Introducing the Bristol Democracy Blog!

Between now and Bristol’s first Mayoral election on November 15th 2012, this blog will be looking at how decisions are made about Bristol at the moment, and suggesting ways in which more people could get involved in making them in the future.

This blog will be being looked after by myself, Gez Smith, but anyone is welcome to write for it if they’ve got an interesting idea about how to improve decision making and democracy in Bristol. The only conditions are that any guest blogs have to be well written, and they can’t just advertisements for any of the candidates for Mayor.

One of the ideas behind this blog is to allow people to read and comment on ideas for improving decision making in Bristol, so they can be improved before being presented to the new Mayor once he or she is elected. It’s one thing to have ideas, but it’s another to think about how those ideas would actually work in Bristol, and that’s something only lots of us working together can decide.

However, the Bristol Democracy Project as a whole isn’t going to be about discussion and debate, as it looks like every organisation and their dog wants to host a debate with the candidates for Mayor on their own area of interest. These debates only ever tend to attract people already interested in the subject, whilst this project is about connecting with the people who aren’t interested in decision making in Bristol at the moment.

So, rather than hosting debates for people to come to, I want to get out and talk to people about how they feel about Bristol’s decision making processes right now. Sometimes people will only tell you things if you ask them face to face. I’ll be sure to blog about anything I find out through this process as the weeks go by.

Do read the other information on this website, I hope you enjoy it, and if you want to get in touch about anything at all, click here to send me a message through this website’s contact form.