Five projects, one idea - share power with citizens and the culture changes
Monday 2nd June 2025
I am on a ferry from Cairnryan to Belfast.
At the weekend, I was with a group of people in West Cumbria who were deciding how to invest £100,000 in the creative life of their community.
I’m on my way to Belfast to meet with cultural organisations from across Northern Ireland about the idea of citizen-led decision-making in the creative and cultural sectors.
I am beginning to feel optimistic that something is changing.
This weekend was the third time that the Jury for Joy has met in just over a year. The jury gathers to explore the question “How can everyone enjoy creativity together in West Cumbria?” In 2024, the jury came up with the idea of a Spark Bus to travel around rural West Cumbria to meet people where they are and then gather for the Imagination Festival. These ideas were realised in 2025 by Everyone Here which is the company that has created the Jury for Joy to lead its programme. Around 2,500 people from across West Cumbria got involved with the Spark Bus and Imagination Festival. And this weekend it was inspiring to witness the Jury for Joy working together, people from all walks of life, to develop their next project carefully building on the success of their first.
Meanwhile, in Nottingham, on Friday afternoon, New Art Exchange (NAE) hosted an event to launch a blueprint for embedding citizen-led decision-making into every aspect of the organisation’s work. NAE has been growing its citizen-led model for the last three years. It includes a permanent citizens’ assembly at the heart of the organisation’s leadership structure as well as citizen-led programming panels, the development of NAE’s building, and an exploration about how culture can help reshape Hyson Green, the neighbourhood in which NAE is based. The blueprint, written by Saad Eddine Said, is called RETURN and is part manifesto, part love letter to the idea that leadership can be shared, and that by being shared it can be more powerful, relevant and awe-inspiring.
In Barking and Dagenham later this month, Imagine Galleon Together will see a citizens’ panel of 18 people come together to decide the destiny of Galleon Arts Centre. The findings of the panel will form the vision, values and a plan for Galleon. This is the first time that a cultural building in London will have its future shaped by a citizen-led process. With support from Creative Barking and Dagenham, Arts Council England, and Barking and Dagenham Council, this looks set to be the start of a long-term approach for culture in the borough rather than a one-off event.
Also in June, Citizens for Culture will publicly launch in the West of England with the backing of the region’s Metro Mayor. This project will see a representative group of 52 people, selected from across Bath & North East Somerset, Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, to take part in a citizens’ assembly. The project was initiated in 2021 by Emma Harvey of Trinity Community Arts and LaToyah McAllister-Jones of St Pauls Carnival. The assembly will be held this Autumn and will create a new Cultural Plan for the region and each of the four Unitary Authority areas. And because the project has been designed by citizens, back in 2023, there are already plans in place for citizen oversight of the implementation of the cultural plans across the region.
Meanwhile, in the Midlands, Birmingham Museums Trust is taking forwards the findings of its citizens’ jury to help transform its museum service. The citizens’ jury brought together a diverse group of Birmingham residents earlier this year who delivered thoughtful, grounded, and an inspiring plan that reimagines the relationship between a cultural institution and the people it serves.
Across these five projects, something is happening that is more than just another round of cultural engagement. Communities aren’t being invited to comment on decisions already made – or choose between predefined options - they’re leading and making decisions up front about what should happen next.
About programmes (West Cumbria), about strategy (Galleon), about regional planning (Citizens for Culture), about transformation (Birmingham Museums Trust) and about almost everything (NAE).
I’m engaged with this work because it’s all part of the Citizens In Power Network so take that as a bias warning :)
But I have also spent enough time inside the creative and cultural sectors, over several decades, to know that real change can be stubborn to achieve. Sometimes it feels like things are going backwards because despite great participatory work in recent decades, led by exceptional practitioners all over the UK, the statistics about who engages in culture have shown things to be getting worse rather than better.
Which is why I think this citizen-led work, supported by a range of inspiring organisations around the UK, is worth acknowledging. It’s a glimpse of what the cultural sector could look like if we started from a place of generosity and trust with communities.
If we stop assuming that cultural professionals are the only people who can make good choices about arts and creativity. If organisations stop acting as gatekeepers and start serving their communities. If we shift our leadership, governance and funding models to reflect this.
I’ll leave you with one further reflection.
I spent fifteen years at Battersea Arts Centre trying to create an organisation that was open, porous, generous and that was at the centre of life in the local community. We tried to create a culture in which everyone could be inspired to take creative risks and work together to change stuff. Occasionally, we got close and in those moments the culture of the organisation felt full of potential.
What I have noticed over the last few years of working in citizen-led decision-making processes (like citizens’ panels, juries and assemblies) is that these approaches consistently create that feeling and that environment - an inspiring and hopeful culture.
It can almost feel a little bit like magic. But it’s actually not magic at all. It just feels like that because people have the tools, the space and the platform to work with others, to lead and to inspire each other. It’s basic. It’s just a great process with amazing outcomes.
The more complicated bit is about changing our organisations to enable this process to happen. And I am in awe of the new generation of leaders who are doing just that in the five examples I have offered. Hats off to them!
As with anything, there are opportunities and challenges. But if you are looking to generate a creative and collaborative culture which brings people together, and which creates an inspiring and relevant organisation, then you should seriously be looking at the idea of citizen-led decision-making - not as a one off - but as an embedded model of leadership, governance, programming and planning.
If you are interested in this stuff then talk to the organisations that are leading this change. Or sign up for updates on the work of the Citizens In Power Network. Or you could even join up as a Network Associate.
David Jubb, co-director, Citizens In Power