For the last couple of years Birmingham City Council has been working on The Big City Plan. This document aims to set out how the city centre of Birmingham will change and evolve over the next few decades. A major part of this is supposed to be consultation with the citizens of Birmingham and, true to their word, a whole new website was launched before Christmas allowing people to comment on specific sections of the plan and offer up their own ideas.
There was only one problem. The document was written in council planning speak. Ordinary people, those it was supposed to be aimed at, couldn’t understand it. Many who wanted to have their voices heard simply gave up.
Step forward Jon Bounds, Nick Booth, Nicky Getgood, Julia Gilbert and Michael Grimes. They decided to take their frustrations and do something positive, translating the whole document into plain English. No commentary, no criticism, just clarity. Here’s a sample from the Introduction:
They’ve also added links to external sites where it adds context and, most critically, opened up the comments. All feedback is visible immediately and they’ve included threading so conversations can occur. And finally they’ve tagged and categorised everything so you can navigate through the document thematically. Here’s all the sections pertaining to creative industries, for example.
What impresses me most of all, beyond the incredible work that’s gone into the translation, is the tone of the site. It’s not confrontational. It’s not critical. It’s simply demonstrative, showing the council what they can achieve if they broaden their horizons a bit. It’s not the planning department’s fault they produced an unreadable document. This is the language they speak – it’s how they get things done. They just don’t have the skills to produce a document in plain English and that’s fine. Similarly whichever department created the official Big City Plan site can’t be criticised for producing what they did. In fact I’d congratulate them. It might not have been perfect but it was a step in the right direction, one which enabled Jon and co to build on that. This is about collaboration between the governing and the governed. Too often we shout and bitch at the council but that’s usually because there’s no other option. This approach gives us an option. I hope the council will join in too.
Sadly the consultation period ends February 6th so there’s only three weeks to raise awareness of this and get some dialogue going. It would be fantastic if we could get this out of the blogging bubble and get as wide a range of voices on it as possible, so please do your bit. Send the link to your friends and colleagues. Explain to them where it’s come from. Tell them it’s actually pretty revolutionary in a quiet way.
And the next time you see Jon, Nick, Nicky, Julia or Michael, make sure you buy them a pint.