National Meetings involve:

Bringing participants and members of BWT together for a short period of time (3 or 4 days) with the children for whom they either have parental or professional responsibility.

Developing an understanding of the role and value of shared responsibility as a means of promoting children’s instinct for exploration and discovery.

Providing workshops for shared learning and discussion.

Seminars, Conferences, Talk Times involve:

Parents and practitioners who have taken part in theatres of learning, exhibitions, national meetings, expeditions and local groups presenting the results of their enquiries to each other on national and international platforms.

Discussing the significance of what they have learned.

See a list of recent seminars

Telling our stories to instigate change

The UK is a democratic entity surviving socially and economically in an increasingly globalised system of markets. Tensions within the political institutions that support our traditions of equality and justice are often expressed in terms of ‘exclusion’. Participation is widely seen as a good thing and unsurprisingly the less advantaged in our society are most at risk of non- participation.

After the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 the participation of children in the decisions and work which may affect them has been of increasing importance, not only in the field of development but also in research, politics and urban planning. Increased participation by children in all these fields is intended not only to produce an end product that is more appropriate for the young user, but also to give children the opportunity to gain new skills and knowledge and to empower them in their relations to adults.

Big Wide Talk’s method enables even the youngest children to express a view through self-directed experience. The evidence of what they actually say and do is used to support adult decision-making about the services and spending they need. The trouble is, however, that the most needy children often have the least advantaged parents, who are therefore people from the section of society least likely to vote and most likely to feel that they can make no difference to outcomes.

Our experience in Big Wide Talk is that all parents want to have a say in building their children’s futures but often see no connection between this and voting locally or nationally. We are therefore determined to give them a voice in determining the shape of services at local level by enabling them to tell their stories to instigate change. We do this by spending time and energy on the co-construction of valid research, stored in our participative planning database and published as research stories on our website. This means that whenever opportunities for direct participation by our children, their parents and their practitioners occur, they are prepared to have a voice and they seize these opportunities eagerly and spontaneously.

Number of people involved in National Meetings since July 2002

<<< Back