Let’s chat about how we can shake up politics and bring real change to our communities.

We are very pleased to welcome Uffe Elbæk — former Danish Minister of Culture, founder of the green political party The Alternative, and one of Scandinavia’s most compelling progressive thinkers — to Birmingham (his first visit) to join-in and support our dialogue on civic revitalisation, already underway in our great city.

We invite you to join Uffe, Mike Townsend and Kamel Hawwash for a conversation on how Uffe's thoughts and experiences for protecting democracy and driving climate action and sustainability, might be customised for Birmingham and UK, and to generate a dialogue which can provide a catalyst for people to engage, organise and collaborate.

The key to this process is all about people coming together and co-creating their better world. Elbaek’s magic is in bringing people together and helping us to get the best out of ourselves.

In his new book, Doubt, Hope, Action (https://5mbooks.com/product/doubt-hope-action), Elbæk turns that lifelong experience into a manifesto for the moment: an unflinching reckoning with climate collapse, the rise of authoritarianism, the fracturing of democratic institutions, and the frighteningly seductive pull of the far right – followed by a clear-eyed, evidencebased argument for why another world is not only possible, but already being built.

This book arrives at a good time in the UK. We have an opportunity for a more open, honest, engaging and progressive public dialogue, building on the recent successes of the ‘National Emergency Briefing on Climate & Nature’ along with Citizens’ Assemblies, to go further into renewing our democratic process.

There is much we might learn from Elbæk, the outsider with an insider’s perspective. Yet, this isn’t just another story of great works from the Nordics. We’re not Denmark, but what can we learn from Elbæk’s experience and insights? Perhaps, we can take this opportunity to explore how we can harness new solutions that will work within our own context?

In Birmingham, we face many local-level, as well as big picture challenges, during a time of great disruption and opportunity. The city is undergoing a massive programme of redevelopment, yet we desperately need new local economic models to generate local, skilled jobs, livelihoods and shared prosperity — while also working within our climate and environmental limits.

Now is the time to build a new and constructive political-economic-democratic dialogue – enabling people and communities to reclaim agency, towards a fairer society and shared prosperity within a thriving local economy.

Please come along, share your voice and help build a new dialogue for change.

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