This is a story of a journey to power and participation, a journey to self-rule, in Stroud. An aspiration for this work to become the latest chapter in Stroud’s long ‘ourstory’ of power and engagement, standing up for what’s right and what’s required. We are standing on the shoulders of our local giants, and we are honoured to be in service to our community in these times.
A lot can happen in a year, and in this blog we capture the pivotal moments.
By Jo Woolfall, in collaboration with Lucie Brown
(and on behalf of Adrian, Roz, Michelle, Rich and Claire).
About Jo: Parent, yoga and meditation teacher, former market research director in the nonprofit sector, with a focus on comms and strategy. Moved to Stroud in 2019 from southeast London. Co-founding XR Families and Climate Action Lewisham in 2018, and worked with a local councillor in declaring a climate emergency (February 2019, one of the first few boroughs to do so). Co-coordinator of Parents for Future Stroud and co-chair of Stroud Commons.
About Lucie: Worked across the nonprofit / charity sector for the last 15 years in communication, partnership and campaign management roles. A long-time activist and organiser, Lucie has spent time in human rights work in Palestine and Sri Lanka and was part of the team to establish XR Families. Co-coordinator of a large local group in Walthamstow in 2019; co-coordinator Parents for Future Stroud and currently working as co-director/movement organiser in the national team.
Scene 1: Curio Lounge, November 2022
It was a dark – but not stormy – night. We (myself, Lucie and another volunteer Nicola Hill) were having a Parents for Future coordination meeting at Curio Lounge, whilst our children were at ‘Dramarama’ after school club, down the road at Lansdown Hall. We had recently formed our Parents for Future group in Stroud and were having a check in and discussing an upcoming action for the Warm this Winter coalition campaign.
I had been becoming increasingly curious about Citizens’ Assemblies as a form of activism, and asked if there might be interest in exploring it as a group. Having gained some experience in local climate action groups, I wondered if it might be a way to unlock the power and agency needed to meet the times we are in – specifically, climate and ecological and systemic breakdown. Somehow (and for many reasons), collectively, we’re not getting the message that no-one is coming to save us, no-one else is sorting it out. It is up to us. The particular form of democracy we are used to in the UK is not true democracy. Our political systems are broken. Building local resilience is vital. And maybe participatory democracy is the way to start to take matters into our own hands.
Lucie’s response: (a big) Yes. Let’s try it.
Scene 2: Pathways to Participation, January 2023
Having agreed we would take this on, we began a series of presentations in the new year to explore this possibility with our local group of concerned parents. We called it ‘Pathways to Participation’ (we later added, ‘ and Power’) and provided a flavour of the context, the lack of sufficient collective action to date, and forms of participatory democracy which were emerging more into the mainstream, and already extensively and effectively used in many places and countries around the world.
The response from our local PFF group was profoundly affirmative. There was a sense of relief that we were going to engage in something which would go deeper and with more possibility of bringing about the kind of change and the scale of change needed. It also felt positive – a strand of work which would be oriented towards bringing the community together and bridging division. This felt particularly powerful post pandemic, with all its ensuing polarisation.
Scene 3: A supermarket, January 2023
During a supermarket shop one afternoon, I bumped into a dear friend Skeena Rathor (co-founder of Visioning XRUK, Co Liberation, and Being the Change – as well as a former Labour councillor for Stroud Central). We swapped updates, and she mentioned a new project on the horizon in Stroud – which has since become Stroud Commons. I knew the person who was leading this initiative (Dave Darby) and had been impressed by his work. Not realising he had moved to Stroud, I got in touch. Shortly afterwards, on an email thread I had been copied into, I read a message from a Roz Savage which mentioned she wanted to work on Citizens’ Assemblies.
The mycelium network was beginning to reveal itself. We arranged to speak, discovered we were thinking along synergistic lines, and Roz introduced us to her collaborator, Cllr Adrian Oldman. Our core team was formed. And what a team – Roz and Adrian bought with them a wealth of local and central governmental experience, activism, and community engagement. (See their biogs here.)
Scene 4: All roads lead to Rich and Claire Wilson, February 2023
If you want to start a project about participatory democracy, it turns out Stroud is a great place to do it. Two of the UK’s foremost practitioners and experts in participatory democracy live in the heart of Stroud, and just down the road from Lucie. Rich and Claire had popped up on our radar through community contacts; and Roz and Adrian had also been encouraged to make contact.
