Who: #NotWestminster, a voluntary collective and a free annual event for people who are interested in local democracy, and anyone who is up for the challenge of making it better. It takes place in Huddersfield in February, and has been running since 2015. 2025 was the 10th anniversary event!
The brief: Design and run a workshop with local democracy specialist Jonathan Flowers, about local democracy at the scale of town and community councils.
What we did: Our workshop title was “unleashing local power for climate action“. We developed a structure that focused on reflection, discussion and feedback. We opened with some input, examples and ideas to get the thinking juices flowing, contributed by Jonathan and workshop guest Fiona Barrows (an independent town councillor in Frome, Somerset). They were wide-ranging, from hedgehog corridors and pollinator planting, to community solar and climate councils.
The participants were sat around 3 tables, and their brief was: collectively, as a group around your table, you are the town or community councillors for your locality. Discuss your ideas about taking climate action as a council at the heart of your communities, and flesh out a proposal using the template provided. We asked each “council” to share their planning with the other two, and reflect all together.
The discussions and collaboation styles were very different between the 3 groups, but they were animated and full of ideas, and some great feedback was shared on their hypothetical proposals.
A personal reflection: This will probably be my last #NotWestminster. It was my fifth (I have been going since 2018, with some gaps due to clashes with client events!). In past years I have also run workshops and done lighting talks, and I’ve loved working with the team. Local democracy, while it will forever remain of interest to me as an ordinary citizen, has been particulary relevant all the time I was representing the Co-production Network for Wales. But this year I realised that my freelance path is diverging somewhat, and I don’t have very current examples of practice in local democracy to draw on. When discussing workshop and speaker options with the team, all my suggestions were a couple of years old; I’m not so in touch with people and practice in local authorities, and town and community councils, any more. Such is life and where it takes us. I will always carry a fondness for the #NotWestminster events and the brilliant team!
Photo by Jonathan Flowers