Rapper and community organiser Jenniah Brown has launched a scheme to translate council policy into creative, live sessions intended to help young people find, understand and use public information — a problem he says is not lack of material but accessibility and confidence.
The programme, called Connecting Dots, will focus on four policy areas and stage a series of events where residents and artists dissect documents together. The first session took place in Croydon on Friday, featuring performances and a panel discussion that included representatives from King's College and the Department for Work and Pensions.
"The problem was not a shortage of information but whether people could find it and felt confident enough to use it,"
Brown told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that many council documents are publicly available online but are frequently impenetrable. He argues this produces a gap between formal consultation and meaningful participation: young people often do not attend standard engagement exercises because they do not understand the language or where to look.
How Connecting Dots works
The project will stage sessions called Cultural Research Exchanges in several towns and cities, bringing together local artists and residents to interrogate relevant policy material. According to organisers, the exchanges aim to create an accessible, creative route for people to engage with policy rather than sit through the conventional consultation process.
- Sessions will take place in Croydon, Lambeth, Bristol and Exeter.
- Each event pairs artists with local residents to unpick public documents and highlight practical implications.
- Performances form part of sessions, using music and storytelling to reframe policy content.
The first Croydon meeting included performances from artists such as Big Scoop, Shaniqua Benjamin and Selorm, followed by a panel exploring how councils and communities might work differently to co-produce services. Brown stressed that co-production rhetoric is common but that authorities still need to create environments where people are interested and feel able to participate.
"I think it's time policy had a story attached to it,"
Organisers say Connecting Dots will examine four specific policy strands. The table below summarises the themes on the initial programme.
| Policy area | Focus |
|---|---|
| Devolution | Local decision-making powers and community influence |
| Health in all policies & creative health | How health considerations intersect with local planning and the role of arts in wellbeing |
| Creative Industries Sector Plan | Support and strategy for local creative economies |
| Levelling up & UK Shared Prosperity Fund | Funding and initiatives aimed at reducing regional inequalities |
Why it matters nationally
Local councils across the UK publish strategic documents and consultation materials, but low engagement among younger demographics is a recurring concern for civic institutions. If Connecting Dots succeeds, it could offer a tested model for turning formal policy into narratives and events that reach people who currently ignore traditional consultation methods.
Brown and collaborators hope councils will adopt the approach as an alternative to poorly attended consultations. For councils, the attraction would be twofold: improving the reach and representativeness of engagement while also discovering new ways to co-produce services with communities who feel alienated by bureaucratic language.
Critically, the project confronts a gap that is not about supply of information but about legibility, trust and invitation. By bringing policy into the spaces where young people already gather — cultural nights, live shows and artist-led forums — Connecting Dots seeks to lower the barrier to participation.
Organisers plan further sessions in the coming months. The initiative may offer a test case for local authorities nationwide seeking to broaden participation and make policy conversations more inclusive and compelling.