Claire and Rich and their two boys have been living in Stroud for twelve years. In 2015, Rich stood as an independent candidate for MyStroud MP to start a debate about democracy. The campaign asked, how can we have a better democracy? It had three pledges – ‘listen to the people, respect the people, trust the people.’ Oh yeah! We can get behind that ..
Scene 5: Around the kitchen table, March 2023
In March, six of us (Adrian, Claire, Jo, Lucie, Roz and Michelle from our wider Parents for Future group, who coincidentally knew Rich and Claire from a previous life in London) met around Lucie’s kitchen table to share ideas and make use of Claire as a sounding board for next steps. We were heartened by how impressed Claire was at our grasp of Citizens’ Assemblies and similar ‘low-fi’ assemblies such as People’s Assemblies or community assemblies. Her warmth, encouragement and affirmation was deeply appreciated, and we began to formulate plans for bringing this proposal to a wider audience of community leaders and organisations.
With Rich and Claire as allies for this project, we’d hit the Citizens’ Assembly jackpot. After five years of climate action and not seeing much depth or breadth of impact, I remember saying, ‘it feels like Christmas!’ (With the caveat, or perhaps a poor attempt at a slogan: ‘Participatory democracy is for life, not just for Christmas ..’)
Scene 6. Down the pub, March 2023
Everything happens in the pub. It’s a cornerstone of building friendship, good will, sharing good times and deepening connections. Thank god for the pub; and for Rodda and The Crown and Sceptre. Lucie and her partner had made a spontaneous decision to go out for a pint on a Saturday night. They ended up at a table with Gail Bradbrook (co-founder of XR and Being the Change, amongst many other projects) and her partner Toby, and instantly formed a connection, which has continued in ongoing friendship, support and sharing resources about community action and strategy (as well as late night dancing). Gail encouraged us in our work of reaching out to community leaders, and our aspiration to create a strategic alliance at the local level, representing the breadth of the community in Stroud District. A primary purpose of this group would be to explore forms of participatory democracy as a tool for navigating the consequences of global heating and climate and systemic breakdown, at the grassroots.
The mycelium network was continuing to weave its magic, making this less a journey that we were driving and controlling, and more a path unfolding and emerging in its own way and its own time.
Through Gail, Lucie was invited to attend a course with Jem Bendell on ‘Leadership & Communication during Societal Collapse’ in April, and this gave us further courage and conviction to be willing to name this as the context of our work. Our invitation to local leaders had included the word collapse, and when it was flagged this might create issues with staff at the council being able to join such a meeting, we held firm. In due course, the person invited was able to join our meeting, and we celebrated it as a mini moment of progress.
Alongside this work, our Parents for Future group continued to engage with the Warm this Winter coalition campaign, and this also enabled us to be developing relationships with local groups working at the intersection of fuel poverty and climate breakdown, and reaching a wider demographic through our events and campaigns.
Scene 7. Lansdown Hall, May and back again in October 2023
In May, we convened a round table of community leaders and organisations to raise the possibility of participatory democracy and Citizens’ Assemblies. The positioning of this session was: ‘building community bonds and resilience in the face of multiple crises, and specifically climate and ecological collapse, through enabling and creating pathways for participation, leading to collective leadership and decision-making’. Alongside our core team, Rich was able to join us. Our invitation list comprised fifteen local organisations, and we clearly owned its limitations. Building this network is an ongoing work in progress, being carried out on a voluntary basis (and often late at night, when the children are in bed). Our group – somewhat intimidating in their level of skill and experience – was enthused, supportive and encouraging, keen to engage, and we agreed to meet again in October to continue the exploration, once more with Rich as an expert resource. It was, and continues to be evident, that inclusivity and representation (beyond ‘the usual suspects in a room’) is of the utmost importance for this work.
