Two pieces of research by the recently-formed group Involve should - they hope - help establish whether new forms of public participation can strengthen Britain's democracy. Richard Wilson, based at the Environment Council, has put a lot of energy - with others - into gathering a consortium of supporters and securing funding from the Home Office and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. The research will be into Understanding Participatory processes and Mapping the Participation Sector. There will be workshops as well as desk research and interviews, with a report leading up to an Involve Convention next year.
As Richard writes in a newsletter announcing the funding: "Involve comes in response to the failure of formal systems of governance to inspire public trust, energy and involvement. Turnouts at elections are low, and in some areas the voting levels are so poor that the legitimacy of councils as community leaders and representative bodies is at risk. At the same time, we are also witnessing an unprecedented rise in participative working. This can be seen in the development of health services, technology development, national policy and local strategic partnerships. But what works and what doesn't? Does participation improve decision-making and is it really democratic?
"At present these questions remain unanswered as there is no focus in the UK for discussions around public participation. Involve will provide that focus. It will answer these questions by improving the understanding of participative processes and providing the structures to generate and use that understanding. Also central to Involve will be involving large numbers of people in its work."
Richard explains that the first piece of research has been funded by the Home Office’s Civil Renewal Unit, and aims to improve understanding of different participatory processes and what each can achieve. The primary output from this piece of work will be a model for assessing participatory processes.
The second, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, aims to define what the participation sector is, who is in it and who influences it. A final report, ‘Where Next for the UK Participation Sector?’, will be produced. This will detail the shape and structure of the UK participation sector, the opportunities for the sector to strengthen Britain’s democracy and the future role for Involve.
I know Richard and some of the others involved through InterAct, and I'm sure that the research will be thorough and the report insightful. But I have a slight reservation that I can't quite pin down about ideas like "the UK participation sector". I hope it doesn't mean that Involve will become an inward looking professional association promoting only current methods of public and nonprofit participation practice. There's also a lot to be learned from those promoting people-centred participatory working in corporations, for example. A get-together of the environmental systems thinkers and the organisational systems thinkers would be interesting.
The spread of organisations cited by Involve as part of the consortium looks broad enough to avoid too much introspection, and hopefully the spread of interests will grow as Involve takes the promised participatory approach to its research programme and communications.
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