Political Innovation in Belfast: New ideas for old problems

This Saturday we have over 80 people booked up to come to the Political Innovation event in Edinburgh at the weekend, with the topics of conversation being shaped up at our uservoice site. The week afterwards (20th November) we’re convening at NICVA for the Belfast event (book your place here). In both cases the political context is similar. There are important elections coming in May for the Assembly and the local councils.

At the moment the top three conversations for Belfast are:

– How do we address the growing democratic deficit in our governance?

– Is there a way around the obstacles that block the emergence of a post-sectarian centre-left party?

– Use of Participatory budgeting as a confidence builder for politicians in decision making

And of course there is the opportunity to come and help shape up the new Slugger Awards categories in time for the new Awards time slot of January.

There are currently 17 topics and more are being added every day. Come over and vote on your favourites and get them to the top. Comment and fill out the programme for each one. Or propose your own session and grab some mind space for your own favourite idea/innovation.

Aside from all of this, this event is a great opportunity for politicos and social innovators to meet and thrash through a set of common problems. The more problems the merrier. We can’t promise any direct solutions will come directly out of our deliberations, but it is an important opportunity for those on the hill to come out of the bunker for a day and engage directly.

We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!

For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.

Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.

If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.