WELCOME and getting started

Hey 😊 just having a little look at your site 👍😊. Looks very interesting. Looks like it is a good way to develop lots of mini peoples assemblies from different areas and obtain mass feedback 👍..but what do you do with this feedback to further progress?

Hi Danielle

Good question! This is something new that we've only done once so
far. With our Funding Social Care kit, we're collecting all the
data from those who used it and collating this to go back to
Parliament (as they commissioned the original Citizens Assembly).

What we've recognised is that many people won't join this kind of
discussion unless there's some kind of result ie feedback to, or
influence on power.

See this
article in The Alternative ( https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/4/21/how-would-a-talk-shop-work ) for a bit more on this.

And if you'd like to talk more we can arrange a phone/ zoom call.

Best wishes

Bob

Hi, I'm Rosa Zubizarreta. I practice, teach, and research a relational approach to group facilitation called Dynamic Facilitation. This approach has been used extensively in Austria and now in Germany, for sortition-based participatory policy-making. It is a very useful way to encourage creativity among diverse perspectives. If you are interested, you can find more info about it on my site at https://diapraxis.com/home/translations-of-germanlanguage-resources-on-df-and-cccs

Hi Rosa! Great to see you here :D I have your book on my table right now.

Hello Lyn. I admire all you're doing. Please will you tell us a bit more about Site 9? Is there a website? Thanks. Bob

Thanks so much for your kind words, Bob. There’s not a Site 9 website per se I don’t think and everything’s at the organisational stage at the moment but fingers crossed we’ll have some wonderful events etc to offer. If you can add to the mix that would be great!

Lyn Dade
[email protected]

Hallo, I'm Lyn Dade. I'm 70, a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and survivor of many years of political activism. I am not a member of any political party though my heart is Green. I'm in a couple of Site 9 WGs and have asked to be there because of my passion for visioning a new democracy. Forgive me for being linear - it's my age and inclination as I like clarity - but my interest lies in the transition between where we are now - 'elective dictatorship' as Lord Hailsham called it - and where we might vision a future democracy. Because our constitutional and institutional arrangements are arcane and not written down in one place there is a level of general confusion about what they are and where power lies. For example, those calling for 'the will of the people' to be respected re: Brexit appear not to understand that 'the people' are not sovereign in this country. Indeed, we are not even citizens, but rather 'subjects' of the monarchy. I believe the more we know the more powerful we are. I am working with the World Building Team on Site 9 to put in place some talks, staged readings and workshops around what currently passes for democracy in this country so that people are aware of the battleground and start to reclaim 'their' democracy. I have invited Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert, both of whom I have known for 30 years, to come and talk about why democratic renewal is so critical to a Green future. I am writing today to Anthony Barnett, founder Director of Charter88, for whom I worked in the 1990s, to talk about what has been done thus far on an institutional level and, maybe, to help with the writing of a Charter2020 - a roadmap for institutional reform. I am also planning to organise some staged readings from those who have gone before us - the Levellers, the Chartists, Tom Paine, the framers of the American Revolution. And finally I'm hoping to introduce the Eye Contact Experiment to the site (see The Liberators) and maybe some Free Hugs. It all begins, for me, with real contact between people - the micro-actions that demonstrate that we are one. I'd love your feedback on all of this. Thank you for reading it and thank you for being. Lyn

Hi Lyn, this sounds great. Two suggestions from me:
* Thomas Rainsborough at the Puteny Debates:
“ For really I think that the poorest 9s)hee that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest (s)hee; and therefore truly, Sr, I think itt clear, that every (Hu)Man that is to live under a Government ought first by (her)his own Consent to put (herself) himself under that Government; and I do think that the poorest (hu)man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that (s)he hath not had a voice to put (herself) Himself under.
* Visually, I find Lorenzetti's frescoes of good and bad government, painted in Siennea at the end of the C14, very powerful. In the latter, there is a woman with Yes and No on either side of her dress who is attempting to saw herself in half.
Hope that's useful, Perry

Hi everyone, I'm Andy Paice - I a London based facilitator convener and advisor for public participation and I work with local authorities. I'm very interested in how collectively we can evoke wisdom and intelligence to see us through our civilisational challenges. I explore these questions with friends such as @rosazubizarreta and Tom Atlee and the work he's done with the amazing Wise Democracy Pattern Language www.wd-pl.com

Hello Lyn,

You are very welcome to ask, but I'm afraid I'm fully committed at present. If I took it on, you'd probably get a reply in about 18 months.

I have two suggestions:
1. Put out the request more generally
2. Get hold of Democracy in Britain, A Reader, edited by Jack and Adam Lively, Blackwell, 1994. I think my copy cost £5. Most of the readings you want are there in one place.

Hope that too helps

Perry