A guest blog by Susan Ritchie, describing her recent visit to China to exchange learning on PB. The Invitation PB Partners supports Participatory Budgeting as a method of improving democracy, community engagement, and wider social justice across the UK. PB in all of its forms (of which there are many emerging) enables communities or organisations[…]
MutualGain are pleased to announce their attendance at the 2016 Participatory Budgeting Conference in Scotland, where they will be presenting a workshop on the opportunities that Participatory Budgeting has to improve public engagement and participation in commissioning. Here, Owen Miller, MutualGain’s Business Development Lead, discusses his experience of Participatory Budgeting (PB) used in commissioning Urgent[…]
MutualGain are looking to host a series of breakfast workshops for practitioners and managers working in housing associations who would like to learn more about how they can improve their public engagement and participation. MutualGain has a strong track record of delivering strengths based engagement training and support, and we would love to share some of[…]
How long is a piece of string? That was my first thought when someone proposed an unconference discussion about how the impact of Participatory Budgeting could be measured. To a degree it depends on the point of view that you take. For public services it usually involves a numerical target e.g. the number of crimes[…]
On Monday 26th October 2015 over 70 people attended the UK PB Network conference in Birmingham. The conference was designed for academics, practitioners and those who want to learn a little more about PB in terms of the process, the results and the successes. Following a series of short, but informative keynote speeches, the participants[…]
As you got ready for work today did you prepare yourself with a nice cup of coffee? A caffeine shot to perk you up and take on the world? Are you one of the many that has moved to decaffeinated coffee for health reasons, and do you still get the desired effect? A.C Van Cherub[…]
This time last year I had a call from the Consultation Institute asking if I would support the North of England Commissioning Support Unit (NECS) to do some Participatory Budgeting (PB). It was a bit different to normal calls from people wanting to do PB – they didn’t have a small pot of money to[…]
This blog builds on the learning from the MutualGain networked learning and support programme which has been tested in two police forces – one large and one small. The visual above captures emerging themes from cohorts when asked what would need to happen to police with, by and for communities: what would policing look like[…]
Those that know me know that I am absolutely committed to learning; I love the idea of us all being critical friends to each other so that we can work closely with those who are providing public services on our behalf. I have been doing quite a bit of work in the NHS recently so[…]
I was challenged recently to consider how the MutualGain programme (capacity building the police to engage with the public differently) reflected a game of football. It was important for me to test this metaphor as it came from a participant of the programme: I wanted him to present with me at the Citizens in Policing[…]
