The Royal Borough of Kingston has been running their version of participatory budgeting, known as Your Money You Decide for many years. A small grants programme in the south of the borough uses a market stall format to spend £30,000 of public money. Any community or voluntary group, club, residents association or Council department can… Read More
Themes
The central themes dealt with by Participatory Budgeting
Academy of Urbanism on participatory budgeting as aid to urban development
The Academy of Urbanism is well used to reporting on the innovations that bring about an urban renaissance. In an article by Katy Hawkins the Academy now looks at participatory budgeting (PB) in the USA, the UK and more widely. Following exciting developments in PB in Paris, where PB is being used to spend €426m… Read More
Cheylesmore residents spend nearly £50,000 on community projects
A £48,600 fund for community projects in Cheylesmore, a suburb of Coventry, has been allocated to groups and initiatives after residents came up with ideas about worthwhile projects for the area – and had the final say on the projects they wanted to see funded. Now a number of local groups are set to benefit… Read More
Hebrides Islands rural bus service tendering uses PB to involve residents
On the 20th July 2015 the Island News and Advertiser reported how the community will be involved in deciding how to invest public money in rural bus services in very remote islands of the Outer Hebrides (also known as the Western Isles or Na h-Eileanan Siar in Gaelic). The project, one of the first in… Read More
Well London uses Participatory Budgeting to improve health and wellbeing
Running over a number of years the Well London health and wellbeing initiative has been using participatory budgeting styled events to select projects for support, using money from the National Lottery and other local funding sources. Across a wide number of areas hundreds of people have been engaged in projects that bring wellbeing. As reported… Read More
Up2Us Oldham Big Local… £14,000 up for grabs
People from Clarksfield, Greenacres and Littlemoor were invited to Big Local Oldham’s Up2us event on Saturday 27th June 2-5 at Elim Fountain of Hope Church, Greenacres Road. This was an exciting opportunity for local people to find out about activities in the area and decide how funding will be spent in their own neighbourhood. At… Read More
£18,000 for YOU to spend in the Gallatown area
Gallatown YOU Decide is a new opportunity to increase, continue and support community activities in the Gallatown area. Gallatown is a suburban village outside Kirkcaldy, Fife. In June this year residents of Gallatown had the chance to decide how to spend £18,000 to support opportunities for people to become more creative and take part in… Read More
Democracy has become the political version of kale, almost everyone says its good, but few want to eat it
In a new blog entitled ‘let them eat kale’ by Peter Bryant, PB Partners associate and head of community engagement at Our Life, he argues that DevoManc is an excellent opportunity to practise devolved democracy. In a memorable quote by Josh Lerner, director of the North American PB Project: "democracy has become the political version… Read More
Iceland adopts participatory democracy over austerity as its solution to the banking crisis… and it works
Iceland was one of the worst hit countries of the international banking crisis of 2008, with many of its major banks bankrupted. Since then, whilst going through some hard times it has been recognised as bouncing back. Participatory democracy, including forms of participatory budgeting, has been at the core of its strategy to re-engage citizens… Read More
Boston engaging thousands of young people in democracy
The City of Boston is making history for a second consecutive year as the city has allocated $1,000,000 of Boston’s capital funds for the youth to spend as they see fit! This process is called Youth Lead the Change: Participatory Budgeting Boston. Participatory Budgeting in Boston started with a series of public events in January,… Read More