As we move towards the delivery of the Citizens’ Assembly for Culture in 2025, here’s a look back at what we achieved over the last six months

Outreach and Partnerships

Building strong connections has been central to our progress. Since the project’s launch, we’ve worked to establish a wide-reaching network of partners, supporters, and collaborators – from cultural organisations, to community groups, to political leaders. 

Over the last six months, we’ve:

• Engaged with more than 100 organisations across the cultural sector, led by our Assembly Producer, who joined us in May.
• Hosted online information sessions in August to connect with cultural organisations and individuals interested in becoming Assembly Associates.
• Secured £100,000 in funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, with additional funding prospects in development.

Designing the Assembly

Creating a representative and impactful Citizens’ Assembly remains central to our work. The Assembly’s design principles have been shaped through collaboration with citizens, community partners, and cultural organisations, with a focus on accessibility and inclusion.

Key steps in the design process include:

• Developing a detailed sortition process in partnership with the Sortition Foundation to recruit a diverse and representative group of Assembly participants.
• Complementing this recruitment process with targeted outreach to historically underrepresented groups, including working-class citizens, young people, and rural communities.

Adjusting the Timeline

The Assembly is now scheduled to take place in autumn 2025, a shift from the original spring timeline. This adjustment ensures we can brief the region’s incoming mayor on the initiative after the spring elections, securing their full support.

Meanwhile, we’ve begun public engagement through events like the Trinity AGM and Speak Out with Young People. These initial conversations have helped develop provocations that will shape the Assembly’s focus on accessibility and inclusion.

What’s Next?

As we move into the next phase of Citizens for Culture, we’re committed to building a representative Assembly and developing an actionable Cultural Delivery Plan. With strong regional collaboration and growing support from funders, the project is positioned to influence cultural planning and governance locally and nationally.

In the comings months, we’ll be:

• Launching a public awareness campaign to engage communities across the region.
• Hosting summer festival events to spark conversations around ‘what culture means to me.’
• Preparing for the Assembly’s delivery in autumn 2025.

We’re excited to set the stage for a more inclusive and democratic cultural future in the West of England.

Sign up to our newsletter to stay updated on the journey to Citizens for Culture and find out how you can get involved.

We caught up with Martha King to discuss their approach to inclusive decision-making

As we shape up plans for a 2025 Assembly, we are connecting with some of the people who have been part of the journey so far to ask them how they are exploring inclusive decision-making processes.

Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC), a Bristol-based arts and technology organisation, is a prime example of reimagining leadership and governance. Their commitment to creating fair and thriving neighbourhoods has led them to adopt more equitable and democratic practices.

In this piece, Martha King, co-director of KWMC, shares their reflections on how the Bristol based arts organisation are embracing different ways of ‘organising’.

Martha King, creative co-director, Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC)

KWMC is an arts and tech organisation in Bristol. Our mission is to ‘make fair and thriving neighbourhoods together, with arts, tech and care’. We believe in empowering communities and fostering non-hierarchical spaces for change making.

KWMC started in 1996. Back then it was all about democratising access to camera technology and supporting young people to tell their own stories. Now, we work with people of all ages, both locally and beyond, to imagine and co-create equitable futures through arts, technology, and collaborative making.

Being place-based, we want our organisational structure to reflect our commitment to inclusivity and non-hierarchical collaboration. This Easter, with the retirement of our founder-director, Carolyn Hassan, we saw an opportunity to re-evaluate leadership and explore new models of organising. We worked with Practical Governance Collective who helped us transition from a single CEO model to two co-directors as a step towards more distributed leadership.

Our journey towards more distributed leadership ….

During the pandemic, we connected with cooperative Outlandish, who supported our staff to use methods from Sociocracy, a values-based governance system, to embed consent-based decision-making within KWMC.

Sociocracy’s ‘circles’ method provides an easy-to-follow process where people bring forward proposals. All voices can be heard and decisions are made based on a process of iteration and consent, applying the notion of ‘good enough for now, safe enough to try’.  

We support staff to use these tools through coaching and training so they can regularly develop these skills. We see coaching as a way of enabling staff, community, partners and artists to find their own solutions and assume leadership in relation to goals.

Our team of 30 is currently using Theory U, a systemic change method, to develop a refreshed collective vision.  Through active listening and co-creation, we’re forging a future built on shared understanding.  This work is drawing on methods and approaches from the Clore Leadership Systemic change programme that I attended earlier this year.

Looking ahead: experimentation and collaboration

There are many examples of good practices of organisations who are using alternative modes of organising. However, as the recent Arts Professional article highlighted, it is still not common for arts organisations to adopt non-hierarchical structures and use models such as Sociocracy. We are ready to go on this journey.  

We are mindful, however, to make sure we don’t get too caught up on internal organising at the expense of delivering our activities. We are aware we need to keep thinking about how we can increase representation of our local community and other stakeholders at different levels of decision-making, inspired by models of Citizens’ Assemblies and the adoption of citizen juries by places like Birmingham Museums Trust.

At KWMC we are excited to go further towards more radical ways of organising that match our co-creating practices and are ready to experiment, learn and share with others.

Connecting and sharing

KWMC are keen to connect with others doing similar things and are currently in conversation with FaCE about co-producing some talks that share inspirational practice in this field. Watch this space for more developments and feel free to reach out for a conversation: martha.king@kwmc.org.uk

Further resources:

• Find out more about ‘Teal’ or self-managed organisations from ‘Reinventing Organisations’ by Frédéric Laloux.
• There are useful tips on the ‘Sociocracy for all’ website on setting up ‘circles’ and using consent based decision making.
• Dark Matter Labs blogs about organising beyond the rules. 

During the summer of 2024, we hosted a series of Citizens for Culture Online Information Sessions as part of our ongoing journey toward the South Wests first regional Citizens’ Assembly for culture, set to take place in 2025.

The sessions, held via Zoom, provided an opportunity to learn about the Citizens’ Assembly, ask questions, and share ideas that would ultimately shape the assembly itself. Hosted by key project partners, including LaToyah McAllister-Jones from St Paul’s Carnival, David Jubb of Citizens in Power and Emma Harvey from Trinity, the sessions provided an open space to discuss and understand how democratic tools can shape and impact the cultural sector, and how they might address challenges that the sector faces. 

Across three engaging sessions, participants explored the concept of Citizens’ Assemblies, the potential impact on cultural decision-making, and how individuals and organisations in the West of England can get involved. 

Each session covered a different topic. LaToyah McAllister-Jones offered an in-depth look at the assembly’s design, addressing questions about its structure and objectives. David Jubb highlighted the strategic potential of the assembly to impact the region’s cultural ecosystem, emphasising the roles of key stakeholders. Emma Harvey led a discussion on potential questions the assembly might tackle. These discussions sparked conversations and provided a space to reflect on how different people can play a part in this project.

We want to extend a thank you to everyone who joined us for these sessions. Your contributions have shaped the next steps of Citizens for Culture. 

We’re now looking for more individuals and organisations in the West of England to become associates with Citizens for Culture. Associates will play a key role in guiding the Assembly, ensuring it reflects the region’s diverse voices and that its outcomes shape the cultural sector for the better.

We’re also excited to announce the launch of our new Citizens for Culture website, where you’ll find more ways to get involved, including opportunities to submit evidence, participate in workshops, and stay updated on our progress.

Interested in finding out more?

• Read our six month look back at Citizens for Culture
• Become a Citizens for Culture Associate