I’ve spent the last couple of months interviewing folks in the UK’s democracy sector — in order to learn about how better networking might help boost our efforts to improve democracy. (The work was previewed in this post.)
I’ve now finished writing up the report.
Here is the full report as a Google Document. This is best for reading on a phone.
Here are two other formats:
Or read on for the summary and list of recommendations.
Previously, on this blog…
The other thing I’d want to see if I was a funder — and as someone in the sector — is that we’re working together, sharing knowledge and ideas, or at least avoiding repeating the same thing or competing for limited media attention. That’s where better networking comes in.
Me, earlier
There’s not much collaboration across democracy-related fields, despite some enthusiasm for it. My guess is that this is due to a lack of capacity among such organisations: no single organisation can volunteer the resources to run a central hub or a coordination role to support a network.
Before diving in to try to create something new, I’ve wanted to do a bit more research into the problems faced by the sector. Happily, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (JRRT) have awarded me a small grant to look into this further.
So which political party has signed up Marcus Rashford?
I’ve long wondered what politics can borrow from sports, and watching Rashford’s campaigning on child poverty brought it to mind again. Sports teams do talent-spotting, training and development well. What can politics learn from them?
Is this what a healthy democracy looks like?
Three months ago, I wrote a blogpost outlining projects I thought necessary to improve the state of democracy in the UK. After many helpful conversations and lots of feedback, I’ve tried to work out what’s most useful to do next.
The TL;DR: A Centre for Democracy — research, evaluation and network-building for the democracy sector. Equivalent to similar organisations in health, education and economics.
I recently wrote a long post about new institutions to support democracy, but I thought a three-minute version might be handy…
Given I now have a bit more time on my hands, I plan to spend my time working on institution-building for democracy.
I’m also planning to catch up with several years’ worth of Things I Really Should Have Read Earlier. The COVID-19 lockdown presents an opportunity to try to get through some it.
Update: This post is 4,000 words long. A very quick summary is available here.
This time four years ago, Sym Roe and I found ourselves working from the converted cellars of Somerset House, alongside the Thames at Waterloo Bridge. Nice spot. We’d joined the Bethnal Green Ventures programme for ‘tech for good’ startups, having decided that Democracy Club — the organisation that Sym had woken from hibernation for the 2015 general election — was worth throwing ourselves at, full-time, in an effort to make something happen.
