This year at the Forwards Festival, Citizens for Culture hosted a panel discussion on The Information Stage, presented by Jemma Forte and titled “Citizens for Culture: Obstacles and Opportunities.” This session, hosted on The Information Stage, aimed to explore how cultural initiatives can navigate challenges while seizing opportunities for growth and community engagement.

The panel featured LaToyah McAllister-Jones, our Lead Facilitator at Citizens for Culture, alongside notable industry leaders: Dr. Thom Oliver, a Senior Lecturer in Politics at UWE Bristol; Ruby Sant, an accomplished artist, designer, and maker; and Saad Eddine-Said, the CEO and Artistic Director of the New Art Exchange.

Saad Eddine-Said highlighted the importance of accountability and transparency in building trust, while Ruby Sant spoke about the role of creativity in sparking dialogue across communities and the role culture can play in healing fractures in communities. Dr. Thom Oliver reflected on how citizens’ assemblies can offer a more inclusive alternative to traditional politics.

“I’m interested in how organisations and institutions can share power and collaborate with communities in terms of decision making“ – Saad

“.…a Citizens Assembly for culture can help artists find work and make more community-centred decisions about what is funded in the region“ – Ruby

“Looking at democracy and government and how it transposes and translates into people’s lives through participation and representation. I am particularly interested in the work of Citizens for Culture and how a citizens’ assembly for culture can create new ways of working, foster innovation, and build trust in politics through democratic processes.” – Thom

Key points from the discussion included:

• The innovative role of citizens’ assemblies in engaging individuals who typically do not participate in decision-making processes. These assemblies can serve as a bridge, fostering inclusivity in governance.
• The empowerment of community members through the provision of choices and the necessary tools for self-education, and removing barriers to access information. 
• The importance of sustained, grassroots actions in driving real change within communities over time.

A recurring theme was the distinction between debate and deliberation. Unlike the adversarial style of parliamentary debate, citizens’ assemblies prioritise listening, reflection, and collective problem-solving.

At the end of the session, the audience was invited to respond to our two public-facing questions: “What cultural experience meant the most to you and why?” and “If you could create one cultural experience for your community, what would it be?”

The responses revealed a shared desire for connection through cultural activities. Ideas ranged from community meals and street parties to multi-faith celebrations and youth jazz bands. A few highlights included:

• “Utilise community assets to create equal spaces to come together. Make them feel like home from home”
• “Street parties for your road and for kids to play outside with each other, all your neighbours coming together in celebration – free and accessible”
• “Multi-faith celebrations introduced to festivals like ‘light’ at the turn of the year, not mid-summer”
• “A series of community meals with intercultural and intergenerational knowledge sharing”
• “Going to a Steely Dan concert when I was named after one of their songs – full circle”
• “Just in Time 2 – youth jazz band in Bath/Bristol getting young people excited about music”

These reflections highlighted how citizens’ assemblies can strengthen individual voices, making decision-making more accessible and rooted in the lived experiences of the community, while fostering a sense of shared learning from the practices of other regions.

LaToyah shared her insights on the session: “I found it particularly useful to hear about the experience of my fellow panellists who spoke so passionately about the opportunity that citizens’ assemblies might offer in the future, particularly as a way to connect citizens to everyday democracy. It feels like we’re at an all-time low in terms of confidence in politics. We need to find ways to centre citizens’ voices in decision-making while reconnecting people with the issues that matter to them.”

The panel was also a springboard for what comes next, the first Citizens’ Assembly for Culture, which meets for the first time this month to begin discussions around shaping how communities can influence cultural decision-making in our region.

The discussion reminded us that culture isn’t just created on stages or in institutions – it begins in everyday shared spaces, with communities imagining and shaping their own shared cultural experiences.

As Thom concluded, assemblies work best when grounded in strong evidence to ensure everyone can be heard. That’s why we’re using Pol.is to gather opinions that will help to define ‘culture’. Join the conversation here. 

At Citizens for Culture, we are keen to explore engaging ways to understand how the regional cultural ecosystem works, how its many parts connect, and the many different roles stakeholders play in shaping it. 

