The Audit Commission announced last week a new toolkit designed to help councils benchmark their success in engaging their community. The press release is a little short on the detail of what the toolkit consists of but the aims are clear and worthy.
This poster stopped me in my tracks as I left Westminster Tube stations a few weeks ago. The design was striking and the copy was spot on. They are simple and strong and, I think, they convey the frustration many young people have with the way they are perceived by Read more
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 Read more
A cracking idea from the Conservative Party. Supporters (or not) can send in their 30 sec clip about how they would improve their local environment and the best will feature in one of the Conservative Party election broadcasts. Excellent way of involving people. For it to truly work though they Read more
As part of the launch of The Electoral Commission and Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement 3 there was an event at Portcullis House last night. A full house got to hear the offerings from: Sam Younger (Chair) – Chairman of the Electoral Commission Dr. Philip Parvin – Hansard Society Read more
Today it was announced that Riverbend, the author of Baghdad Burning, has been longlisted for a £30,000 Literary Award. This follows on from the critical acclaim for the somewhat less worthy Belle de Jour. Congratulations to the anonymous bloggers. The other high profile arrival in the blogging world is very Read more
I’m not normally the biggest fan of Youth Councils as they seem to be a way of replicating the mistakes of "adult councils", but they do have their place. Equally, though, I don’t believe any council should set up a Youth Council and think that the job of youth engagement Read more
Viewing the visitor logs for your blog can make strange reading sometimes. Three weeks ago I wrote a post about a project called BlogCode. BlogCode was intended to help visitors to a blog find other similar blogs that they might enjoy. One of the unintended consequences of BlogCode is that Read more
Tomorrow, Friday 10th March see the launch of a project that we initiated 15 months ago by inviting Bristol City Council to jointly pitch for funding from the ODPM e-Innovations fund. CampaignCreator was conceived as a way of levelling the playing field of community voices. Many grassroot campaigning groups were Read more
Cllr Bob Piper, the author of one of the more entertaining councillor blogs, wrote a very interesting post about loyalty to the "party" a couple of days ago. I think it must be weighing on his mind because today he follows up with another post on the relevance of political Read more