Engage received a Catalyst grant from the Royal Society of Arts to follow-up an intervention at the Engage Seminar Series 2016 entitled Reclaiming the City: from consumer and stranger to citizen and neighbour. The seminar was called From Consultation to Collaboration and was delivered by Dr Christian Iaione from Guglielmo Marconi University in Rome and Director of LabGov at LUISS Guido Carli.

A video of the speech is available HERE

A number of people present on the night were inspired by the content of Christian’s contribution and have been meeting since to explore how we might  take his ideas further. One idea was to examine the actual experience of Liverpool, gathering evidence to see how our governance system is working for ordinary people. The community of the Dingle was chosen because of it’s long history of civic engagement. That work of interviewing people and learning from their experiences and expertise is continuing.

A brief blog has been written for the benefit of the RSA and can be read HERE. It was published on 17th August 2018 and was compiled by Julia Zielke from the University of Liverpool.

As more evidence is gathered and people’s views listened to we will make sure we share progress with anyone who is interested. At present though we continue to explore, listen and unlearn what we thought we knew.