The containment of democratic innovation: reflections from two university collaborations

Abstract

This chapter reflects on variations in practice across two instances of street activism in the west end of Newcastle. Both projects shared with the Big Society agenda concerns for local democratic renewal and the foregrounding of community-centred knowledge, as well as an operating context marked by mainstream service retrenchment and piecemeal opportunities for civic funding. However, they also illustrate spatial variations including neighbourhood affluence, level of dependence on the local state and the strength of anchor institutions. The case studies are presented as a microcosm of broader challenges posed by the Big Society, explored longitudinally across a period of deepening austerity. They question the limits which austerity places on social innovation and the implications these may have for the civic university agenda in the future.