Play:Disrupt are a creative studio designing playful, participatory experiences that help people explore complex systems, spark collaboration, and imagine new possibilities together.

We asked Play:Disrupt to design a game that would help Assembly members understand how the regional cultural ecology works, how it connects with other systems, and the roles and responsibilities of each set of stakeholders.

In our model, these stakeholders are grouped into five key categories:

Authorities, e.g. Combined and Unitary

Advocates, e.g. Funders and Investors

Associates, e.g. Culture Sector Partners

Activists, e.g. Community Partners

Allies, e.g. Business and Development Partners

The Trinity team were the guinnea pigs for a game testing session which took place at The Trinity Centre last month. The session was fun, full of laughter and learning, and a brilliant opportunity to test what we’ll deliver at the first official Assembly session in September.

At the end of the session, we caught up with the Play:Disrupt team to tell us more about their work and how their game design is developing. Here’s what they had to share:

Play:Disrupt were invited to develop and deliver an engaging, accessible activity for the first session of the Citizens’ Assembly for Culture. The aim was to introduce participants to the West of England’s cultural ecosystem in a way that made it easy to understand how organisations and individuals connect, and who does what in the sector. We were also asked to support participants in identifying key actors (funders, organisations, venues, artists, freelancers, infrastructure staff, and production/tech roles) while exploring challenges and opportunities across Bath & North East Somerset, South Gloucestershire, Bristol, and Somerset.

The result of the workshop needed to be visually engaging and feel like a map that everyone taking part had created and could refer back to during the day. Ideally, participants would remember the experience and how it looked throughout the Citizens for Culture programme, and feel a sense of pride in having made something together.

After an initial meeting with the team, we devised and trialled a workshop at Trinity in July with the mission of learning what worked and what didn’t and perfecting the activities ready for delivery on September 14th.

We worked with the Citizens for Culture team to create an engaging experience that promoted active participation and fun. Participants embodied one of five stakeholder groups and developed a cultural activity based on a recent experience.

One group focused on the Bristol Harbour Festival, discussing how their characters could contribute to its success. The other group took a “devil’s advocate” approach, exploring ways to counter negativity and secure funding from the council leader by appealing to his vanity!

Both groups shared their insights afterwards, reflecting on what could have been improved, which helped refine the workshop ideas.

Games and the invitation to play allow people to engage with complex systems in ways that relate to their lives and experiences. Once people have relaxed and become absorbed in activity, they seem more open to understanding topics, landscapes, and systems that initially seem remote or disconnected.

What surprised us most was how differently the groups approached the task. One became very involved in making the event and creating something visually appealing, while the other grappled with difficult questions and challenges. From this, we were able to iron out wrinkles and now have a much clearer idea of how to prepare facilitators, props, layout and materials for the workshop day.

Once you engage people actively in play, barriers are broken down. It’s all about active engagement and encouraging a playful mindset. Our practice is built through years of making interactive street performance, play interventions, and embedded community engagement. The skills needed to encourage people to play together in public transfer really well to civic participation. Our observations and experiments are backed up by decades of international research into play, game design and psychology. We know that active engagement leads to deeper conversations, and play is a surefire way to actively engage and immerse people in the topic.

We are really excited to see how our workshop plays out in September and feel immensely privileged to be offering participants their first opportunity to take part in a collective activity. We hope people have a lot of fun and gain a deeper understanding of the cultural landscape in the West of England, helping the project to involve ordinary citizens in decision-making.

Our aim is to widen engagement, especially with communities that’ve been overlooked. Active engagement empowers participants, encourages collaboration, and allows more voices to share the stage. The Citizens for Culture programme fits perfectly with our ideals; we need to ensure people from all walks of life are empowered to have a voice in civic decision-making, as it enriches the cultural fabric of our cities and ensures that places and services reflect the communities they serve. 

Thanks to Emma and LaToyah for inviting us to develop this with you in an open and collaborative way.Learn more about Play:Disrupt by heading to their website.