.coop forms part of the council's Good for Nothing and Made in Lambeth initative. Made in Lambeth is when people in Lambeth, including local citizens who are coders and have other skills, come together to discuss ways to solve problems locally. They have been consulting on a Lambeth.coop which they hope to be a website that suits all the needs of their users. It is an on-going process as they see what works and what doesn't but at the moment it is similar to gov.uk in its user-focused design. It will change depending on feedback, and the whole process has been collaborative.
This isn't a big joined up solution to the crisis of democracy. One could argue about the applicability of these projects to local government in the UK. Big red ears appearing outside most town halls would probably end up as impromptu litter bins. Iceland has just been through a massive, wrenching crisis, so people would be more likely to participate. And surely the lessons from Lambeth can't be used in Lunedale.
I don't think we need a big joined-up solution, and we have to avoid the temptation of going out and trying to find one. Instead, we should find and connect the little pieces of the solution that are already out there.
Like Lego bricks, there are little parts of the solution that every council or citizen group can choose and put together in the ways that work best locally.
So my lesson for local democracy week could be – do not think that there is a single answer to the problem that local democracy faces in your authority. Instead, find and create ways that could work from your area and from farther afield, and build the local democracy that is right for you.
Anthony Zacharzewski is director of the Democratic Society.
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