UK Democracy Meetup |
This half-hour weekly event accompanies the Democracy Handbook. The handbook is a co-created resource for everyone working to improve democracy in the UK. This event is a chance to share what you’re working on, flag relevant news/events, and make requests or offers.
We gather together every Thursday, from 2pm til 2.30pm. Sign up here to add to your calendar and for an email reminder prior to the event
If you can't make 2pm on Thursday, you can always opt to write down your updates directly into the Check-ins section below. On Friday we'll send a bulletin out to the wider UK democracy sector with a summary of your updates, you can check out last week's here.
You will get more out of this session if you are familiar with Google Docs, including how to use comments. It’s also helpful if you’re signed into Google, if you have an account.
Return to the UK Democracy Meetup homepage
How this works |
Zoom (optional): https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88234220745
Password: Democracy
14:00 - 14:10 Write your check-in below
14:10 - 14:20 Read everyone else’s check-ins and make comments
14:20 - 14:30 Answer comments on your check-in, organise follow-up chats
14:30 - 14:40 Breakout Rooms, for those who want them
Friday The team edits together everyone’s updates and sends them out via the mailing list.
Breakout Rooms |
Feel free to make suggestions for topics for (voicechat) discussion, and we’ll set these up as breakout rooms at 14:30
Check-ins |
Roxana Khan-Williams, Hope Not Hate |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Titus Alexander, Democracy Matters |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Ed Straw, Independent Constitutionalists UK |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Kyle Taylor, Director, Fair Vote UK |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Rose Whiffen, Research Officer, Transparency International UK |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Edward Saperia, Dean, Newspeak House |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
James Moulding, Organiser, UK Democracy Handbook |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
James Baster, Meet Your Next MSP |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Rebecca Deegan, Founder, I have a voice |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
We’re trying to show that political education and understanding how politics works isn’t just about democracy (though of course that is the most important factor), but that it also makes sense for lots of other reasons. We’re working towards an output that showcases lots of different perspectives on this and hoping that some policy recommendations become clear throughout this process. We published the first piece on why it makes business sense last week (all business leaders need to understand political risk) – please do read / share / let us know you’d like to contribute to this project 😊 https://www.ihaveavoice.org.uk/political-literacy-makes-business-sense
The local elections are just 5 weeks away eek!
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Jeremy Evans[r][s], Cofounder, Savvy (trysavvy.com) |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Myfanwy Nixon, Marketing and Communications, mySociety |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Josiah Mortimer, Head of Communications, Electoral Reform Society |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Peter Keeling, Democracy Club |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Liz Crosbie, Project Director, Reboot GB |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
EMail - [email protected]
Twitter @CrosbieLiz
Already signed up for newsletters
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Olive Baring, Project & Communications Coordinator, Shout Out UK |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Jonny Will Chambers, Senior Consultant, Koreo |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Roger Wilson, Director, Unite To Reform |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Kevin Keith, Chair, UK Open Government Network |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Michael Mulvey, Outreach Coordinator, Independent Constitutionalists UK |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
@icuk_live
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Tim Hughes, Director, Involve |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Josh Russell, Forward Democracy |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
What will you try to achieve next week?
If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
Your name, job title, organisation |
Contact details (remember this document is open to anyone with the link)
What are your organisations’ programmes / projects?
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If you had an extra employee, what would you get them to do?
What have you seen or done that everyone should be aware of?
The Week in Democracy |
Hello all,
Welcome to the digest of the UK Democracy Handbook, a weekly bulletin aggregating many of the activities across the democracy sector - including a summary of updates, news and gossip from our Thursday meetups.
In our first month we’ve connected face to face, or Zoom to Zoom, with over 60 people from across the democracy sector, an amazing 152 people have now subscribed to the handbook’s mailing list, plus an additional 35 organisations have signed our public call for networking, collaboration and growth in the sector.
Thank you for supporting our work so far. We’re running this so it can be useful to you, so please do tell us if there’s a reason you can’t participate. Please share your ideas, feedback and any questions you might have via our survey.
Please do take a moment to forward this email to anyone who might find it useful — they can sign up for these email updates here.
Without further adieu, here’s what happened this week across the UK democracy sector:
Policing Bill & Civil Liberties
The Government has launched an independent review of political violence and disruption – consultation is open until 10 May.
Elections
Roxana Khan-Williams from Hope Not Hate, is coordinating a Youth Vote Day of Action on social media on the 8th April. Using the hashtag #OurVoteOurVoice, participating organisations and accounts will amplify each other’s content to encourage young people to register to vote.
