What is a Community Assembly?
Assembly. It’s a word we hear often these days, and a word that conjures images of the Senedd in Cardiff Bay or a school hall I’m sure. But what does the word assembly actually mean?
The Oxford English Dictionary states that in essence it’s a very simple thing; a group of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose. And that’s exactly what we’re planning at the moment; Community Assemblies. There are other names given to these types of democratic groups working together, such as jury, panel, or forum, but for us it’s the community that’s at the heart of it all, so we’ve called ours Community Assemblies.
We plan on hosting four Community Assemblies on the Climate in five areas of Gwynedd in 2022-2023, and those areas are Pen Llŷn, Bro Ffestiniog, Dyffryn Nantlle, Dyffryn Ogwen and Dyffryn Peris. The Assemblies will be an opportunity for people to come together to share, learn, listen, talk and plan, before taking action, and the topic of the day is the climate emergency.
It’s important to note that we, GwyrddNi, are a movement that’s part of social enterprise DEG (Datblygiadau Egni Gwledig), and GwyrddNi is funded by The National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund. So the Assemblies are not of a political nature – the aim is to create a clear set of positive actions for the community, to be delivered by the community for the benefit of the whole.
This way of working together already has, and continues to work successfully around the globe. Did you hear about the Climate Assembly UK? Their aim was to make recommendations to the UK Government of how to reach Net Zero emissions by 2050, and was made into a TV programme on the BBC, ‘The People V Climate Change’. Or you may have heard of the Climate Jury held online in Kendal, or the Decitizenship in Brazil, which looked at access to culture. The first assembly of this nature held in Wales was the Blaenau Gwent Climate Assembly, which took place in March last year. If you’re interested you can find more examples of such assemblies across the UK here, and across the world here.
Clearly there is no way of getting all the people of an area such as Pen Llŷn into one room, so say if 500 people register an interest, who gets to attend? Well, people are chosen to take part in order to ensure that the Assemblies reflect the wider community, taking into account demographics such as age, gender, ethnicity and so on, and sometimes opinions as well, for example your view on climate change. But if you’re not chosen to attend, don’t despair, there will be opportunities for the wider community to take part before, during and after the assemblies too.
We hope you agree that this is an exciting and interesting opportunity for us here in Gwynedd! We’re working on the logistics at the moment and look forward to sharing more information very soon, but in the meantime, if you live in one of these areas and you’d like to attend your local Community Assembly on the Climate please contact your local Climate Action Facilitator on email or phone to let them know – they’ll be happy to hear from you.