The Big Society Network and NESTA were in Bristol on Friday for the second Your Local Budget (YLB) learning event on engaging people in local budgets and participatory budgeting (PB). It was good to find six other members of Empowering Communities' eighteen month old PB group also at Colston Hall, and some luminaries from the national scene, including Phil Teece of the Participatory Budgeting Unit and Simon Burall from Involve, down in Bristol again after speaking at our Keeping Empowerment Working event on 10th February.
Empowerment Works is a movement of people and organisations committed to building support for community empowerment in the South West and beyond. For more information please visit the Empowering Communities website.
Monday 28 February 2011
Saturday 19 February 2011
Community Led Planning and the Localism Bill – how full is the glass?
Planners, community representatives and people from the private sector – all experts in different ways – gathered in Tiverton on Thursday 17 February for an over-subscribed day organised by Empowering Communities with Creating Excellence, SWAN and Devon Heartlands Community Trust to consider the prospects for rural and urban communities in the new planning environment being created by the Localism Bill.
Chair Jim Claydon, a Board member of Creating Excellence and Past-President of RTPI, set the scene with a welcome for the Localism Bill and the opportunities it will offer. He had questions, however, on whether the reality will live up to many of the good principles behind it, and his mixture of welcome and concern was echoed by the speakers. Their presentations and other material is on the Creating Excellence website at this link, and more will be added. So this is just a discussion-starting sip of what they had to say:
Wednesday 9 February 2011
Share your story
We know that good community empowerment makes a real difference to people's lives. It helps them to solve the problems and barriers that they face and improves quality of life and access to resources in their communities. It has the greatest impact on those that face the toughest barriers, such as single parents, refugees, social housing tenants and people who have had limited access to education. We want to tell those in power about the difference that community empowerment has made to people's lives, to explain why it needs to be supported and why it is such a good investment.
Exeter Refugee Support Group appeals to politicians to protect vital services to vulnerable people - call for your support
Following the recent Equal Rights Equal Voices event which discussed how to influence cuts affecting equality groups, Refugee Support Group in Exeter has written to key politicians to ask them to intervene on cuts in services to the most vulnerable, including refugees and asylum seekers.
Refugee Support Group (RSG) is at risk of closure because even though it does not receive direct public funding, charitable trust funding is becoming scarcer because of increased demand and the economic climate.
Refugee Support Group (RSG) is at risk of closure because even though it does not receive direct public funding, charitable trust funding is becoming scarcer because of increased demand and the economic climate.
Monday 7 February 2011
So, how *do* we make the case for community empowerment?
On Thursday 80 people involved in empowerment are gathering at Keeping Empowerment Working to discuss what we can do about all this. How can we make the case for community empowerment? Add your ideas by commenting below.
Simon Burall from Involve will make the economic case for empowerment, Sue Warr from Dorset Partnership for Older People Programme will make the social case for empowerment, and Peter Lipman from Transition Towns Network will make the environmental case for empowerment. You can watch online here, and comment on twitter using the hashtag #empworks.
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