At the following meeting in October (with a criteria listed here), named for now as a ‘Collapse Aware Leadership Group’, for whom a proposed remit is to build ‘leaderful, compassionate, resilient communities in the face of climate, ecological and systemic breakdown’, we looked more specifically at the landscape in Stroud, and the ‘treasure map’ we were continuing to build (now representing around thirty organisations). We shared our research on similar initiatives and new democracy networks around the UK and the world. We spent time in small groups looking at resilience from the perspective of ‘power and participation’, wellbeing, and practical resilience. Rich highlighted ‘governance chambers’; governance which runs in parallel with the state. This points to the opportunity to build new forms of people-led governance, in which we make decisions on the issues which impact us, whilst simultaneously witnessing the crumbling of the state. It was beginning to feel very exciting. Rich was also clear in his encouragement: that we didn’t need permission from him or other ‘authoritative sources on Citizen’s Assemblies’ to do this. We know best what will work for Stroud, and to ‘learn by doing’.
Scene 8. The Centre for Science and Art, November 2023
There was a clear appetite in the room to hear more from Rich, so on Tuesday November 28th, almost exactly one year to the day since that first glimmer of an idea was seeded, we met again to hear more about the processes and applications of Citizens’ Assemblies and how to get involved.
The event was called ‘Self-Rule: why now is the time to do democracy ourselves’.
Rich is an outstanding and engaging presenter. He is steeped in knowledge and passion – and humility. Open and transparent about the ongoing learning process of citizens’ assemblies, he led us on a captivating presentation: setting the scene with attitudes among the general public towards current political structures and alternative structures; the impact of citizens’ assemblies in other regions and countries; the concept of a standing or rolling citizens’ assembly; encouragement for unlearning old politics (such as believing in our power and legitimacy); and creating visible, claimed spaces for people-led governance. He also included this incisive quote from Yuval Noah Hurari: “In this time of crisis, we face two particularly important choices. The first is between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment. The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.” The stakes are high and the choices are stark – consciously and wholeheartedly stepping into citizen empowerment and global solidarity is essential and inspiring.
And there was an overarching message: when held well, Citizens’ Assemblies are transformative. They create the conditions for going deeply into finding commonality, bridging differences and division, and generating meaningful community-led recommendations. Rich would go as far as to say that when Citizens’ Assemblies are held well, they are about love.
The audience was likewise outstanding, steeped in knowledge, experience, passion and humility. We were fortunate to have some of Stroud’s most experienced social justice leaders, organisers, facilitators, and change-makers in the room.
Following the presentation from Rich, we came together in small groups for interactive sessions on visioning this work, how we would want to work together, and how to get involved. Some of the themes emerging were making this project and the work of local politics ‘sexy’ and compelling; the importance of power literacy and connecting with/learning from assemblies in the global south and other networks; ‘getting things done’ in order to generate energy to pull in people who might not otherwise get involved; and the importance of outreach, inclusion, visibility, accessibility, and support with navigating conflict. We are holding the question: if self-rule is the goal, how do we get there? The spark has been lit, and these conversations will be ongoing.
Testament to the interest in the room, once the meeting had concluded, many guests stayed to chat and make connections. Rich discovered that Paul Kahawatte, who was representing local organisation Navigate, facilitation for social change, was an associate with one of his all-time favourite facilitators. There was a buzz and an energy which was inspiring and nourishing. The ‘times may be a-challenging’ – we have steered way off course – but people power rocks. If we can increasingly lean into our collective power, wisdom, skill and good humour in learning how to build systems of ‘self-rule’ from the grassroots up, we might just make it, and we will definitely have a good time in the process.
The stars are well-aligned for Citizens’ Assemblies and participatory democracy in Stroud.
We feel like we’re on the edge of something big.
And of course, we went to the pub for a few drinks afterwards.
To be continued . . .
To find out more, email: pffstroud@gmail.com
And look out for www.stroudassembly.com
Note: We are grateful for and delighted by the many moments of serendipity and support coming forward. It feels ‘meant to be’, and it’s an honour to be able to work on a project like this. It is a balm, and a place of sanity, in turbulent times. And it has taken huge amounts of dedicated and committed work, all of which has been offered freely (and therefore has incurred an equally huge amount of invisible sacrifice). For this work to have the best chance of success – and to be able to ‘walk the walk’ on inclusion – it needs remuneration. Voluntary work is beautiful, if your financial circumstances allow, and it brings its own rewards. Long may the gift economy continue. And if your financial circumstances don’t allow, or don’t allow over the long-term, then in this brave new world we are longing to create, it needs to include the creation of paid livelihoods and jobs.