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Lost possessions


We’re currently finalising some written output from a few projects we’ve been working on, so here’s the heads up for three publications which should be available over the next 4 weeks or so. They’re listed here in the likely order of publication. They will all be announced here and on the Neighbourhoods blog - but if you can’t wait, send us a message!

Lost possessions – a playful essay with photographs exploring the phenomenon whereby people pick up dropped possessions (scarves, gloves, hats etc) and place them in a prominent position for rediscovery by the owner. These are gestures of consideration for people we are never likely to meet and whose gratitude we are never likely to receive. Lost possessions will be published by Local Level using Bookleteer.

‘A series of doors’ Young people talking about the experience of poverty
– this paper derives from the work we carried out with Breslin Public Policy and the Office of the Children’s Commissioner earlier this year. The full report contributed to the OCC’s submission to government on the measurement of child poverty; but inevitably the breadth and sharpness of the young people’s contributions was diminished. This paper repackages much of what we heard, minimising the surrounding context, so that the dominant voices are those of the young people themselves. The paper will be published by Breslin Public Policy.

Social technologies, poverty and ethnicity – this is a spin-off paper by Kevin Harris as part of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation project on poverty, ethnicity and social networks. The project is led by the Third Sector Resource Centre. It is based on workshop and interview comments and will be published by the TSRC.



 
 
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Our report on public consultations about car parking in Dore village, Sheffield, has been published by Dore Village Society and is available here.

The report was based on a public meeting and survey data, and was written by Sarah Clow and Kevin Harris.

 
 
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It's always reassuring to have positive feedback, especially when it's public. We've been passed the latest copy of a newsletter reporting on the consultative meeting on parking, that we ran last month in a Yorkshire village. The editor describes a "very constructive evening which was excellently hosted" -

"Kevin facilitated the initial discussion, deferred and quelled any potential provocateurs effectively and brought them around to the main business of taking the comments from the surveys and turning them into ideas to either consider or bypass... I for one really expected it was going to be a complete bun fight, but was pleasantly surprised by the meeting’s tone and impressed by the way Kevin Harris facilitated."


Source: Spring 2012 edition, Dore to Door magazine.

 
 
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_We recently designed and ran a consultative process for a public meeting on the sensitive subject of car parking, in a large village on the outskirts of Sheffield.

Our work was based on numerous written remarks in open questions from an online survey, many of which suggested solutions and many of which expressed annoyance at inconsiderate drivers.

The process we devised sought to ensure that the meeting was participative and produced an outcome. Residents apparently were expecting a conventional public meeting in which councillors said something from the front, were shouted at by a few worked-up voices from the rows, and nothing much changed as a consequence.

Instead we ensured that people had the chance to shape their own agenda; had the opportunity to augment and comment, in groups, on every live proposition as it was passed round; using specially printed sheets which included a street map; and they had the chance to vote, at the end, on preferred options to address the parking problem. It was local participative democracy in action.

We have now been asked to carry out further analysis to support the outcome of the meeting.