Across the North Sea Region cities and governments face similar big governance challenges: rising energy poverty, increasing social polarisation, and the need to transition to greener and more circular economies. Behind this however is a background of decreasing trust in government and increasing citizen disengagement.
Our ambition
We need to develop better ways of working between citizens and governments if we are to successfully tackle these great challenges, and to provide an effective voice to citizens and communities. Speak Up will develop new frameworks and models for citizen engagement and participation that give governments better ways of engaging with citizens (G2C) and which give citizens better ways to engage with governments (C2G). We will reconnect citizens and governments by developing better ways to engage and to participate, by reaching out to moreand different communities, and by working to defuse polarisation.
Our approach
We will do this through 3 Work Packages - 1) Engaging Citizens and Communities, 2) Capacity Building, and 3) Mainstreaming. These will identify effective ways of working with citizens and communities, providing governments andcitizens with evidence based approaches to more effective participation and engagement, and then mainstreaming these approaches across the North Sea Region.
Speak Up will also deliver impact across the other three NSR priorities. Our work on delivering more effective citizenengagement and participation directly contributes towards Priority 1 - Robust and smart economies – by delivering more efficient and effective government. 7 partners are delivering G2C and C2G initiatives in Priority 2 (Supporting the greentransition) and in Priority 3 (Climate resilience).
Speak Up's engagement frameworks and best practices will enable governments to embed effective citizen & community engagement and participation in their work, turning engagement from a “nice to have” to “business as usual” – and enabling them to deliver participation by design.