Community Participation and Citizenship

Introduction:

One of the main aims of citizenship education is for people to think of themselves as active citizens, willing, able and equipped to have an influence in public life and their local communities.

Key Projects:

A small number of Transformation Fund projects focused explicitly on citizenship and community participation, for example:

The Active Citizenship Education Project - ACEP engaged partners in producing materials and developing and delivering courses aimed at strengthening democracy.
Sankofa Community Development Partnership engaged with groups from communities that are often excluded, using community development tools to enhance participation and reflection.

Many more projects enabled their participants to become more active citizens and participate more fully in their communities through the approaches they took, such as:

developing learning activities that brought diverse groups together, increasing mutual understanding and communication - Our Kingston Our Future - People Brands;Stitches into Print; Windows for Peace
consulting potential participants from marginalised groups about the opportunities and services they wanted and enabling them to help shape the outcomes- Inspirational Places - St Mungo's ; Transform - Space East; Shaping Places
developing grassroots initiatives to provide learning opportunities in the heart of local communities - Starting Point Community Learning Partnership
building participants' confidence and communication skills so that they could speak up and represent their own interests and those of their communities - In Focus - ToxtethTV; Burmese and Karen Community Reporters - Sheffield

Many projects also developed opportunities for volunteering; for more details see the page about Intermediaries. Other projects encouraged participants to progress to volunteering in their communities. Over 2000 (15%) of the reported progressions from Transformation Fund learning activities involved volunteering.

Lessons Learned:

Many Transformation Fund projects were shaped by community development values - learning, equality, participation, co-operation and social justice - which encourage active citizenship and community participation. Projects built on such values involved:

Confidence-building: recognizing the value of people's experience, encouraging them to reflect on it and supporting them to develop their skills, knowledge and confidence, so that they believe they can make a difference;
Inclusion: recognising that discrimination exists, promoting equality of opportunity and good relations between groups and challenging inequality and exclusion;
Organising: bringing people together around common issues and concerns in organisations and groups that are open, democratic and accountable and committed to social justice;
Co-operation: building positive relationships across groups, to identify common messages, develop and maintain links to local authorities and national bodies and promote partnership working; and
Influence: encouraging and equipping people in communities to take part and influence decisions, services and activities.

Making it work:

Successful informal adult and community learning initiatives leading to active citizenship and community participation need to take time to:

work with local voluntary and community organisations who understand the issues;
listen and build trust among individuals and communities;
communicate in ways that people understand, by using facilitators who speak local community languages or by employing visual communication tools;
educate people in positions of power and influence - for example local authority employees and local councillors - about the experiences and perspectives of people in marginalised groups;
support learners to develop the communication skills that will enable them to get their message across.

Background:

The Coalition Government is promoting the idea of community participation through its vision of the "Big Society". David Cameron has stated: "Adult learning has a really important role to play in encouraging active citizenship. I'm not just talking about what people learn about specifically, but how that learning makes them feel. It means meeting people, discussing what's going on in the world, boosting your belief in what you can do" Adults Learning, May 2010

The Community Development Federation describes a strong community as one with a sense of belonging, where people feel they can influence decisions that affect them and where voluntary and community organisations thrive. This increases community resilience in the face of economic, social and environmental change.

The Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has an active citizenship learning initiative, 'Take Part', to empower people to get involved in their communities and influence decisions that affect their lives. Empowerment can lead to better use of resources and the provision of services that more closely reflect the needs of local communities. Feeling empowered is also likely to increase an individual's overall sense of wellbeing, and may result in engagement with other areas of civil and civic life, including volunteering.

Citizenship education is now a priority for new arrivals in the UK, to support applications for citizenship and settlement, help develop English language skills and contribute to community cohesion.