Participatory Democratic Methods for a Civic University:Collective re-imagining of the University of East Anglia's civic role.

Since the launch of the Truly Civic report (Kerslake et al, 2019), UK universities have responded to renewed calls for civic commitment by convening a small group of executives from higher education and local government to set priorities for a Civic University Agreement. But could a university take a completely different approach? Instead of asking senior leaders to define what “civic” means in their place, what if we asked the people who live there to define it for themselves? They should be the beneficiaries of such activity after all. From 2021-23 the University of East Anglia (UEA) embarked in a series of six day-long democratic agenda setting events using Open Space Technology open to anyone in Norfolk and Suffolk (Owen 2008). Attended by 350 people and with 15,000 online interactions using the participatory Polis platform (Demos 2022), each event produced a short book in the words of participants and directly informed what became UEA’s 60th Anniversary Civic charter (Forster et al, 2023). The Charter defines the civic role the university should play as articulated by the people of its region. We are recording its effects using Ripple Effect Mapping (Nobles et al, 2022), another participatory method. This paper will explain the process, contexts, outputs and outcomes of a democratic approach to a Civic University Agreement. It will also tell the story of what happened next, from a new arts centre in Great Yarmouth, to co-producing a regional economic strategy, to the Norwich mayor’s apology for the Blood Libel.