Hello

I’m Kelly McBride, based in Edinburgh.

I’ve been working on the design and facilitation of ways for people to shape places, policies, strategies and services for well over a decade.

I’ve led on democratic innovations and supported groups from the grassroots to the European Union to involve people in decision making.

Find out more about my experience

I think we’ve made great progress on building the profile and standards for democratic participation and process design. There’s a lot to celebrate.

However, our governing systems struggle to handle what emerges from participation, to support next step actions, and to tell the story of how it has made an impact. We are not building the skills, confidence and structures to ensure places and organisations can replicate and innovate these approaches. This is where I want to focus my energy next.

Aiteal’s work will centre on collaborations and projects that build participation capability and scaffolds organisations to try new ways of working. The approach will be multi-disciplinary; bringing together glimpses of insight and practice from across the system and building brick by brick, to make participation have long lasting impact.