News | Jam and Justice

Quotation from the Fawcett Society: women must be partners when policy is designed

After months of preparation (including a field trip to Barcelona to meet some of those behind the city’s democratic portal), the GM Decides project kicked off last month with the first meeting of its Partnership Group. The Group was formed and brought together by ARC leads Alice Toomer-McAlpine and Katie Finney. The first session introduced the overarching aim, drew on examples from existing work on digital democratic innovation, and identified how the project should proceed. What follows is extracted from a video shared with participants.

Read more about GM Decides: making digital democratic innovation work for Greater Manchester’s women

Moving towards hybridity--screenshot of the new SPA article

How do social scientists explain 'what works'?

Read more about New publication in Social Policy & Administration

Care at Home - the cover of the report showing an image from the inquiry

What would it take to help people to have a good life at home for as long as they choose?--

Read more about Care at Home Inquiry - report published

Dan and Pete unveil the Everyday Politics exhibition at the People's History Museum, Manchester

“There are some obvious things that people can do to participate in politics - voting, standing for election, joining a political party, or responding to consultation. But what about the less formal ways that people participate?”

Read more about #EverydayPolitics: launching a community exhibition

Mistra Urban Futures in Cape Town and IOPD in Barcelona

Academic and practitioner researchers are travelling to Cape Town and Barcelona in November to share collective insights from the Jam and Justice project, as part of a delegation from the Realising Just Cities programme. They will be joined by strategy and policy leads from Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), who seek to learn more about co-production for urban governance and participatory decision-making.

Read more about Co-producing insights in Cape Town and Barcelona: Jam and Justice on tour

Snapshot of article from Nature (print version)

Catherine Durose, Liz Richardson and Beth Perry look at how we assess the value of co-production in an article in Nature

The theory behind co-production is that it generates better solutions to difficult problems. But how do we measure this in practice?

Read more about How do we assess the value of co-production? New article in Nature sets out challenges.

Snapshot from the digital map locating examples of social and solidarity-related economic activity in and around Greater Manchester.

The following feature article about the Jam and Justice Action Research Collective's work mapping the social solidarity economy in Greater Manchester was originally published in The Meteor (themeteor.org) on 25 August 2018:

Read more about Mapping solidarity in Greater Manchester

There are many critiques of existing forms of urban governance as not fit for purpose. However, there is just as much contestation over what alternatives might look like. Coproduction is proposed as a response to address complex wicked issues. Achieving coproduction is a highly complex and daunting task. Bottom up approaches to the initiation of coproduced governance are seen as fruitful, including exemplification of utopian alternatives though local practices.

Read more about Coproducing Urban Governance Special Edition Published

Space in Common is a Jam and Justice project led and delivered in partnership between The Democratic Society and the Action Research Collective.

Read more about How can we have better conversations about spatial planning in Greater Manchester?

One of Jam and Justice's action research projects is now calling for participants to join an inquiry into care at home.

Evidence and policy suggests that better services are delivered when a wide network of expertise is drawn into policy development, particularly from those with lived experience of needing care at home for themselves or family members.

Read more about Join Shared Future's Inquiry into Care at Home