Meetings

Host your own event!

Host your very own ‘21st Century Ideas from your Living Room’ event - organise your own ideas generating meeting in your own home or community centre

We want to encourage as much participation in this process as possible.  We want people to take charge and organise their own events and meetings to feed into the competition.  We’ll provide you with everything you need to have a successful ideas generating event.  Here are a few basic but important tips to help you (along with the advice below we have also produced more detailed guidelines for you to download):

  • At the forum you’ll need a bit of space for a small group of people to sit round in a circle, this could be in a living room or around a dining table, so you should choose your location accordingly.  Your house is a great place and a community centre room can also work. So choose a space that is quiet and has enough room to spread out.
  • Ideally make sure you have access to a computer with internet at your event location. This would be a useful tool to guide guests thorugh the process, and if you’re really keen you can enter policy submissions onto this website at the end of the meeting.
  • Think of whether your venue is a good space to eat food or grab a drink – so guests can bring snacks/drinks with them.
  • We recommend the event should last for no more than an hour and a half. This allows for ample discussion but also fits into peoples busy lives.
  • If you’re organising a big meeting of 10 or more people you may want to split up into smaller groups around some of the key themes, however if there are less than 10, you may wish to have a generally discussion and assign your chosen policies to a key theme at the end of the process.
  • If you have any questions about choosing a location or hosting in general, just email Gavin.

>> Download the detailed guidelines (in word)

Attend a Compass hosted event: now announced in Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham & Southampton

Living in the 21st Century Ideas Forums - organised by Compass in major cities/towns across the UK: Compass, led by our local groups, has organised a series of engaging events across the UK which are open to everyone. The purpose of these meetings will be to get direct input and submissions from groups of individuals into the competition.

To register for any of these events please email us, putting the city of the event you wish to register for in the subject field of the email. The dates and locations of the meetings are as follows:

NEWCASTLE (this event has now taken place!)
10.30am-1pm Saturday 17 January 2009: The Quaker Meeting House, 1 Archbold Terrace, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE2 1DE
Openning panel speakers: Neal Lawson, Chair, Compass; Jim Cousins MP; Cllr Nick Forbes; Gill Hale, UNISON (invited); Neil Foster, Compass North East (chair)

EDINBURGH/SCOTLAND
10.30am - 1pm Saturday 31 January 2009: The Quaker Meeting House, 7 Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh, EH1 2JL
Openning panel speakers: Cllr Willie Sullivan, Vice Chair, Compass; John Park MSP; Margaret Curran MSP

BIRMINGHAM
10.30am - 1pm Saturday 31 January 2009: The Birmingham & Midland Institute, Margaret Street, Birmingham, B3 3BS
Openning panel speakers: Lynne Jones MP; Ann Pettifor, Advocacy International; Andy Howell, Compass Birmingham (chair)

LEEDS
10.30am - 1pm Saturday 31 January 2009: The Council Chamber, Leeds Civic Hall, Leeds, LS1 1UR
Openning panel speakers: Jon Trickett MP, PPS to Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP (chair); Fabian Hamilton MP; Christine Blower, General Secretary, NUT; Alex Sobel, Compass Yorkshire and the Humberside

SOUTHAMPTON
10.30am - 1pm Saturday 31 January 2009: Friends Meeting House, 1A Ordnance Road, Southampton, SO15 2AZ
Openning panel speakers: Rt Hon John Denham MP, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills; Chuka Umunna, Labour PPC Streatham; Alan Whitehead MP

MANCHESTER
10.30am - 1pm Saturday 7 February 2009: Students Union Building, Manchester University, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PR
Openning panel speakers: Sir Gerald Kaufman MP; John Harris, The Guardian; Wes Streeting, President, NUS; Hilary Wainwright, Red Pepper

NOTTINGHAM
10.30am - 1pm Saturday 7 February 2009: UNISON (East Midlands) Regional Centre, Vivian Avenue, Nottingham, NG5 1AF
Openning panel speakers: Neal Lawson, Chair, Compass; Prof Ruth Lister CBE; Paddy Tipping MP; Steve Yemm, Compass East Midlands (chair)

- These will typically be led by an assigned Ideas Facilitator, who will be joined by a high-profile speaker from Compass who will open the session with a few remarks on the project.
- Those attending the event will then break up into much smaller groups on each of the themes (equality, democracy, solidarity, liberty, sustainability, miscellaneous). These smaller groups will then discuss the themes and come up with policy ideas.

As well as just the handful of meetings we’ll be organising across the country we primarily would very much encourage you to organise smaller events, including 21st Century Ideas from your Living Room events with friends and colleagues in your own homes to feed into the process (see guidelines above).