Exploring Local Authority Activity towards Mainstream Participatory Budgeting
/In this series Katey Tabner, Social Inclusion Officer for PB at COSLA provides an overview of mainstream PB activity across Scottish local authorities.
Read MoreIn this series Katey Tabner, Social Inclusion Officer for PB at COSLA provides an overview of mainstream PB activity across Scottish local authorities.
Read MoreThis one day training course is for people who are new to PB and those who have some experience to share and want to learn more.
Read MoreOur 4th major conference explored how participatory budgeting (PB) is taking hold across the globe and here in Scotland.
Read MorePaul Nelis went along to the ‘Festival of Voices’ in Perth Concert Hall to learn about a new approach to Participatory Budgeting (PB).
Read MoreThis event was part of PB Scotland’s launch of the PB Charter for Participatory Budgeting - the charter sets out seven key features showing what a fair and high quality PB process should look like.
Deliberation is one of those key features:
To explore this further we heard from two contributors and brought more than 60 people together to share their ideas and experiences from across Scotland.
Oliver brought us through the context of PB and participation so far in Scotland, exploring the importance of deliberative democracy where it’s more than ‘counting heads’ and instead about supporting discussion on an equal and inclusive basis - deepening participants’ knowledge of issues in play.
But what’s the difference between dialogue and deliberation?
Dialogue is a form of conversation that focuses on building and understanding and relationships...
Deliberation includes reflection on preference, values and interests...
What’s crucial, Oliver said, is combining the both into the ‘D&D’ model. In the context of participatory budgeting, this allows for more exploration, discovery, learning and scrutiny. It means PB:
Helps to reach decisions that are well justified
Builds understanding and consent for decisions we may disagree on
Can transform uninformed views and preferences through open and inclusive conversations
Can avoid ‘groupthink’ and the ‘echo chamber effect’ (i.e. law of group polarisation)
“Talk without action can be toothless but action without talk can be mindless.”
Sandra spoke about her experiences in Aberdeenshire Council working through participatory budgeting and mini publics. Dialogue and deliberation were key parts of these processes, with three mini publics being run in the Aberdeenshire area.
Participants were paid £50 day and session were designed to ensure people could attend from a range of backgrounds / needs.
The event in Fraserburgh focused on child poverty - a big issue in the local community, where 12 people were asked too contribute their views. Through this process participants developed ideas around the the issue of school meals and food poverty.
Through contributions from speakers and deliberative discussion, it emerged that some children might go home Friday and not get a full meal until the following Monday. One change that came from the mini public process was having schoolsmeals available earlier in the day, so young people didn’t have to wait until lunchtime, as well as developing breakfast clubs with local businesses.
The key learning from Sandra was…
The topic can change - the methods are flexible.
Timings are vital
Be clear to speakers about what they're asked to do
Not all participants can make every session, so don't be disheartened.
“Mini publics one of the most valuable engagement tools I use in my work.”
Following both inputs we came together in groups to discuss what we’d heard and delve into three questions:
How might we use dialogue and deliberation in our practice?
Who supports and facilitates to make this happen?
Where does dialogue fit in a PB cycle?
This led to some great discussions and feedback, with the range and depth of knowledge of PB and other participative methods on display from those in the room. Some of the issues raised included:
The importance of accessibility of PB events
Openness and clarity of information
The amount of time and resources dialogue and deliberation can take
Online deliberation - how does that work?
The importance of a diversity of voices, but how difficult that can sometimes be for public authorities
How much we can learn from youth focused PB
How well do we do dialogue? Do we have the skills? Do we rush into decision making?
The need for good quality facilitation to enable deliberation to happen.
Community involvement in deliberative processes
How do we move from the ‘quick vote’ appeal to PB towards longer more in depth processes?
Ongoing cycle of PB - less about yearly cycles. Getting it into the DNA of how we work.
A huge thanks to everyone to spoke and contributed throughout the day!
You can download the slides from the day here.
The PB Charter sets out seven key features of what a fair and high-quality PB process should be, accompanied by guiding statements which describe what those features should look like in practice.
Read MoreWe attended the Ferguslie Park PB event and saw how local people are quietly using their talents to make a real difference.
Read MorePaul Nelis went along to the Dalmellington PB voting event to see what transparency looks like in practice.
Read MoreFollowing on from a successful pilot event in Speyside, Moray YP Decide has been on a mammoth task to carry out 7 PB events
Read MoreMaryhill Housing Association and YOMO took the bold step to enable young people to lead the PB process for Ruchill and Maryhill.