Last Thursday, Chloe Smith MP, Minister for Constitution and Devolution, provided updates on the Government’s plans to support the 6 May elections, in addition to their published delivery plan in February. The updates include a commitment to provide a COVID-19 indemnity for local elections, referendums and election staff involved in election operations.
Peter Keeling and the Democracy Club community are busy collecting candidate details this week. Voters in London and Scotland should be able to see their full candidate lists on WhoCanIVoteFor by the end of this week. They also put some Parish councils on WCIVF for the first time.
Rebecca Deegan, Founder of I Have A Voice, is working on trying to show how political education is more than just about creating a healthy democracy, but why it’s important for lots of reasons. Publishing their first piece this week, the IHAV team focus on why having a good grasp of politics also makes good business sense.
Kyle Taylor, Director at Fair Vote UK, is launching the Fair Play Pledge next Wednesday 7th April. Join Kyle and Jackie Weaver at the launch next week, register here. Their colleague Matt is also running a live demo of an e-sports style tool for fact-checking next Tuesday, if that’s up your street get in touch with [email protected]
This week James Baster launched Meet Your Next MSP, a new tool to locate hustings for elections in Scotland.
Jeremy Evans, Cofounder at Savvy, is offering a tool for building custom interactive web experiences to election / civic tech projects free of charge. Back in 2017 they used the same technology to power GE2017.com, a voter advice tool used by over 2 million people in that election.
Michael Mulvey, Outreach Coordinator of the Independent Constitutionalists, is putting out a flyer calling on people to vote for independents in upcoming elections.
The race is on to elect the new Lord Speaker of the House of Lords, with members and the three candidates, Lord Alderdice, Baroness Hayter and Lord McFall, participating last week in online hustings hosted by the Hansard Society. A second hustings will take place on 12 April with the result of the election expected at the start of business in the Lords on 21 April.
This week the Conservative Party launched their election campaign for the May elections.
Democracy Reform
In an open rebuff to the arguments of the BLM movement, this week the Government’s independent commission on race and ethnic disparities has found that, when it comes to institutional racism, there’s nothing to see here. According to the landmark report, the UK is “a model for other white-majority countries”. Maurice Mcleod, Chief Executive of Race on the Agenda, has described the inquiry’s conclusions as “government-level gaslighting”.
Tim Hughes, Director at Involve, highlights their thinking around a “democratic response to Covid” in a new blog series with contributions from over 20 authors on different elements of participation, democracy and the pandemic. Alongside this, they’re full steam ahead on delivering citizens’ assemblies right across the UK, from Jersey to Scotland. Involve are hiring a Director of Advocacy and Communications, to really upgrade their output in those areas. Know anyone who fits the bill?
Rose Whiffen, Research Officer at Transparency International UK, is working to update their Open Access tool, which provides the public with information about who is lobbying our politicians. Rosie notes that this week Transparency gave evidence to the Committee on Standards in Public Life, making the argument for stronger regulation of the Ministerial Code, Lords & business appointments, to better uphold the Nolan Principles.
Professor Lorna Woods and William Perrin set out a process by which electoral harms, including protecting the safety of those involved in elections and the integrity of the electoral process itself, might be addressed in the new Online Safety regime.
According to Kevin Keith, Chair of the UK Open Government Network, a finalised draft of the Terms of Reference for the forthcoming Multistakeholder Forum process is now complete and open to responses until April 6th. Each week in their democracy meetup notes, Kevin has been providing great blow-by-blow updates on the development of the new Open Government Partnership National Action Plan, as well as commentary on the OGN Committee’s reaction to the controversial Policing Bill.
Project & Comms Coordinator at Shout Out UK, Olive Baring, is engaging young people and supporting them to register and participate in the upcoming elections. To this end, liaising closely with teachers, they’re tailoring Shout Out’s political literacy resources to the specific context of each school they’re working with over the next few weeks. Shout Out UK, as Secretariat of the APPG on Political Literacy, are hosting the second meeting of the new group on the 13th May, sign up here.
ERS are readying a campaign to oppose the Government’s plans for voter ID, reports Josiah Mortimer, Head of Communications at the Electoral Reform Society. They’re also supporting the launch of Fair Vote’s Fair Play Pledge and running a campaign to put local democracy and the need for local citizens’ assemblies on the agenda in Scotland. Josiah just helped co-run the Citizens’ Assembly on Climate in Blaenau Gwent, which they state is well worth a look-in.
