Alan Anderton: Participatory Budgeting - A Course & Resources For Practitioners

Associated NGPA research project

Pearce, Municipal Innovation in Non Governmental Public Participation: UK/Latin America|

Practitioner organisation

Sostenga (a co-operative of experienced community consultants & trainers based in the North Of England and working across the country.) Sostenga members supporting this fellowship include Dr Val Harris (Associate Fellow For The Institute Of Applied Social Studies, Birmingham University) and Dhara Thompson (Associate Member of the Federation Of Community Development Learning)

Contact details

Sostenga LLP, 6 Selborne Villas Clayton, Bradford BD14 6JZ
Tel 01274 817554; email alpict@btinternet.com|; Sostenga website|

Alan Anderton has been involved in a number of initiatives to engage members of communities in public action for the last 9 years. This has included working with Neighbourhood Action Planning Groups, establishing a community development workers network, training voluntary & community groups in partnership working, training voluntary and community representatives and developing mentoring programmes for community activists. He can also call upon the very wide experience of colleagues in Sostenga who have designed and developed training courses in many aspects of community development, conducted research for DEFRA on mapping training for community development & sustainable development, and conducted a variety of community consultations at local level.

Objectives

The project will utilise both the findings of the University's research and participatory budgeting projects in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to develop a practical, participatory learning course and resource packs for tutors and participants that would lead to an accredited training programme which can be delivered across the UK. On January 24th 2007, the University is organising an event to share the learning from the research project and the fellowship will feed into this workshop and assist in the process of thinking through the development of PB in the UK. It would also be possible to feed into the PB reference group that is co-ordinated by the Department for Communities & Local Government (of which the University of Bradford's International Centre for Participation Studies is a member). The recent proposal from Government minister Hazel Blears for pilot projects in 10 areas of the UK, makes this project a timely and practical response. The fellowship would enable the findings of the research project to be embedded into a practical course for potential practitioners throughout the UK, and contribute to the development of an MA module which the ICPS is looking to deliver. This project would enable Sostenga to develop an accredited training course and course materials, and it would enable other practitioner groups to contribute to and make use of the training materials developed. Once accredited, the course would be available to training providers as part of a Community Work Programme, through either City & Guilds or the National Open College Network or both.

Activities

1. In advance of the ESRC fellowship project - testing the water with a half-day workshop open to anyone interested in PB, in November, in association with the ICPS.
2. Learning materials development - researching what resources are available & designing new materials for learners and putting these together into packs for learners
3. Teaching materials development - including session plans, activity sheets, learning journals questions, action plans etc and other handouts. Together with the learning materials these would be developed into a resource pack for trainers.
4. Peer Reviews - bringing together peer review groups to assess a) learning materials & b) teaching materials. We would want to invite PB practitioners from Bradford, Salford & Southampton, plus practitioners from at least 2 European PB projects (and will be seeking funds in order to do this)
5. Workshops - we would deliver a "dry run" of aspects of a PB course to test it out. This would include recruitment from specific target audiences - Bradford is a pilot area for the Department for Communities & Local Government PB initiative and therefore local councillors and council officers are involved in developing PB projects locally together with the local strategic partnership and community representatives, other community activists will bring a local perspective and contribution to the process, and we will work with the University to recruit students whose interest include this area of study. The practical outcomes will be to build understanding and locally progress PB, developing a wider ownership of the process beyond Bradford Vision, and will enable the proposed steering group to attract a range of practitioners.
6. Dissemination & publicity - this would include distributing a number of packs, a conference to provide final evaluation and review of the course & the materials, report backs to the University and the PB Unit and articles about the course.

We feel that the conference should take place as near as possible to the end of the 3 months funded project, and recognise that we will need additional time to redraft and amend the resources following from the conference, and to prepare the course for submission to an accreditation body. This is the reason for extending the length of the project to 4 &/189; months

Outputs

1. a comprehensive list of materials and activities for PB learning
2. peer review / evaluation of materials
3. 4 workshops to test out aspects of the training materials and course
4. full resource packs a) teaching materials b) learning materials - available as hard copies and as downloadable resources from appropriate websites (such as the University of Bradford, the Department For Communities & Local Government, Bradford Vision, CNet and the national PB Unit).
5. preparation & development of a course for submission for accreditation to the most appropriate awarding body (ies).
6. a steering group for maintaining interest / momentum and take the process of PB training forward.