Gevninge Bibliotek og Beboerhus wants the citizens’ help to shape the future communities in the building. Therefore, all residents in Gevninge who are 15 years of age or older receive invitations to participate in an ambitious citizen engagement program. The library and community center is an important cultural institution in the area and is threatened by declining visitor numbers. To ensure that as many citizens in Gevninge as possible will feel a connection to the library and community center in the future, and to provide a higher degree of ownership, they are starting a citizen engagement process. They have asked We Do Democracy to lead this process.
An ambitious participation journey
We Do Democracy has designed a process that will consist of an extended participatory process where 24 citizens from Gevninge will help chart the course for the library and community center. To ensure that we include as many perspectives as possible, participants are selected to reflect the local population in terms of age and gender. Inspired by methods from citizen assemblies and OECD standards for citizen engagement, these 24 citizens will hear different inspirational presentations, develop their project management skills, develop ideas for activities, involve other stakeholders and local citizens, and more.
In addition to the participation process, there will be an open public meeting for all interested citizens on d. September 23rd, where citizens and local stakeholders will be able to share ideas, provide input and get inspired to participate. Both the longer participation process and the open public meeting will take place in late summer and fall 2023.
Ambitious and innovative
The goal of this participatory process is to make the library and community center relevant to even more people in the local community. The library and community center should play a central role in the local community, as it has done historically. In addition, the goal is for the citizen involvement process to ensure a lasting driving force where citizens can take ownership of the activities in the library and the community center in the future.
At We Do Democracy, we are very excited to design and facilitate this assignment. Project managers on this project, Matthew Daniali and Jeppe Lillegaard Nielsson say the following:
It is a very ambitious and important process that we are developing with Gevninge Library and Community Center. Libraries and community centers can play key roles for communities outside of large cities, which is why we’re excited to design and facilitate this program. Gevninge Library and Community Center is one of the first libraries and community centers, if not the first, to engage with citizens at this high and ambitious level. We hope that many other libraries and community centers will be inspired to do the same.
A number of libraries are part of a monitoring group where they will follow this citizen engagement process. Part of the task for We Do Democracy is to develop tools for Gevninge Library, other libraries in Lejre Municipality and the accompanying libraries so that they can create similar participatory processes in the future.