Communities would be engaged and empowered and arts policies would be invigorated, says Janet Vaughan, co-artistic director of Coventry-based artists company Talking Birds, whose work focuses on the relationship between people and place.

Attempting to banish the consultation fatigue of four years’ involvement in the preparation for Coventry’s time as UK City of Culture in 2021, and desperate to understand what value ‘ordinary people’ placed on arts and culture, Talking Birds called a Citizens’ Assembly in the city on arts, culture and creativity.

We wanted to explore how people imagined culture contributing to the necessary collective work of shaping a just, equitable, regenerative future that works for everyone. We certainly didn’t expect the legacy of this project to be a new crowdsourced artistic programme for Talking Birds.

A Citizens’ Assembly is a deliberative democracy tool that brings together a representative sample of people from all walks of life to learn about, and discuss an issue, before making recommendations. Citizens are paid, in recognition of the value of their time and engagement, and to ensure access for those whose circumstances might otherwise prevent participation. It’s important to include as many viewpoints as possible and there is equal value in the opinion of someone who might only be doing it for the money. The brilliance of the format is its sensitive facilitation: ensuring there is no danger of people feeling stupid or being challenged in an unhelpful or exposing way. The first sessions gently nurture respectful listening and questioning, establish the Assembly as a safe space, building from points of consensus and avoiding conflict, whilst allowing people to express honest opinions.

With our partners the Sortition Foundation (experts in recruiting representative assemblies via random stratified sampling, against demographic data) and Mutual Gain (deliberative democracy specialists experienced in designing and facilitating assemblies) we assembled brought together 50 local citizens to consider the question: ‘How will arts, culture and creativity shape a better future for Coventry?’

As the organisation calling the Assembly, Talking Birds was not allowed to take part in discussions, to avoid us unduly influencing participants or recommendations. Relinquishing control and trusting to the process was, it turned out, both terrifying and inspiring. We had no idea what the Assembly might come up with, and we’d undertaken not only to deliver the recommendations to the team responsible for Coventry’s Cultural Strategy, but also to produce pilot projects as proof of concept for the recommendations.

Fortunately, time and again Citizens’ Assemblies prove that when people are given the time, agency and space to collectively learn about, discuss and deeply consider something, they generally make really good decisions. Over six weeks, our Assembly heard from 20 ‘expert witnesses’ – with particular knowledge, ideas or opinions, different life experiences and perspectives – and it was a huge privilege to watch the process unfold, to see the way that the Citizens grew in confidence and knowledge; challenging themselves and others; working collaboratively with people whom they would not otherwise have met.

After the ‘learning’ period comes ‘deliberation’ – this is the point where the Citizens condense their knowledge and discussions into recommendations. We were blown away by our participants’ keenly felt sense of responsibility to represent all Coventry’s citizens, and the care they took in their deliberations. The resulting recommendations deftly sketch an ambitious and exciting future for Coventry, offering democratic, regenerative, equitable lives for all, with democracy of access to arts and culture as creator, participant and audience. A resilient, green, welcoming and future-facing city where creativity is valued and fully integrated into all communities. They included a free travel and cultural pass to 15-25 year-old residents, an accessible city centre garden, and environmentally considered and beautifully designed lighting, to improve safety and the night-time economy.

When we had tried to imagine what the Assembly might recommend, we’d envisaged piloting short term mini-projects; we didn’t expect to end up adopting these nine ambitious recommendations as our five-year policy, programme and mandate for driving (in collaboration with the Citizens) people powered change across our city.

We couldn’t have hit upon a more engaging or effective way to both explore and demonstrate the value of arts, culture and creativity. It turns out that ‘ordinary people’ are – who knew? – extraordinary. 

To find out more about the Coventry Citizens’ Assembly and read all the recommendations visit talkingbirds.co.uk/A4TP

[This article was originally commissioned by, and published in, Art Quarterly Magazine, Spring 2023]