Yvonne Murphy: Transforming public understanding of democracy

About Yvonne Murphy

Yvonne Murphy has been a freelance theatre director, creative producer and creative practitioner and consultant since 1992 working across the UK and internationally and is passionate about the intersection between democratic and cultural participation and creative/artistic centred approaches to problem solving and systems change.

In 2008 Yvonne founded Omidaze (Oh My Days!) Productions, a partnership organisation, with fellow freelancer Dick Johns. She is the lead partner of Omidaze Productions and the creator of The Talking Shop and The Democracy Box. Both prototypes seek to address our current democratic deficit by creatively informing all generations about the basic principles of our UK democracy to inspire everyone to engage and participate both at and beyond the ballot box.   

Omidaze’s mission is to use theatre, the arts and creativity to empower, inform and entertain new audiences and inspire positive social change. Omidaze are arts activists who strive to create a fairer, more equal and just society as well as creating groundbreaking and inspirational theatre and creative projects.

This work really began in 2013

I was made a Clore Fellow and seconded as the UK strategic lead to the relatively new cultural sector movement What Next? and began the first chapter of What Next? in Wales. Throughout my time with What Next? I was interested in how we could involve the public in this conversation around the importance and value of arts, culture and creativity to society. I continued to think about this as I created a Shakespeare trilogy with the Wales Millennium Centre over the next three years and started to explore the intersection between cultural and democratic participation with the final part of the trilogy. I created a workshop to accompany the production which toured to schools. This two-hour interactive workshop explained the basics of Romeo and Juliet and introduced the students to Shakespeare and then in the second crazy whirlwind hour explained how our democracy works and fits together. The response to this workshop was so positive with adults and educators telling me that they needed this workshop. All of this thinking and work led to me creating and finally piloting The Talking Shop in 2019 in an empty shop in Cardiff.

The Talking Shop is a non-partisan cultural and democratic information centre.

A public space which explores the intersection between cultural and democratic participation. A shop which sells nothing and ideas, information and conversation is free. And so is the tea. A space with information, creation and conversation at its core. A space in which to articulate, champion and strengthen the role of the creativity and democracy in society and empower through a sharing of information and knowledge. A place which encourages and facilitates public engagement with creativity, arts and culture and democratic participation. An open and safe space for the public and creatives to be informed citizens and collide, converse, connect, collude and create. That tiny pilot which ran for one month was visited by over 550 visitors aged from two to 92 and one thing was said again and again. Can you just show me somewhere on my phone that explains our UK democracy in the way you just did? And I couldn’t. I couldn’t find one place online that explained everything simply and succinctly.

This information gap, evidenced first by the schools workshop and now by The Talking Shop intrigued me.

I wanted to know how we had got here and why. I passionately believed then and still do now, that we needed to address this urgently and unless this democratic deficit was addressed and all citizens had a shared basic understanding of how our UK democracy actually works and fits together then we can’t actually claim to have a working democracy in the UK. It also reminded me of the role of public information films which I had grown up with. I wondered what a public information film and campaign now, 40 years later would look like and where it would sit and how we could engage 65 million people in this subject matter.

Clwstwr’s Ideas Lab was a space to discuss and test my ideas.

When I first arrived I felt quite uncomfortable and out of place. I don’t work in tech or games development and as someone who works predominantly creating live performance, events, project and experiences I wasn’t sure how I fitted in with Clwstwr. However, I have always been very passionate about the creative industries and the arts/cultural sector being one ecology and one creative sector and this two-day opportunity has turned into three years of intense work demonstrating and evidencing exactly that. I was very fortunate to team up with four brilliant individuals in that two-day Ideas Lab who allowed me to use my work on The Talking Shop as the focus of project we developed together. It gave me the confidence and backing I needed to begin. All four individuals from that day in February 2019 remain important and integral to my thinking as I continue to prototype.

