Sep 17, 2014 | Community Engagement, Deliberative, Local government, Participatory budgeting, Sustainability, Terms of reference
This week the recommendations of the first Melbourne participatory budgeting jury were unanimously approved by Darebin City Council. The jury’s final meeting was in early August and council worked quickly to get the recommendations (Item 901 Appendix A 15...
Jul 4, 2014 | Community Engagement, Deliberative, Local government, Participatory budgeting
Citizens juries are a site of adult learning. A common juror response is: There is masses of information coming in! Organisers need to be aware of information overload. At the end jurors always say: We learned so much. There is a big increase in understanding about...
Jun 17, 2014 | Community Engagement, Deliberative, Participatory budgeting, Terms of reference
When you’re putting in the effort to hold a participatory budgeting jury or any citizen jury, you want it to be the best jury possible. The role of the jurors is at the heart of this. Apart from pulling out all stops with catering, what considerations should...
Feb 28, 2014 | Community Engagement, Deliberative, People, place & governance
The pic featured on this blog is the opening slide of a presentation I gave to a VLGA forum ‘Community engagement in Local Government, where have we been, where are we going?’ in March 2014. So here’s a classic piece of graffiti on public interest...
Nov 19, 2013 | Advisory committee, Citizen committees, Deliberative, People, place & governance, Sustainability
After two years focused on the workings of citizen committees I joined a community advisory committee myself. Melbourne’s Greater Metropolitan Cemetery Trust (GMCT) services a huge community. That’s Altona to Lilydale and Fawkner. The diversity of its...
Nov 12, 2013 | Advisory committee, Citizen committees, Collaborating, Community Governance, Deliberative
I’ve just come back from a month in the US, and loved getting into the New York Times each morning. Read a great column by Nicholas D. Kristof giving Twitter a serve in the lead up to its launch as a public company. You may know that Twitter, symbol of out-front...