Read MoreBuilding on a previous successful event, this was an opportunity for Barrhead to have a direct say in how £48,000 should be best invested in the community.
Read MoreThe Scottish Government has published its Community Choices 2017/18 report, detailing the last year of participatory budgeting activity from across Scotland.
Read MoreJointly hosted by PB Scotland and COSLA, the event featured inputs from Young Scot and The Democratic Society, with the loads of questions, ideas and discussions from people in the room.
David Reilly from SCDC (which hosts PB Scotland) kicked off for us, providing some context for the day outlining why PB practice is core to achieving more empowered communities:
David stressed the importance of our decisions and practice being value-driven, and the opportunity to widen participation through using PB to boost our efforts to achieve equality, empower communities through good processes, and make better decisions on public money.
Whatever our mix between online and in-person PB, we should take a co-productive approach with communities having an equal seat at the table when decision are being taken.
#DigitalPB. Challenge for digital PB is how to build in more of a ‘deliberative’ component. Scotland perhaps currently has a bit of a ‘deliberation deficit’.
— £eith Chooses (@LeithChooses) March 25, 2019
Our first input was from Gavin Crosby who spoke about Young Scot’s work around digital participation and PB, highlighting their online voting system has been used for PB processes from North Ayrshire to Moray.
Gavin made it clear that we don’t need to choose between in person and online voting – we can and should do both. They can support each other. He also talked about the balance that has to be struck between achieving low cost + robust vote security + high turnout - and just how hard that can sometimes be.
We also need to compare online with face-to-face PB and not let perfect be the enemy of the good. He used the example of voting security, but pointed out that we’re not talking about hyper secure technology - instead it’s about being robust enough.
Simon’s role supporting local authorities to carry out PB puts him in a great position to introduce the Consul platform and talk about its role in moving towards ‘mainstream’ PB in Scotland.
Simon stressed that digital means of PB, participation and engagement are an enhancement to our efforts and are not the only approach to take. We should not be ‘digital by default’ as this risks a whole host of people being excluded because they don’t have the skills or access to engage digitally.
Consul, a free, open source platform used across 33 countries, has been developed as a single tool for local government participation and is now being piloted with 16 local authorities in Scotland. In Madrid, where Consul has been adopted, PB is seen as the least of what the platform does as it allows a range of different ways people can engage with decision makers.
@Demsoc Digital participatory budgeting in Scotland – learning report gives lots of food for thought for how we embed and mainstream PB locally #digitalPB https://t.co/WZbo3TmSb8
— PB Fife (@PbFife) March 25, 2019
The Democratic Society offers support and shares learning about digital approaches to PB across Scotland. Kelly McBride, Head of Scotland, offered her insights after a day of ‘active listening’, sharing some of her reflections about how we can develop digital PB in Scotland.
Kelly reflected on some of the key issues on accessibility and inclusion in digital PB - and the importance of making sure digital tools don’t add to the barriers people already face.
She also mentioned the recently published report from Demsoc which reviews the last two years of digital PB activity in Scotland, providing valuable learning about different tools, techniques and ideas. Crucially, it also offers some solutions in next steps of digital PB practice.
Leith Chooses introduces an innovative way to actively include members of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities in Leith, but how? David Reilly went along to their event in February and shares all in this blog.
Read MorePaul Nelis went along to the Buckhaven PB event and learned that it’s not easy for organisers or voters as they make difficult decisions about the great project ideas that are presented.
Read MorePaul Nelis reflects on Letham4All’s approach to voting. The community-led group used multiple methods of voting to engage the wider community. At the voting event in February 2019 they had collected 1,452 votes by using ballot boxes, online voting and in person voting. Around 10% of the population had their say.
Read MoreWith chance for discussion and networking, we'll look at why digital is so important to PB practice going forward in Scotland.
Read MoreWe’ve put together this short survey to help us find out what the training needs are in Scotland, and what training delivery methods would be most useful.
Read MoreThe Big Celebration event on Friday 7th December, at The Inkwell, Elgin, was a joyous occasion where everyone who was involved in tsiMORAY’s latest PB programme had their achievement celebrated.
Read MoreIn this blog, Andrew Paterson from PB Scotland shows how PB is a great way to advance children’s right to participate.
Read MoreParticipatory budgeting in Scotland.
Participatory budgeting (PB) is a way for people to have a direct say in how local money is spent.
PB Scotland is developed by the
Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC)
with funding from the Scottish Government.
For more information please contact info@pbscotland.scot.
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