Researching Democracy
TrustGov are hosting a half day mini-conference on “The Geography of Political Trust” on April 20th. The event will consist of two 90 minute sessions exploring the topic of trust in governance. Find out more and register here.
Funding Democracy
Community organising platform VocalEyes crowdfunds over £300,000. VocalEyes are also at the heart of the UK’s first Participatory City initiative in Nottingham.
Back in 2018 Luminate made the strategic shift from ‘civic tech’ to ‘civic empowerment’. Amira El-Sayed, Principal at Luminate, provides a useful update this week on their current trajectory and Luminate’s recent decision to be more explicit about their objectives and the outcomes they seek.
Co-production Network for Wales report they have just received a burst of successful funding grants, which means they’re now hiring a new Communications Development Officer.
Democracy Meta
With the dissolution of the Democracy Matters alliance, Titus Alexander is rethinking their strategy and priorities. They list a range of projects they’re interested in working on, with particular focus on working on the ways in which higher education can provision and support civic engagement.
Voicebox Cafes, a project funded by the Government Equalities Office to drive women’s engagement in politics, has a wealth of reusable resources left over from the campaign, notes Roger Wilson of Unite to Reform.
Dr Meakin of the University of Manchester, summarises the ongoing saga of the restoration of the Palace of Westminster amid the release of the new, but practically identical, Strategic Review of the Palace of Westminster Restoration, which endorses a full decant of Parliament into new premises. Despite the risk of fire damage and other factors, Leader of the House, Jacob Rees Mogg MP, is apprehensive to endorse the repeated findings of the 2014, 2016, 2020 reports and the 2018 Bill.
Forward Democracy’s next event, Better Work, is next week on the 8th of April. You can get yourself a ticket here. Besides preparing for the event, Josh Russell is working on youth local elections GOTV, in particular, designing a new GOTV resource website and voter reg flow.
Jonny Will Chambers, Senior Consultant at Koreo, is pushing to see if they can create more work placements as part of the Kickstart scheme. If you are a charity, community business or social enterprise let Jonny know as you might be able to get full funding for roles covering 25 hours per work, as part of the Government’s Kickstart funding scheme. Jonny’s covered quite a bit in their weekly update from new books on deliberative democracy to Larger Us’ first open house gathering; take a look at the extended edition here.
This week, Liz Crosbie, Project Director at RebootGB, is working up a draft pledge for organisations of their Progressive Alliance for the next General Election.
Myf from mySociety notes that TicTec slides, video and notes are now online and unrelatedly, that they’re happy Full Fact are getting ‘campaign-y’.
Local Democracy
Relationships Project are teaming up with Tony Clements, Strategic Director for Economy at Hammersmith and Fulham Council, to produce a range of resources for local authorities including their Kit for Councils - a pack for LAs to support stronger community relationships
Democracy Devolved
In depth analysis of the rocky road to any potential Scottish Referendum.
Monday April 12th, the Centre on Constitutional Change are launching their new book, State & Nation in the United Kingdom: The Fractured Union. The book outlines the key trends and forces playing out in the Union and devolved nations post-Brexit.
With a Cabinet Office-led review of Intergovernmental Relations ongoing, David Torrance, Clerk at the House of Commons, has produced a comprehensive research brief on existing intergovernmental machinery and changes up to and including Brexit.
Supporting Democracy
There’s just two weeks left to apply for Spring Impact’s Scale Accelerator. The 2021 programme includes two routes: an intensive consultancy offering bespoke strategic support and a training programme for leaders.
Asks
Liz Crosbie, Project Director at RebootGB is on the lookout for IT assistance. Email for details.
