Participation in an Age of Populism

The more the merrier

“The more the merrier” has been Camden Giving’s approach since we were set up in 2017. From the beginning, we worked on the belief that everyone who experiences inequality should have a say in how money is spent in their borough. Since then, we have worked with over 500 local people to make that happen. Our ten-year strategy sets out how we plan to scale this up dramatically, because we believe that participating in grantmaking can be a catalyst for people to take greater control over their lives and their communities.

Of course, it has never been a process where everyone agrees. I remember a community meeting eight years ago when a resident in council housing spoke about people experiencing homelessness in dehumanising terms. That moment has stayed with me. And while disagreement is nothing new, it does feel harder now. As people narrow the range of online sources they trust to get their news from and as poverty deepens quietly, frustration grows and with it, a search for someone to blame.

Despite all this, our community grantmakers still find respectful ways to reach agreement, though it takes more effort than before. A little harder is fine, but I worry it may soon become a lot harder. Those of us working in participatory ways need to take steps to protect our work from being used to divide people rather than bring them together.

Balancing participation and populism

We believe that having more people involved in shaping their borough is a good thing. But populism presents a real challenge. What happens when the people we empower use that power to push for simple solutions to complex problems, or worse, to limit the freedoms of others?

Populism is often defined as a political approach that appeals to people who feel ignored by elites. Someone once said to me that Camden Giving uses the same tools as the far right, just for a different purpose. But this isn’t about left or right. It’s about ensuring that participatory processes are protected from being captured by opinions that pit communities against each other.

Create space to disagree

The world gives us very few places to disagree safely. Online, it often feels impossible. Participatory work must protect and nurture spaces where disagreement can exist — and this happens best in person.

That’s not to say it cannot work online, but it is more effective when people meet face-to-face. Almost everyone who joins one of our sessions will belong to an online community where disagreement is punished — whether that’s a local parenting group or a discussion on international affairs. People learn to self-censor, afraid of being publicly shamed or labelled.

Some issues are complex, with no single right answer. We can love each other and still disagree, but holding that space takes skill and compassion. Participatory work must invest in people who can build those connections and manage disagreement constructively.

Be explicitly anti-oppressive

Participation must be rooted in equity. We have to design frameworks that prevent oppression, and we must use the laws and practices that uphold it. It is illegal to discriminate against people based on protected characteristics in the UK, that has meant at Camden Giving, we have on rare occasions pointed out oppressive biases and pointed to discriminatory assumptions being made. In that rare moment, it was helpful to have the phrase “this applicant is being treated differently on the basis of who it serves, it’s illegal for us to turn down the organisation of that basis”, you can say that nicely and with compassion, but it does need to be said to protect spaces from becoming oppressive.

Liberation for one group cannot come at the expense of another. The advancement of women should not mean limiting men’s freedoms, and racial justice should not exclude white communities. This is easy to write and much harder to live and enact, especially when resources are scarce. We don’t always get it right, but we must keep asking: who is missing from this work, and why?

Highlight where people agree

Most of the time, people do agree, agreement just doesn’t take up as much space as disagreement. Practitioners have a responsibility to make that agreement visible and to show how much common ground exists.

If participatory work moves online, we must build platforms that celebrate consensus and acknowledge disagreement without amplifying it. People toxicly disagree about lots of things, for instance about trans rights in exercise spaces. If 1000 people are asked whether the community needs more space for exercise and most say yes, that should be the focus. Whether it’s a trans woman, a cis woman, or anyone else making the point, the shared message is that everyone values exercise and inclusion. The question isn’t “whose needs matter most” but “how can we make this accessible for everyone?” Practitioners should repeat and celebrate agreement, it builds connection and trust.

Do everything you can to keep people in the room

It can be tempting to give up on those who seem too difficult to reach agreement with. But that is how resentment grows and participatory work itself is a system. If we want systems to change, we must resist excluding people, even when it feels easier.

There are facilitation techniques that prevent dominant voices from taking over, and digital tools that make participation more equitable (we’ve built one with out community, it’s called Elevate). Sometimes people need space to express frustration perhaps outside the main meeting, but we should do everything possible to keep them involved. At Camden Giving we run a racial justice and disability justice participatory fund, the Equality Fund, it’s sometimes a little bit clunky to have race and disability as a focus, but what it allows us to do is have a panel of 12 citizens, some of whom have disabilities, some of whom don’t, some of whom experience racism, some of whom don’t. Most aren’t justice practitioners, so the language used is sometimes clunky, but as we’ve worked with this group, it’s not been hard work to keep them in all in the room, it’s been incredibly easy and the most beautiful thing has been finding solutions that tackle the oppression of people who are racialised and people who are disabled. It helps that some of the group experience both forms of expression, but we certainly haven’t needed to chuck out all the people who aren’t disabled in order to have an empowering conversation about disability justice.

Moving forward together

These reflections come from what we have learned so far at Camden Giving. As participatory grantmaking continues to grow (and we’re delighted that it is), our sector must be ready to meet the challenges of populism and division.

If we don’t, the very mechanisms we’re designing to empower communities could one day soon be used to oppress them. We would love to hear from others working in this space, let’s work this hard stuff out together.