2023 Award "Best Practice in Citizen Participation"

In Montreuil, a popular city bordering Paris whose identity is marked by a great cultural and social mix, citizen engagement takes a multitude of forms. Today, this abundance, which is based on values of solidarity and is part of traditions, is a source of wealth but also of many questions.

The municipality decided in 2020 to concretize a citizen factory which aims to preserve and positively develop citizen participation carried collectively. It seemed essential, upstream, to share what local democracy, or even democracy, is and how it works in reality and from different points of view. In short, it was a question of understanding participatory democracy in Montreuil in order to design the citizen factory.

This schematization effort should make it possible to identify the positive or negative points, the areas of misunderstanding, in order to measure what can be treated in the long, medium or short term or be abandoned.

The choice was made to use an innovative modus operandi to arouse enthusiasm and interest but above all to bring people together. Workshops of a working group made up of people who have had various experiences of participatory approaches, have made it possible to draw the framework of the democratic mechanism which can be self-supported, tested, with a view to being completed. It was asked to tell the story of situations experienced in participatory democracy, happy or unhappy. From this have emerged libraries of occurrences of stakeholders, actions, places ... a material for developing a game, a tool for analyzing the democratic mechanism, for carrying out a shared reflection involving all types of actors.

https://www.montreuil.fr/ (External link)

Presentation of the Citizen Factory of Montreuil (External link)