Deliberative Democracy and the Grassroots Forum.

It was cold and rainy last Wednesday and I really didn't feel like leaving home- more like curling up in front of the fire with the kids -listening to their chatter, reading, drinking tea.

My vehicle was playing up so I had to borrow a car to get to Nowra.

What a lovely surprise to see a packed room of people interested in better decision making!

Organised by Huskisson identity Graeme Gibson- Grassroots was a night not just talking about democracy but a two way conversation on how we can work together better with government.

The panel of four provided short  stimulating presentation which gave the crowd  ideas and the confidence to be bold in their own responses to the questions.

The 'world cafe' model was used for the second part of the evening. All gathered got to brainstorm ideas on how we can all 'do' democracy better and what ideas we had as a collective to improve process.

I was reminded of the attempts I have made at Shoalhaven Council to get meetings more open to community needs and even though these ideas have been boo-hooed out the door, I think that some osmosis is happening and the benefits may be reaped in other ways,(see earlier blog posts)

So I came away from the night feeling more positive about the future- 100 people had braved a cold wet evening to come out and talk about doing democracy better and there were even two persons under 25!

I look forward to looking at the spectrum of ideas that are currently in the process of being written up for distribution- hopefully the ideas will inspire me to raise them with Council.