Project
Your Community, your choice
This project was funded by the Active Citizens Fund administered by the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner.
What is it and who is it for?
We worked with the Wolverhampton Neighbourhood Policing Unit to engage the residents of Wolverhampton to:- identify issues and solutions in relation to crime and community safety in their local areas; encourage residents to apply for funding to take forward these solutions; inform residents about the new Police two way messaging service WMNOW; and encourage them to submit their contact details for registering on the system.
What we did
We developed and implemented a consultation plan which used a mixture of quantitative and qualitative techniques to engage with residents, this included 2 world café style events (in Wolverhampton city centre) and 14 events in local neighbourhoods and 8 pop up events in supermarkets and shopping centres.
Local residents were invited to discuss how crime and community safety affected their local areas and what solutions both residents and statutory agencies such as Police and Council etc could put into place to overcome these. We also carried out face to face interviews; shared questionnaires via social media; engaged community networks such as community groups and religious networks and attended formal meetings such as neighbourhood PACT (Partners and Communities Together) meetings to gather views.
What happened?
Overall, 524 people were engaged in activities across the city of Wolverhampton:
- 418 completed interviews / questionnaires
- 68 attended the world café events
- 38 participated in the local events
Sixty-eight of those engaged told us they would be interested in applying for the Active Citizens funding and all of these were invited to take part in the Participatory Budgeting event which took place at the end of the consultation.
We hosted a Participatory Budgeting event at Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Museum where local people and community groups pitched their ideas to an audience of local people who listened, discussed and then voted for their preferred idea. Following the count of votes, which took place at the event, 10 groups were successful in securing funding to take forward their ideas.