Local Democracy Bytes and friends held our first Maker Day in Leeds on Friday 11th September 2015. We brought together digital makers, local government officers, open data advocates, councillors and activists to work on three of our Local Democracy Design Challenges.
The challenges were:
- Access to decision makers - How can we encourage real contact between those making the decisions and those affected by them?
- Voter information - How can we ensure that voters in local elections get the facts and figures that they need to make an informed choice?
- Digestible democracy - How can we present local decision making so it’s less obscure like modern jazz, and more popular, like rock and roll?
Our aim was to turn our discussions around local democracy and digital into some practical tools that we can all use to make democracy work better for us. It was a really inspiring and creative day. Together we came up with ideas for new digital tools, made a demo local hustings site, mapped decision making processes, planned Ward Walkabouts, looked for ways to involve young people in councillor induction and carried out some guerilla user research on the streets of Leeds. We also talked a lot, got to know each other, and made a commitment to carry on working together.
You can find lots of useful links and info from our Maker Day on the Notwestminster web site:
Huge thanks to everyone who took part, to the other organisers - our friends at LocalGov Digital Makers and Democracy Club - and to the #Notwestminster participants who supported us from afar. Thanks also to LocalGov Digital for letting us take over LocalGovCamp Friday.
Look out for another Local Democracy Maker Day at the Notwestminster event in February 2016.