CONTEXT & GOAL
As part of the European Week of Local Democracy, Brulocalis asked Createlli to help organize a colloquium on good practices and new forms of participation. A program was co-created for this colloquium with the employees who were responsible for participation in the 19 municipalities. The target audience of the colloquium were politicians, citizens, policy makers, associations and organizations.
The main aim of this colloquium was to inspire with examples of new participation methods for local government. Secondly, there was a search for a feedback about the benefits and limits of participation, so that experts could search for solutions to the challenges in the field.
OUR APPROACH
The colloquium was opened with an inspiring example of participation by a councilor of Grenoble. Afterwards participants could choose in which of the three workshops they wanted to participate:
1. New forms of citizen participation (including bottom-up initiatives)
2. E-participation and Social Media
3. Participation in policy choices in municipal administration.
Each studio had between 20 and 40 participants.
Each studio was introduced by an inspiring presentation with practical examples. Afterwards the participants worked in groups of 10 people on a SWOT analysis of participation (with an emphasis on their theme) and on proposals to improve participation. The lead facilitator expert from each studio then gave a synthesis of the results during a plenary briefing.
RESULTS
90 participation actors learned by doing, from each other and from the experts. They gave a new impulse to the Brulocalis platform for exchange about participation. The colloquium provided the basic ingredients for a charter of good practices for participatory processes and local policy. This charter is being further developed with the municipalities under the impulse of Brulocalis.
