Rapper Jenniah Brown is employing poetry and spoken word to bridge the gap between complex council policies and young people. Brown, a former council worker, believes the issue is not a lack of publicly available information but rather its inaccessibility and the public's confidence in using it.
"In terms of Croydon Council providing policy documents, the interesting thing is that the majority of these documents are already publicly available online," Brown stated in an interview. "The problem is most people don't understand the documents."
Brown's initiative, called Connecting Dots, aims to address this by focusing on four key areas: devolution, health in all policies and creative health, the Creative Industries Sector Plan, and levelling up and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
The project includes Cultural Research Exchanges, sessions held in Croydon, Lambeth, Bristol, and Exeter. These events bring residents together with local artists to collaboratively dissect policy documents.
"Councils talk constantly about co-production, but you have got to get them in the room first. They have to be interested first," Brown explained. The first session in Croydon featured performances and a panel with representatives from King's College and the Department for Work and Pensions.
Brown hopes his approach will serve as an alternative to traditional, often poorly attended, public consultations. "I think it's time policy had a story attached to it," he added.