Local Level has begun some preliminary community engagement work with residents in West Ealing, London, as part of a consortium with Playlink and Rethinking Cities. The work has been commissioned by A2Dominion housing, in view of significant anticipated regeneration funding for the area.

In this initial phase, we’ll be organising a walk around the neighbourhoods with resident activists, followed a couple of weeks later by a second walk involving both activists and stakeholder-influencers, which will terminate in a facilitated meeting exploring options and possibilities for change.

We’re hoping that the process will create a culture in which it feels legitimate (not to say routine) for local people to come up with ideas readily and pursue them with appropriate support – especially in arts and social enterprise – with less likelihood that their initiative will be quashed by officials. In our view, this should be how community engagement practice really develops now, in an age where the local implementation of policy comes to be based more on consent and permission than decree from above.

We have been asked by East Sussex youth participation team to carry out an evaluation of a Young Inspectors scheme. They have been working with eight young people with a range of disabilities and disadvantages, who have been trained and carried out inspections of public buildings and a park. The national (Youth4U) programme was developed by the National Children’s Bureau between 2009 and 2011 and their evaluation published last year.

From one side, the young inspectors programme is about improving local services through young people’s participation in service evaluation. From the young people’s point of view, it can be about genuine participation, respect, self-confidence and a set of ‘employability skills’ such as communicating, presenting information and teamwork. Read Amy’s story as an example.

In addition, Local Level will be helping the Equality and Participation team with some of their own development, and supporting our friends at Breslin Public Policy in an evaluation and promotion of the team’s ‘Big Vote’ youth cabinet exercise. Some of this work begins immediately, and will run through until May 2012.

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.

_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.

_'This delightful little object of a book' - Dave Clements reviews Kevin Harris's essay Picnic in the UK Huffington Post.

(See also Alsion Gilchrist's comment on this post).

On 23 November Kevin Harris and Martin Dudley ran a lunchtime seminar for the University of Leicester's School of Museum Studies, on our work with museums and young people looked after, following our report earlier this year.

Our study found consistent, sustained benefits for young people in the innovative projects we observed. Yesterday we emphasised the need to research and develop the argument and business case for museum services, and to call for political support for programmes of engagement with young people looked after.

This essay will be published on 14 November 2011 by Local Level using Bookleteer. 44 pages. Printed in full colour on high quality, FSC-approved sustainably-sourced paper.

Standard edition £10.00.

A limited edition of 50 copies, with a special wrapper designed by Gemma Orton, will be signed by the writer and illustrator, and sold in aid of Crisis for £30.00.

More about the publication here. Online orders can be placed here.

We are carrying out another short evaluation of a project with young people looked after, this one based at Norwich Castle Museum.

About eight youngsters aged between 12 and 19 took part in a week long programme exploring the ways in which their county has changed over the last 100 years.

They visited three different parts of Norfolk and made a video about how the open spaces are managed today.