Andrea Cornwall looks to the Beacons

One of my memorable experiences of public involvement in the UK came during a battle fought and lost by parents at my children’s primary school.

Plans were afoot for a major waste recycling unit to be built directly behind the school. Parents and residents mobilised to stop it. A public meeting was held by the Council to ‘consult’ with parents: actually a didactic session with a series of ‘experts’ justifying the scheme. The Council were unprepared for what they were to encounter. One by one, a stream of highly articulate professionals stood and voiced their concerns: an environmental chemist, a planner, an expert on pollution. Flummoxed, the Council representatives blustered and then closed the debate.

As we spilled out into the street, a small group lingered to grumble, contemplating the only viable way of making their voices heard: a carefully orchestrated piece of direct action that would grab the attention of the media.

From words to action

What the Beacons Centres offer is a way of channelling this expertise and social energy into constructive engagement with government – helping government to listen, as well as facilitating citizens to engage. This is something Britain badly needs.

We’ve had more than a decade of professed commitment to public involvement. But what many communities have experienced has been what one resident on a south London estate called the Mushroom Syndrome: ‘Keep ‘em in the dark, and feed ‘em on sh*t’. Yet pockets of excellence exist all over this country. Innovative public servants doing things differently, community groups using their imagination and creativity, the Great British Public moving from bystander to actor. It’s these experiences I see the Beacons Centres nourishing, promoting, extending, providing Britain with some genuinely new and different ways of engaging its citizens.

Lessons from change

New democratic spaces have opened up in many countries in recent years, giving millions of citizens and their representatives opportunities to engage more directly in shaping public policies and monitoring their implementation.

In India, social movements have activated the Right to Information, using it as a tool to leverage greater accountability from government. In Brazil, the right to participate is enshrined in what has been dubbed the ‘Citizens’ Constitution’ of 1988. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians participate as representatives of organized civil society in the participatory democratic institutions that form part of the executive branch of government.

In contexts as diverse as Bolivia, Nigeria and the Philippines, the state of participatory practice at local government level is often several steps ahead of what one might find in most places in the UK.

Landmark potential

The Beacons can change all this. Learning from what works and experimenting with new ideas, connections and possibilities, these centres have landmark potential.

They simultaneously expand the possibilities of the academy well beyond its conventional borders: making universities living centres of learning and change that are rooted in communities; engaging the media, including exciting uses for new technologies; and linking with British artistic and media institutions that are so much part of our heritage – the BBC, the British Museum and the National Museum of Wales.

Different language

So often in the past, the language of public policy and of academic social and natural science has been dry and inaccessible. The Beacons all speak to the need for a radical shift in the way researchers communicate with publics about issues of science, technology and governance.

Rather than telling people what they ought to know, simplifying ‘the facts’ to convey them to the uninformed public, the Beacons recognise that knowledge and power are deeply intertwined. They also acknowledge that we need changes in relationships, opening up space for communicating in a more lateral and respectful way, and making new connections between science and everyday life at all levels. These connections are vital to be able to communicate in inspiring ways, to really ‘speak to’ people and get them interested.

The innovative feel of the Beacons project bubbles out from the descriptions of the projects. I read with growing excitement, noting how very different the language they use is to what I’ve heard and seen before. It sets a completely different tone, one that is refreshingly different. Passion, curiosity, creativity, dynamism, imagination... exciting words for an inspiring project.

These centres will doubtless become beacons of hope indeed for those who believe genuine public engagement is necessary if British democracy is to be renewed – and that the time is ripe for this process of renewal. Maybe, in years to come, we might even have a few things to teach the Brazilians.

Andrea Cornwall is a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies in Brighton. She has worked on public involvement
in the UK and internationally for the last twenty years