It takes courage to step up and organise something to make life in your neighbourhood or city better. Even when it’s part of your job it takes courage: What if no-one turns up? What if it rains? What if people don’t like what we’re doing? What if doing this makes us look stupid? What if we fail? These (and many other) questions plague us (and every artist) every time we/they do something. When you have raised funding to make your event happen, the pressure is even more intense – this is public money and there’s a big responsibility to make sure it is spent well.

But when you are “ordinary people” – when putting on events is not your actual line of work – that takes courage too. It also takes enthusiasm, trust, time, generosity, tolerance, a sense of humour, talking to a lot of people, putting leaflets through a lot of doors, juggling budgets… But maybe most importantly it takes a good team of people around you.

It’s been hugely exciting for us to work alongside a small team of “ordinary Coventry people” (who were randomly selected via an amazing process called sortition to be part of our Citizens’ Assembly on Arts, Culture and Creativity held in 2021) and watch as they have grown their knowledge, skills, confidence – and courage – to get to the point of now organising a Neighbourhood Creative Day (June 22nd, pop it in your diary!)

The point of the Citizens’ Assembly, for us, was to find out how much arts, culture and creativity meant to ‘ordinary people’ (ie those not already very invested, or working, in the arts) and, through the work following the Assembly, for this direct experience of creative, deliberative democracy to inspire actual people-powered change. If you have already read the recommendations made by the Citizens’ Assembly, you’ll probably remember that they clearly sketch a better future for Coventry: one which is green in every sense and offers a democratic, regenerative, generous, equitable and collaborative life for all its citizens; where there is a real democracy of access to the arts as creator, participant and audience; a city that is a pleasant place to live – verdant, green, welcoming and future-facing; and where the arts are fully integrated into all communities. Very much the Coventry we’d like to live in.

With the help of the fabulous 64 Million Artists, we designed Creative Citizen Changemaker training to follow on from the Assembly and help a smaller group of Citizens to develop the courage and agency to use art/creativity to make things happen in their neighbourhood or community. We shaped this training around the Assembly’s original recommendation for Neighbourhood Creative Hubs. This recommendation reads:

> Neighbourhood Creative Hubs

Network of inclusive Neighbourhood Creative Hubs designed to connect, integrate and educate communities. Each individual neighbourhood hub is created by and for the local residents (and therefore does what its local community needs it to do) but all are safe, familiar, easily accessible, flexible, inclusive, multipurpose, empty but equipped, open access. They are networked across neighbourhoods to allow for even greater connection and exchange.

In the Neighbourhood Creative Day that our group of Citizens has put together, The Nest and Daimler Powerhouse will become a pop up Neighbourhood Creative Hub for the day – aimed squarely at our local geographical neighbourhood of Radford, but open to everyone – and there will be a chance to have a go at most of the things listed in the recommendation. Not only will this give the organising team an opportunity to test the recommendation and see how their ideas work in practice – but we hope it will also inspire other people who want to find ways to make things happen in their own communities to see that it can be done.

It’s been so energising to see how taking part in the Citizens’ Assembly got these “ordinary” Coventry people fired up to make a difference in our city. Before the Assembly they didn’t even know each other and, since then, they’ve worked together to bring to life the vision of Coventry that their recommendations describe. We hope you will come and enjoy the event they’ve put together – and that perhaps the experience will inspire you to get involved in making things happen in your own neighbourhoods.

UPDATE: To see photos of the day and read about how it went – see this post.