I was down in Brighton last month for the city’s third CityCamp – an exciting event for discussion around issues related to sustainable cities that included everything from inclusive cities to alternative currencies to getting councillors on social media. The CityCamp format first started in Chicago, and has 4 aims:
- Bring together government officials, municipal employees, experts, programmers, designers, citizens and journalists to share perspectives and insights about the cities in which they live
- Create or maintain government transparency and effective local governance using the web as a platform
- Foster communities of practice and advocacy on the role of information and open data in cities
- Create outcomes that participants will act on during and after the event
CityCamp Brighton builds on this by offering ongoing support for the best ideas developed during the event, with an idea called Citizens Agenda taking home the ‘overall winner’ prize at this year’s event.
Citizens Agenda was originally pitched at CityCamp Brighton as two different ideas. One was an online platform for local social interaction, and the second was a platform to crowd-source items for council agendas. With complementary goals, the teams behind these ideas decided to come together to create one pitch, winning top prize with an idea deemed “deliverable, achievable and sustainable” by CityCamp’s panel of judges.
“The problem we’re trying to solve is people are disengaging more and more with formal politics,” said Emma Daniel, part of Citizens Agenda. “We want to allow people in the city to co-produce an agenda item for formal council meetings, replacing the idea of people as consumers of decision making to an active part of the decision making process.”
Citizens Agenda aims to become an online platform that enables local people to work together to create proposals for council agendas, refining ideas, voting for or against them and explaining how submitted proposals affect their lives. The long term goal is for online discussion to reflect discussion already taking place in the offline world, but with a potentially larger and more engaged audience.
“This isn’t about big society, it’s about us reclaiming our democratic structures,” said Daniel whilst pitching Citizens Agenda to the event’s panel.
Citizens Agenda has a lot to live up to. Last year’s winner was a service called Gig Buddies – a volunteer scheme that connects people going to gigs with people with learning disabilities. Since winning in 2012, founder Paul Richards has launched a service which now has 22 volunteers signed up and employs a member of the local community to help run it.
“We’re not changing the world tomorrow,” says CityCamp Brighton co-founder Max St John, “but it’s about working collectively to make a greater positive impact, in new and different ways. CityCamp is beginning to have a real impact on people’s lives in terms of the projects they’re taking forwards and how that has created change in communities.”
Fellow co-founder Anthony Zacharzewski is similarly optimistic: “The third time around it really felt like CityCamp has started to have a life of its own. There’s no doubt now that CityCamp 4 will happen. That is a reflection of the fact that we are starting to build connections between really interested and active people in all kinds of spheres.”
Photos: Sasha Taylor
