Ecological evaluation of Dunfermline New City Assembly

How can we tell if a democratic innovation is genuinely embedded in local life?
In Dunfermline, the UK’s newest city, the New City Assembly (dunfermlineassembly.org) is testing a new model for local democracy, supported by the Electoral Reform Society, with the hope of expanding across the UK.

To evaluate its first iteration, I used an ecologically inspired method, drawing on Jason Chilvers and Helen Pallett’s work on participatory ecologies, and Sonia Bussu’s understanding of embeddedness as rootedness.

First, I mapped all the local community actors I could identify; from actual people and groups, to community policy instruments, physical community locations, and topics that have sparked local debate. Then, using the old anthropological technique of ‘card sorting’, we worked collaboratively with organisers and local government to assess how well the New City Assembly is connecting to these elements, and whether more could be done to give support, ask for support, encourage others to champion, or listen more to this complex ultra-local ecology.

All this, of course, with the support of my evaluation superstar, Elisabet Vives