Bristol City Council, VCSE, and community members awarded grants to small, community organisations to build their resilience. Jack’s evaluation of the project showed the potential of a huge participatory democratic process.
In 2023, the Council created the Community Resilience Fund to support organisations to rebuild after the COVID-19 pandemic. To make sure the grants went to the right places, the Council included voices of Bristol residents.
The project was an experiment in democracy and participatory decision-making, to explore how decisions could be decentralised to communities. It followed the Citizens’ Assembly in 2021, where 60 Bristolians directed Bristol City Council direction on climate change, transport, and health policies.
Jack was keen to build on the success of the Citizens Assembly, exploring deliberative democracy and citizen engagement with the promise of an even greater opportunity to equalise power, and interested to lead the learning process and evaluation through his research position at the University of Bristol.
Making sure the organisations that most help us can grow
The overall design of the project was crafted by TPX Impact and Bristol City Council, with Jack providing feedback and insights throughout. The project was built to put Voluntary, Community, Social Enterprise (VCSE) organisations, the Council, and community members on more equal footing. Part of the design process was therefore to include VCSE organisations in the designing; they were involved in planning how to have the conversations with the VCSE organisations and local residents.
Bristol City Council were keen to learn by doing, which aligns greatly with Praxis’ combination of practice and theory. At the start of the project, Jack’s role was to bring theories about deliberative democracy to translate theory to practice. With the different skills and experiences brought by TPX Impact, Bristol City Council, the VCSE organisations, and Jack, the team covered a whole host of strengths which created a holistic and comprehensive plan for the deliberative discussions.
Bristol’s culture is at the centre of these discussions
Jack worked with Vivid Regeneration and a team of students from the University of Bristol to evaluate the process of co-designing, facilitating, and holding discussions. Again, the diversity of the groups involved brought a range of strengths. Vivid Regeneration’s relationships with the participants - built over many years of working with the council, VCSE organisations, and communities across Bristol - meant they brought insight on the history and dynamics between different groups. On the other hand, the students brought a fresh perspective, with less experience with theory and the organisations’ histories. Jack’s skills in deliberative democracy brought a theory-based approach which grounded the evaluation in existing research.
Jack and the team observed the participants’ deep appetite for the deliberative processes. The collective conversations gave space for the participants to grow into deliberators with decision-making power. Over the course of the project, the citizens got to act as citizens, getting involved in the decisions that help support and strengthen their communities. There was a real appetite to get involved in future community participatory forums.
The Community Resilience Fund project is one of the biggest examples of community deliberation in Bristol to date. The efforts of TPX Impact, Bristol City Council, Vivid Regeneration, the students, and Jack demonstrate the scale of energy required to meaningfully facilitate a deliberative space. Their work also shows the importance of engaging and including the community in decision-making so that local context is taken into account.