Our work
Check out what we do - from guides to carrying out high quality PB to sharing good practice from PB events - plus regular learning events and conferences.
Guides
In this blog, Andrew Paterson from PB Scotland shows how PB is a great way to advance children’s right to participate.
Paul Nelis reflects on the importance of evaluating the impact of PB and presents 7 simple questions that will help PB steering groups and agencies (implementing mainstream PB) to evaluate their process and events.
With equality and empowerment central to participatory budgeting, David Reilly asks: why we would exclude anyone because of their age?
Fiona Garven, SCDC Director, shares her experiences of visiting Arizona to learn about their progress with PB.
Here Paul Nelis reflects on his discussion with Ullapool Community Trust about the voting options available to them as they plan for their participatory budgeting event. It seems like there are as many variations in voting as snowflakes on a winters day.
Find out some of the ways local community organisations can get involved in participatory budgeting in Scotland.
Our event reports
Here’s your chance to catch up on what we discussed during our digital PB learning event.
Paul Nelis went along to the Dalmellington PB voting event to see what transparency looks like in practice.
Maryhill Housing Association and YOMO took the bold step to enable young people to lead the PB process for Ruchill and Maryhill.
The young people of Ferguslie park successfully held a fun packed PB event on Friday, 29th March 2019. The results are in.
Building on a previous successful event, this was an opportunity for Barrhead to have a direct say in how £48,000 should be best invested in the community.
Leith Chooses introduces an innovative way to actively include members of the Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities in Leith, but how? David Reilly went along to their event in February and shares all in this blog.
On the 7th March 2019 Stirling Council announced the launch of its first large-scale participatory budgeting(PB) process.
Paul Nelis went along to the Buckhaven PB event and learned that it’s not easy for organisers or voters as they make difficult decisions about the great project ideas that are presented.
Paul Nelis reflects on Letham4All’s approach to voting. The community-led group used multiple methods of voting to engage the wider community. At the voting event in February 2019 they had collected 1,452 votes by using ballot boxes, online voting and in person voting. Around 10% of the population had their say.
Event report: See how PB was used in Partick to make a difference to local communities.
Paul Nelis reflects on the changes to Cranhill in Glasgow and Cranhill Development Trust’s use of PB to tackle the persistent issues of summer hunger and lack of activities for young people.
Tuesday evening Musselburgh Area Partnership held an event to showcase their evaluation process of ‘Your Voice Your Choice’ programme.
For most groups running PB processes the final event is what everybody sees, the visible tip of the iceberg, if you like. But the planning, preparation and sheer hard work that goes into PB represents the other nine tenths of the process.
Here, David Reilly shares his thoughts about a recent PB process which saw people experiencing homelessness decide on the best support for them.
Glasgow’s Gorbals is famous for its strong community and on 1st February 2018 the Gorbals community met to decide on how public money should be spent.
Read about all the action from the day.
David Reilly gives us his thoughts about the recent Young Movers Community Celebration night - and the difference young people are making in Glasgow.
Local residents have their say on how money is spent on a number of projects in their community, thanks to a new participatory budgeting initiative launched by Midlothian Council.
With local election turnout still relatively low, where do we start with getting people more engaged – and where does participatory budgeting fit in?
Guten Tag! Buenas Noches! Bonsoir! Good evening! were the welcomes which kicked off the evening at Woodside Hall in Maryhill on Thursday 20th April 2017.
UpNorth! Community Chest has provided a blog reporting on the recent PB process in Tongue, Sutherland on the March 11th 2017.
The event in Orkney demonstrates the innate flexibility of the PB process. The inter-island vote and discussion on the day were a masterclass in co-operation.
Where else other than a PB event would community projects offer each other the free use of a hearing loop, a spare couple of desks for working at and hens for a chicken coop?
In March Castlemilk saw participatory budgeting with a twist. They called it ‘community funding’, but rather than being about a community of place this event was about funding for two school communities.
This event report of the Leith Links event in March 2017 shows how PB helped bring the community together through low fuss table top presentations, community discussions and social voting for £400 - £2,000.
For this event the community were invited to celebrate not only the range of community projects who applied, but also St Andrew’s day and so they enjoyed a steak pie meal, a bagpiper, a local musician and more at this fun family event which culminated in the projects receiving funding that would help them develop their ideas.
On Saturday 21st May 2016, 349 local residents in a disadvantaged area of Midlothian decided how to spend £30,000 on projects supporting people struggling financially. PB Scotland was there to capture the action.
In January 2016, South Lanarkshire Council and partners organised PB events in four locations in South Lanarkshire which took place across two days. The events allowed local people to decide how best to spend money on facilities and activities for young people. PB Scotland reports from one of the events, held in Springhall Community Centre.
Our conferences and events
Our 4th major conference explored how participatory budgeting (PB) is taking hold across the globe and here in Scotland.
The International PB Conference brought together more than 200 people across two days to learn about participatory budgeting (PB) and see how it can help shape democracy in Scotland and beyond.
The PB Charter is a set of seven key features showing what a fair and high quality PB process should look like.