WP43 Responsible

[UWE-44] - University of the West of England, Faculty of the Built Environment – Cities Research Centre (Bristol)

WP43 Responsible for Spread of Excellence

[UWE-44] - University of the West of England, Faculty of the Built Environment – Cities Research Centre (Bristol)

WP43 Objectives

• To share and discuss  with European colleagues in the network learning from a network of Champions of Participation that has brought together practitioners from the UK, parts of Europe and the rest of the world to share experience on citizen participation
• To make the learning from this dialogue more widely available to policy makers, practitioners and researchers in Europe and beyond

WP43 Description of work

In  2007, a group of 45 participants from countries across the world came together under the auspices of the Institute for Development Studies to share experience in relation to citizen participation.  They included champions of participation from within local government as well as from civil society and met to explore the challenges they face either working within local government or as citizens outside trying to engage with local government.   The visit culminated in a conference in London to share the learning that had been generated by the dialogue and a series of site visits by participants.  The group included participants from a number of European countries and a report of the discussions is being prepared.  Within the available resources, this work package would invite some of the group to meet with members of the CINEFOGO network to discuss further the common themes that emerged from the May 2007 conference when discussing the challenges that citizens face when engaging in the new governance spaces that are emerging across the globe.  It would build on the work of WP14 and WP 37V and also, where appropriate draw on learning from the UK-based Programme on Non-Governmental Public Action in which some members of the CINEFOGO network have already been involved.  We will seek to disseminate the learning from bringing together these three groups by publishing the proceedings of the seminar and explore the potential for a special issue of a journal (for example, the Community Development Journal)   The work package would make a clear contribution to Theme 3 as it will pick up on themes relating to rules of inclusion, formal and informal relations with representative institutions, the outcomes of participation and mechanisms for the selection and channelling of civil society organisations.
CINEFOGO members with similar interests include: Jude Howell (LSE) and Emanuela Bozzini (Trento) and we are talking to other potential partners
and Roskilde.  We have also secured the co-operation of the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex who ran the May 2007 conference.

WP43 Participants

• [UWE-44] - University of the West of England, Faculty of the Built Environment – Cities Research Centre (Bristol)
• [LSE-43] - London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Social Policy, Centre for Civil Society (London)
• [UGOT-40] - University of Gothenburg, School of Public Administration (SPAGU) & Centre for Public Sector Research (Gothenburg) - from September 2005 to August 2007
• [Örebro-50] - Örebro University (Örebro) - from 2007
• [RUC-1] - Roskilde University, Department of Social Sciences (Roskilde)

WP43 Documents

For documents of this work package, please go to CINEFOGO Outcomes Database and type WP43 in the Search field.