Levenshulme Market is a social enterprise based in Manchester, that has established a successful community market. It recently held what is probably the first social enterprise led and funded grassroots participatory grant making programme. Using funds generated from within the local community through hiring their market stalls to small businesses throughout the previous year. Money… Read More
News
Levenshulme Market Fund: An innovation in grass-roots Participatory Budgeting
Higher Folds We Decide: Police and community working together
A ‘hot off the press’ video of a recent Police led £20,000 participatory budgeting (PB) event on the Higher Folds estate, near Wigan. One part of a wider initiative that saw PB grant making projects take place across Greater Manchester in the winter of 2014/15. That altogether distributed well over £250,000 for community projects into… Read More
Thinkpiece on democratic innovation published by Foreign Affairs website
In an article published on the 11th March 2015 on the respected Foreign Affairs website, Paolo Spada and Hollie Russon Gilman provide a overview of the development of participatory budgeting (PB) in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil since the late 1980’s. They consider what’s been achieved in the birthplace of PB, as it evolves… Read More
Online tools for Participatory Democracy
Nesta is a respected champion of innovation, new technology and online collaboration. As part of its series of ‘Tech4labs’ briefings it presents a helpful description of the differences between representative, direct and participatory democracy. As well as a review of a number of online platforms and tools for stimulating online deliberation, decision making and networking…. Read More
Windsor and Maidenhead’s online rolling PB programme 2015
Online voting is now open for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead’s online PB-style neighbourhood grants process. Up to £50,000 is available in 2015 and supported by information posted on the council’s website local people are able to vote using an online survey. The neighbourhood PB scheme is geared towards assisting local residents and… Read More
Beyond cynicism and complacency – Participatory Budgeting in Scotland
A new blog by Oliver Escobar, Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh, explores the development of participatory budgeting in Scotland. Oliver is part of a small working group convened by the Scottish Governemnt that is looking to support the role out of new PB experiences over the coming year and beyond. As well… Read More
One Wigan community celebrates through Higher Fold We Decide
Higher Folds is a small community trying big ideas and Saturday 17th January 2015 was a special day in the life of the Higher Folds Community Centre. Higher Folds “We Decide” became a reality and local groups really did benefit. After nine months of consulting and working with the community the first “We Decide” event… Read More
Report on Paris: ‘largest’ participatory budget in Europe
Paris has been experimenting with PB. Despite some criticism the initiative started as too ‘top down’, over years it promises to change the way Parisians engage with their city. Mayor Hidalgo has committed to invest 426 million euros from now until 2020, about 5 percent of the entire city budget. In a recent report by… Read More
New York expands PB in new social housing programme
New York has been pioneering a massive PB initiative over the last few years and this continues to grow. New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito recently announced in her State of the City address that the Council will appropriate new funding in the FY 2016 budget to expand the Participatory Budgeting (PB) process to… Read More
Tower Hamlets “You Decide!”
In Tower Hamlets, a Participatory Budgeting project known as “You Decide!” was carried out across the whole Borough in 2009 and 2010. The Cabinet allocated £2.38 million per year for a two year period (total of £4.76 million) with £300,000 added by the local Primary Care Trust (PCT) in year two. A total of over… Read More