To begin I received £10,000 in funding to develop my ideas

I wanted to work with young people aged 16-26 from the five lowest voter turn-out constituencies because I thought if we could work out how to engage this demographic, that the rest would follow. I wanted to look at what digital content already existed which explained our UK democracy and work with them (and pay them) as Young Co-creators to see how they would create or curate this information differently. I also wanted to see if I could create a toolkit for working with young people as Co-creators. The pandemic hit just after I had been awarded the funding and was the only work I had remaining - all my theatre work and work on The Talking Shop collapsed overnight. The pandemic meant I had to work differently than planned. Instead of working with just five young people in person for one week I recruited 10 and worked online. This work incredibly instructive. I quickly realised that working online was much better than working in the old fashioned way - in a room. It broke down barriers in accessibility and location, and meant that they could join me from a space they felt comfortable in. 

Instead of doing an intense week of in-person work, we did things virtually, one hour at a time.

We'd have our online hour where we’d talk about the basics of democracy. Then, I'd set them tasks to do or things to think about before our next call - for example, find out information about a certain topic, reflect on information I'd shared with them, or see what content about democracy exists and how it could be better. At the same time I ran focus groups with lots of other young people to look at existing content on democracy, to learn and understand what democracy meant to them and to understand how and where they go for information and entertainment on screens. These young people were recruited by a paid community consultant who was also one of the Young Co-creators.

Finally I did desk-based research, interviews, and surveys to gather evidence. It showed me what people understood, where they learnt it from, how they watched content, how they used their phones and where they went for quick knowledge gathering versus deep dives. I also researched how systems change, democracy in general, the barriers to people understanding and participating, how we tell stories and how to use stories to convey complex information.

At the end of the R&D I had a number of outcomes

I knew that we needed a public information campaign and an education information campaign in schools and non-formal education environments. Additionally, I'd started creating a prototype toolkit of how to work with young people as Co-creators. Also, I knew we needed to create a democracy hub for content, a one-stop shop for all the information out there so that it’s in one place and easy for everyone to find and access. I decided to call the umbrella campaign The Democracy Box because if we are to succeed in addressing the current democratic deficit and meaningfully and sustainably increase democratic participation we need to explain and engage people in democracy widely and beyond the ballot box.

I then successfully applied for £50,000 in Clwstwr funding to design prototypes

I went back to working with the young people and recruited many more to look at the ideas and feedback that came from the first stage. I commissioned some of them to explore and develop their ideas. For example, one of the people had come up with the idea of explaining democracy through singing and music videos, so I commissioned her to make five videos, four of which were then commissioned by BBC Bitesize, after the Head of Education came to one of my online sharing sessions.

Another young person came up with the idea of doing a podcast of rapid fire interviews with elected representatives. Another two came up with the podcast idea of peer-to-peer conversation, where one young person knew slightly more than the other so that they could learn together. So I commissioned them to smash the two ideas together and make six episodes, with the first part of the episode being the young people's conversation then the second part being the rapid fire interview with a representative.

A Young Co-creator who was a student graphic designer did all the branding of The Democracy Box, designing the logo, colour scheme and font. Another Young Co-creator illustrated the story.

I wrote The Story of our UK Democracy That Everyone Should Know, in Seven Short Chapters.

The basis for this is that workshop I created back in 2017. I tested the story with young people and different stakeholders, got it fact checked by the Electoral Commission. This now forms the basis for all The Democracy Box work. The Young Co-creators are busy finding creative ways to retell this story and host this public information campaign prototype across multimedia platforms. From music, to podcasts, to social media to YouTube. This is a prototype of a sustainable public information campaign with the target audience at its core as paid Co-creators.

I worked out the different levels of voter information, defined them as four levels of voter information and had someone illustrate them for me. I also broke down the information citizens/voters want and need into four levels. Levels 1 and 2 are non-election specific voter/citizen information. Levels 3 and 4 are election specific voter/citizen information.

Levels 3 and 4 are where most of the time, energy, focus and resources are spent but without investment in the foundation of Level 1 (and I would argue Level 2 also) we will never truly change the status quo and voter registration, turn-out and democratic participation generally will remain low or worse still decrease. 

The young people, and everyone we met in The Talking Shop and in every focus group and survey response felt the information we were sharing should be taught in schools.