https://joffetrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/JCT-Trustee-Terms-of-Reference-Mar21.pdf
https://www.volunteernow.co.uk/volunteering-opportunities/#/volunteering/5edf7e46dbfe000011898fd6
https://www.charityjob.co.uk/volunteer-jobs/the3million/non-executive-director/733998?tsId=8
https://neweconomyorganisers.org/about/jobs/board-member-treasurer/
https://neweconomyorganisers.org/about/jobs/board-member-new-economy-expertise/
https://apply.workable.com/peoplepowered/j/E3243C172D/
https://www.forumforthefuture.org/executive-assistant-to-the-chief-executive-job-share
https://www.forumforthefuture.org/personal-assistant-pwd-kickstarter-scheme
https://neweconomics.org/about/work-with-us/head-of-campaigns-and-organising
https://copronet.wales/jobs/
https://www.europeanmovement.co.uk/current_vacancies
https://www.europeanmovement.co.uk/current_vacancies
https://apply.workable.com/peoplepowered/j/A86786CAC0/
https://apply.orkable.com/peoplepowered/j/8ABE3F275A/
https://www.good-governance.org.uk/senior-communications-officer/
https://wellbeingeconomy.org/recruiting-now-weall-cop26-communications-officer
https://www.counterhate.com/jobs
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/job-vacancy-editorial-assistant/
https://www.nesta.org.uk/jobs/principal-data-scientist/
https://jobs.lever.co/wearefuturegov/5b6b6efc-a1c2-4852-b781-780fd689d654
https://jobs.lever.co/wearefuturegov/0662e9de-a4f1-4fbb-9b64-3e588d9dbd5d
https://jobs.lever.co/wearefuturegov/00383f12-16c9-4528-a902-c961503bc9e1
https://www.ukonward.com/events-and-communications/
https://democracyhandbook.org.uk/?header=&id=xUgx9tnMQWlClGYE
https://www.counterhate.com/jobs
https://www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi?jcode=1714530&csource=csalerts
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/job/internship-programme-2021-22
https://neweconomyorganisers.org/about/jobs/orgbuilders-coach/
Unsalaried job listings
https://jobs.lever.co/wearefuturegov/e21e7994-e2e0-40b4-99ec-dd3e59bdbd44
https://www.purpose.com/jobs/#job-id-2109044
That’s all for this week, if you’ve found this useful, please forward it on to your colleagues. They can sign up for these emails here.
We’ve been experimenting with the format of this email and the accompanying meetup, if you have any feedback we’d be glad to hear it.
These documents are open all week. If you can’t make our weekly meetup, you can always drop in to the meetup document of the current week and add to it by going to democracymeetup.org.uk.
See you next time,
James and the Democracy Handbook team
[a]Would be great to discuss!
[b]For the avoidance of doubt IHAV is keen to join :)
[c]Hi Roxana! Great call last week, Josh Russell mentioned there's a whatsapp group for this too?
[d]I'll do this :)
[e]Hi Titus, seems you were way ahead of us. Does the Democracy Handbook match up with what you had in mind? What would you change? I'll check out your doc - I'm sure Joe Mitchell would be interested too!
[f]I'm working on something related - designing a political technology masters degree with UEA
[g]Happy to contribute where we can Titus
[h]Can you expand on what you mean by practical politics?
[i]e sports democracy tool? tell me more!
[j]sorry for missing your date change last week Kyle!
[k]I'd not seen this before, thanks for highlighting, I'll take a look!
[l]Pleasure!
[m]currently open for applicants
[n]Thank you for sharing!
[o]which kind of groups are you looking for?
[p]Anyone with an interest in the topic or data or something - very open to chatting with people, I have few preset ideas!
[q]Thanks for highlight these Rebecca!
[r]Good to see you :)
[s]👋❤️
[t]I'd love to know more [email protected]
[u]Great! Will send you an email :)
[v]Thanks for coming, I really appreciate your support. Most peoples' programmes won't change from week to week so feel free to copy and paste! Different audience each week.
[w]lovely, thanks for sharing Myf!
[x]!!
[y]Me too actually!
[z]Do you think it's worthwhile us following their newsletter/getting a membership?
[aa]I don't know much about them - we were tagged in a tweet as someone thought it looked like the sort of thing mySoc would be interested in. Couldn't hurt to reach out to them to learn more perhaps?
[ab]Tweet: https://twitter.com/Declan_JMN/status/1377197480148922369
[ac]Nancy Platts is great :) look forward to hearing more about this soon
[ad]She is! Yes, lots more to come. We've just launched our new steering committee https://politicsforthemany.co.uk/about/
[ae]Have you seen Cabinet Office have started hiring for the roles? (last week's meetup, got mentioned by Joe Mitchell)
[af]Yes! We're concerned legislation will be coming quite soon
[ag]= anti-voter ID = anti-voter-suppression = pro-voter engagement campaign :)
[ah]I assume you've chatted to Compass?
[ai]They've got a new report out today touching on this I think
[ak]What do you need? What do you use at the moment?
[al]+1 - Wondering whether we can help in any way!
[am]Thanks for sharing Olive, I'll highlight this & add to the handbook
[an]great thanks!
[ao]I assume you've chatted to Compass?
[ap]Yes, very closely engaged with Compass leadership since 2016
[aq]Yes, this is great, I think they (re)launched just last week too
[ar]👍