It was the Nowhere Trust, a local community enterprise, that persuaded the local authority to invest in a single neighbourhood experiment. The Trust had already set up a neighbourhood forum and created a neighbourhood plan for the area which had been approved in a local referendum. Jan had been on the Nowhere Trust committee.

The Trust saw the opportunity to create deeper democracy, a whole new set of civic relationships, and an environment that worked for both the people surrounding the park and those in the estates just beyond. The Trust’s team of community organisers knocked on every door locally, and spoke face-to-face with over half of the local residents. They also organised a number of meetings and parties, many in the park.

The heart of the proposal was to take advantage of the double devolution to create a neighbourhood citizens’ panel to make decisions on where to spend money on local “green infrastructure” (plants, trees, street furniture, park lawns) – as well as maintaining a budget to support community-led projects. The really radical thing the Trust proposed, though, was appointing the members of this panel by lottery. A key job of the community organisers and those initial parties and meetings was to introduce people to this new civic role and to see if they were willing for their names to be “in the hat” to potentially become new panel members.

At the time, Jan grumbled, “well, I was a bit offended. Me and the rest of the Friends, and other local groups, had put so much time in and now here’s an opportunity to make real change. And they’re just pulling names out of a hat? It seemed absurd”.