Creating Community Conversations - Gallomanor

"Make playgrounds more dangerous"

One of the nice things about travelling by train is the opportunity to meet new people.  Last year I ended up sitting next to an old house mate from 10 years previously who now has a couple of pubs in Bath.  Last week I sat down opposite a fellow called Michael Follett who turned out to be the "Play Development Advisor" for South Gloucestershire Council.  We had a great conversation with too much to relay here but a few keys snippets were:

• Year 7 children (age 11 & 12) are 2 years behind in terms of cognitive thinking compared with 20 years ago.  Apparently this is due in part to changes in children's play habits.
• The distance that kids roam from their home unaccompanied has reduced by 80% compared to 20 years ago.  Parents restrict their children far more than in previous generations for a variety of reasons and the big losers are the kids.

Michael's job is to advise South Gloucestershire on their play strategy and to change the councils attitude towards risk in particular.  He argued that children learn through play and enjoy play more when there are elements of unpredictability and risk.  Play has become sanitised.  The play I remember from my childhood is digging dens in the field behind the house, climbing over building sites, being shot at by my brother's air pistol, and exploring woods.  Does anyone remember the safe bark matting under the climbing frame?  In essence Michael's job is about telling South Glos councillors to make their playgrounds more dangerous.  I was intrigued about how Michael went about this.  Was it a blunt approach?  What do a few broken bones matter anyway?

Michael told me he starts his pitches by asking the audiences who was a child (yes some councillors don't stick their hand up) and what they remember from their childhood play.  Invariably their memories are different from what they are offering the current generation of children.  He then asks if that is fair to deprive today's children of the fun that they had as kids.

As he told me this it occurred that the same approach could be used to convince councillors that it is worth embracing e-Democracy to make politics more transparent and accountable.

In my experience Councillors get into politics for the right reasons.  Because they want to help people, to serve the community, to do a better job than the incumbents.  I'm going to be asking Cllrs from now on to think back to the time before they got elected.  Did they call for more transparency, more openness, more accountability?  Is it right to deprive this generation of citizens every chance for that? 

There are risks with e-Democracy tools.  Some online forums can degenerate into abuse (or more likely banality) but most provide a place to discuss local issues; e-petitions can provide support for unworkable, impractical, but popular ideas, but mostly they are a way of identifying support for good ideas; blogs can land the author in trouble, but mostly they are a great way of initiating discussion and communicating with the community.  There are risks but without taking some small mitigated risks you'll never achieve the benefits that you wanted before getting elected.

Councillors: next time an officer asks you to consider a new way of engaging with the community don't just consider the risks - think back to before you were elected, would you have liked the opportunity to engage with politicians this way? 

Towards consensus? Citizenship in Secondary Schools

OFSTED published today their latest report on Citizenship teaching in secondary schools.  You can download it here.  As you'd expect it recommends direct contact between students and councillors as a good teaching practice. 

A common feature of good lessons is the high level of participation on the part of pupils.

Weaker lessons have common characteristics, principally too much talk by the teacher, the direct involvement of only a few pupils in the class who volunteer answers, closed questions and unstimulating resources.

Pretty obvious stuff unless you'rethe one desperately looking for the stimulating resources and live politicians that will get the whole class participating!

I support Local Democracy

The sharp-eyed amongst you will have noticed a little extra eye-candy today.  This site now sports a bright yellow button that links through to the page showing how people can get involved in the Local Democracy Campaign.

The aim is to get as many people displaying the button as possible.  You can get the code for it here.  Anyone who cares about local democracy can and should display the button.  Especially any politicians out there with a web presence.

The main aim of the Local Democracy Campaign is to make democracy relevant and useful to young people.  We can achieve this through councils and particularly councillors engaging with young people in their area.  The campaign has lots of different ideas on how councils can do this.

Declaration of interest: I sit on the campaign board helping to guide the LGA (who are the campaign owners) make the campaign bigger and better.  And one of our projects, I'm a Councillor, has been one of the highlights of Local Democracy Week for the last three years.

Local Democracy Campaign Awareness

Last week I was invited to speak to a Citizenship Co-ordinators Network event in Bristol.

It was held at a City Learning Centre at Brislington College and the facilities were superb and, judging by the number of students who tried to get into the computer room where we were meeting, the facilities are well used.

I was asked to the meeting by Kate Watson from Bristol's award-winning consultation team to present I'm a Councillor, as Bristol City Council are running with it again this October. 

Three points I want to make:

1.    It's good news that Kate has started to talk to teacher's this far in advance.
2.    It was good news that 3 out of 6 projects that the Bristol team talked about were Gallomanor projects (IAC, LifeSwap and CampaignCreator)
3.    However it was bad news that out of 6 teachers and 10 PGCE students only 1 teacher siad that he was aware of Local Democracy Week as an event.  We at the Local Democracy Campaign have a lot of work to do.

UPDATE:  4th point to be made.  And a very important one.  All the teachers agreed that Teacher Packs for IAC should be sent out before the summer holidays.  The message is be pro-active like Bristol.  Don't wait until September.

International Rock Festival

Gillian Simmons, from England's most northerly council, Berwick-upon-Tweed, was telling me about their youth engagement plans for this year.  The council is supporting a venture between Berwick High School and a local music company PFL Studios.  The venture Berwick Music is setting up a music festival in July.  Students at the school are developing their business skills with a real life event that is a touch more interesting than the traditional "Widget-Building role play games" that I remember as a student.  The council is supporting the event in a number of ways ranging from the practical - loaning Hi-Vis jackets - to  strategic advice on licencing.