Interventions: Context. Challenge. Discussion

Interventions WPContext. Challenge. Discussion.

Participatory budgeting

• Experiments in 1970s/80s Brazil • Famously implemented from 1989 in Porto Alegre• Philosophical commitment on political left to

increasing democracy within a socialist project• Desire to bypass corrupt/clientalist local cliques• Target deprived neighbourhoods for additional

funding• UN Habitat II Istanbul 1996, participatory budgeting

one of 42 best practices for urban governance

Birmingham’s ‘Jaws of doom’

‘Governments must have the resources to implement the projects that participants select.’ (Wampler, 2007, 25)

£600m funding shortfall

• DCLG’s Neighbourhood Community Budget Pilot Oct 2011-Apr 2013

• co-design• exploring the scales at

which decentralisation of services works best• assessing community

capacity and appetite (DCLG, 2013, 11)

Birmingham Cultural [budgeting] Pilots• Running 2013-14• Built on experience from DCLG’s Neighbourhood

Community Budget Pilot Oct 2011-Apr 2013

• £95k ACE/BCC/DCLG• Three case study neighbourhoods mapping onto

Community budget pilot areas• Balsall Heath• Castle Vale• Shard End

• £40k extension from DCLG/ACE agreed March 2014

Yorkswood Griffins

• An historical curiosity• Local rather than city-

wide interest• Local ownership = local

empowerment?

Challenge: Cultural Intermediation pilots• Balsall Heath & Ordsall• Assemble a commissioning panel for each

neighbourhood• Training from LJMU• Commissioning panel meetings – YVJ as expert

member• Commissions• Participatory evaluation – D O’B