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Welcome to my blog. Im always looking for new ways of bringing people together to build campaigns. Im always amazed by the energy and passion of the people I meet and the different skills they bring to making change happen - the ideas we try out, the campaigns we work on, the relationships we build together. I want to share those stories with you. I hope you enjoy them!

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Shaping place through identity and participation: fostering active citizenship

We need to reclaim the national story about what it means to be English, British, European, etc from the extremes that impose the threat of the “Polish plumber” or the “terrorist Turk”. We need to go beyond this nostalgic nimbyism and foster a more inclusive civic pride which recognises the fluidity and diversity of the world we live in, where social justice is where we want to go and participatory democracy is how we want to get there.

Globalisation can render people powerless and anonymous, while our institutions seem more and more remote. What’s left of the “grandeur de la France”? Through his nationalist sirens on French identity, Sarkozy evangelises a nostalgic nimbyism, echoing what Bauman describes as “the promise of freedom from fear and the tranquillity of the chez soi” or the “craved-for cosiness of belonging is offered at the price of unfreedom”.



Through a participative and decentralised offer, we can embrace an inclusive civic pride, from devolved decision making in the regions to participative tools to shape national policy. Indeed, identity and solidarity are created and sustained when people can work together to shape their communities thus developing a shared sense of ownership.

We need to combine idealism and pragmatism, turning the interconnections of individual self-interest into a common endeavour, translating social democratic and progressive values into the narrative of everyday experience and linking rights and responsibilities through the lens of pro-social behaviour.


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