This weekend, for the second year running, a lot of people came from all over the country to Huddersfield, the town where I live, for the Not Westminster event, which brings together people interested in finding ways of modernising local democratic processes. In fact, this year, many of them were here for two days, and the Local Democracy Makers event was held on the Friday, before the main event on Saturday. More about Friday shortlly.
One of the sessions I was in on Saturday was about re-designing consultation processes, led by  Elli Panagopoulos and Emilie Glazer of Eclipse.
A key conclusion our group came to was that consultations need to be led by organisations independent of the bodies which have vested interests in the outcome. This is rarely the case.
Elli and Emilie had given us all Play Do to help us craft our solutions. We didn’t have much of a clue what to do with it until I realised the shape I had moulded looked like a colourful igloo.
This led me to think that I really should resurrect my MeetingPoints idea, which is about making consultations fun and in people’s faces in prominent areas. Thanks to the Play Do, I have now added a colourful mobile igloo to be used as a space in which to do genuine consultations.
John Popham's Random Musings 