So, I set about creating a version of The Democracy Box that could be used in educational settings. It's called The Democracy Box Creative Cascade programme, and I've successfully trialled it in 15 schools in partnership with Central South Consortia and it is ready to be rolled out across Wales. Put simply, it involves us teaching the teachers the basics of our UK democracy using the story and all the content that the Young Co-creators have already created. Then through a series of five online sessions, we support the teachers as they share the story with their students who come up with creative ways to retell part of the story to the year below supported by professional creatives. We also introduce them to all the other stakeholders who can then support their ongoing work in this area from the Electoral Commission to the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales team to the Senedd Enagement team.

In the pilot, the retelling saw children code video games, make puppet shows, write songs and poems, do illustrations... and cascade the story from year 11 to year 2. The pilot far exceeded our expectations.

I believe we can change the future with The Democracy Box

My theory is that if The Democracy Box Creative Cascade programme is rolled out across Wales, where all year 11 children are taught it and then it's retold all the way down to year 2 pupils, everyone who leaves school in 10 years time will understand the basics of our democracy and have developed their creative habits of mind.

The last part of my project took me back to where I had begun.

The Young Co-creators and all the young people I recruited for additional creative think-ins   told me that they wanted  face-to-face points of information. They wanted both digital and in-person spaces for information and so I came full circle back to The Talking Shop. 

I put The Democracy Box inside on the wall, on the screens and in bilingual booklets that you can take away with you. I train freelance creatives and Democracy Box Young Co-creators as Talking Shop hosts and continue to recruit more Young Co-creators from across Wales and train up the older Young Co-creators as Assistant Producers. I have now trained seven Young Co-creators and two emerging creatives as Assistant Producers, recruited and trained 32 freelance creatives/Young Co-creators as Talking Shop hosts and recruited and trained 47 Young Co-creators.

I am trialling Talking Shops in towns across Wales from until Summer 2023 in order to create a blueprint for how to use The Talking Shop and The Democracy Box as models for a conversation with the nation and creative democratic deliberation which can increase democratic participation both at, and beyond, the ballot box.

I passionately believe that new money is not needed to make a Talking Shop sustainable and longterm. Rather multiple stakeholders (cross departments of local authorities together with cultural organisations, public service boards, regional partnership boards and additional partners and collaborators) need to come together and use their various budgets strands for public consultation, engagement and participation in a more joined up, creative and effective manner.

The Talking Shop, The Democracy Box public information campaign, The Democracy Box education campaign and the toolkit for working with young people as co-creators are almost completely finished, tested and trialled.

Once my prototyping and proof of concept is complete in summer 2023 all four prototypes will be ready to be upscaled and rolled out. The question remains how and by whom. During my Clwstwr funded R&D I began looking into just that. I fundamentally believe that this work should be state funded and looked to three public organisations who are arm’s length from the government have this work at their core purpose. I drafted a joint memorandum of understanding and proposed to the BBC, the Future Generations Commissioner or Wales and the Electoral Commission that they should be the guardians of The Democracy Box/Talking Shop models and embed and develop the work jointly. Omidaze formed a legal partnership with the Future Generations Commissioner and became the Electoral Commission’s Youth Voice partner for Wales. I am currently in conversation with colleagues at the BBC and I am still negotiating and developing how The Democracy Box/Talking Shop models can be co-owned and co-developed by all three, or possibly more, stakeholder organisations.

My vision is that I can incrementally step away from the work and that can be run by young people who come up through the movement. If it is to succeed it needs to constantly change and evolve. The platforms that we are currently using will be obsolete and replaced by new trends and tech in my lifetime and the only way to create a sustainable model is to ensure that 16-26 year olds are constantly being recruited, trained and paid as Co-creators.

The support I had from Clwstwr was amazing and much more than just funding.

The programme provided incredible opportunities and learning, enabling me to create unlikely alliances, forge incredible new collaborations, partnerships and networks. It is hard to quantify how important Clwstwr has been to me professionally and personally. The Clwstwr team had my back and were there (and still are) to support me on every step of my R&D journey and that, as a freelance artist and creative, is priceless.