Choosing Our Future With Community Assemblies

🤔 What now to organise locally in our communities? 🤗 With Community Assemblies, people can organise locally to experience the power of deliberative democracy for making progress on issues that are most important to their community. If we want to choose our future, mitigate power and empower our communities, Community Assemblies are a powerful tool in your kit. Community Assemblies can: 👥 Show what more inclusive democracy looks like; 🤝 Strengthen our local alliances by collaborating with other organisations; 👔 Keep up the pressure on politicians by inviting them along!

Why Run Community Assemblies?

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Thanks to The Big One, many of our supporter organisations signed up to a demand for citizens' assemblies for the first time ever.

We did our shouting outside Parliament. We handed in green cards to speak to our MPs. We pressurised them online via our Digital Rebellion.

It's now time to bring deliberative democracy into our communities!

By organising local Community Assemblies, we can…

… Grow our local networks by continuing to build local alliances and do outreach;

… Keep up the pressure on local politicians;

… Spread the word about deliberative democracy and empower people in the process;

… Start a local campaign or project in collaboration with other groups.

Would like to hear some sheer inspiration from Jamie Kelsey Fry, talking about upgrading democracy through deliberation at The Big One? Enjoy...

Ready to co-create a beautiful bonding experience in your community with allies? Check out:

Community Assembly Resources

Community Assembly Social Media and Flyer Design Templates

**Community Assembly Project Support Email: communityassemblies@extinctionrebellion.uk

Resources

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Local Group Pack

Support Form

Fill in this form to let us know that you are running a Community Assembly. It contains questions to help Gardeners identify what kind of support you might need: Facilitators, experts, funding and so on.

We will:

Community Assembly Manual

Open Call Introductory on Community Assemblies YouTube June 2023 recording of Open Call

Support Contact Details

If you have any question please approach your regional/national Gardener or email communityassemblies@extinctonrebellion.uk.

Social Media and Flyer Design Templates

All the designs and templates you could want coming soon!

Additional Learning

More Resources

To learn more about assemblies happening all round the world, the XR Local Group Support Pack contains a list of website and video links to grassroots organisations doing deliberative democracy in their way... It's truly inspirational... Here's a taster:

Case Studies

National Assembly Campaigns

Alternative and Supplementary Guides to Deliberative Democracy

Other Resources

Further Training

The Gardeners plan more training on Community Assemblies in the near future, in collaboration with other XR Circles, including::

For Facilitation Training, the Facilitation Circle holds regular, in depth trainings. These can be adapted to different settings, including Assemblies, but we hope to collaborate on tailored trainings for local groups wanting to set up a Community Assembly soon.

Meantime, you can contact the Facilitation Circle with your questions at facilitation@extinctionrebellion.uk

Street Scripts on Citizen’s Assemblies

Trust the People TTP are THE expert trainers inspiring and empowering people everywhere to really bring democracy home. Enjoy 8 weeks worth of in-depth and fun training to equip your local community to organise and run an effective magical experience in deliberative democracy. And it's totally free, twice per year from the experts in building deliberative democracy

Community At Work Check their: "Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision Making". They run online trainings too but there is a hefty price tag. Check their schedule.

Hope For The Future Talking to Politicians whom you may invite to your assembly or even writing to them and meeting them in person can seem daunting. Being prepared ensures you get what you need from dialogue with those in positions of power to bring about change. The General Election is not far off and hustings will be happening... Skill yourself up and boost your confidence in talking to politicians, be they local, regional or national.

**XR Open Call on 2023-24 Strategy

Questions and Answers

The Community Assembly Working Group wants to ensure that we all learn from each other. When questions are asked at Open Call meetings, or at training sessions, we will bring them here and try to answer them as best we can, broken down by theme.

Meantime, we also recommend checking out the recording of XR's first Open Call about Community Assemblies, which we will post here soon.

SOFTWARE TOOLS

Q: What was the crowd sourcing software used at the Big DIY Assembly to collate everyone's input and ideas, written up from the Breakout Groups?

A: It was Polis: https://www.crowdwisdomproject.org/polis/