As discussed in my TEDx talk, my prior experiences in formal politics (ie. working with the Mayor of Halifax, and getting involved in Student Government) had left me feeling like the basic relationship between citizens and their governments was built upon antiquated foundations. As I graduated from Studio Y I felt more committed than ever to focusing my energy on helping support innovations in democracy, governance and policy making.
Lucky for me, as project coordinator for the Make Democracy Better project for the Halifax-based Springtide Collective I had a chance to do a deep dive into what these emerging new futures might look like.
At its core the project was about sourcing and prioritizing ideas for democratic reform and gauging citizen buy-in and building a community in support of these ideas. My role was to design and implement a multi-faceted strategy to accomplish this goal, working on a limited budget and a four month timeframe. This included:
- Dialogue interviews with 20 public servants, journalists, politicians, and civil society leaders to identify underlying trends and dynamics shaping our political sphere
- In person events (eight of them) hosted with community partners from all across Nova Scotia to introduce ideas to citizens in plain-language format and get their input into prioritizing them
- An online deliberation using a tool called Ethelo to broaden the audience engaged in helping set priorities
Emerging from the process we identified 5 critically important ideas and engaged almost 500 people in total. Furthermore, as an organization Springtide developed a stronger analysis of the benefits and challenges of various proposals for democratic reform, and broadened the base of community members engaged in the conversation.
The project had a transformative impact on me personally by challenging me to critically evaluate about potential solutions to enhancing democracy. It was a true pleasure to work with Mark Coffin and the Springtide team as well as those from EngageNS.
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