Policy engagement workshop: “How should the new Labour government be listening?”

To attend, please email Naomi Waltham-Smith no later than noon on Monday 2 September.

This event is the fourth and final in a series of workshops organized by Professor Naomi Waltham-Smith as part of her Oxford Policy Engagement Network Leaders Award. 

“They’re just not listening” has become a familiar lament in contemporary politics. Politicians often promise to listen, and citizens still feel let down. If listening is often hailed as a remedy for the ills of distrust, disaffection, and polarization, what do we mean exactly by listening and what does listening well look like in practice? To whom should government listen, and how? What needs to be done to embed listening in the workings of government across multiple scales?

This workshop brings together people thinking about these issues in academia, think tanks, and charitable organizations to address these questions from multiple angles—from the impacts of unresponsive economic policy to the potential of deliberative democracy, from the political challenges of building sustainable coalitions to the marginalization of minorities in public policy. The workshop will be interactive, with two sets of short panel presentations, each followed by small-group discussion organized around prompt questions to help identify concrete policy proposals.

In the first half, we will look at a range of political and political-economic factors influencing distrust and how these can be tackled. The second half will focus on more inclusive practices of listening including deliberative democracy and combatting the marginalization of minority voices.

Full details of the workshop can be found here: https://www.auralflaneur.com/open-workshop-4.

The workshop will be divided into two halves, each beginning with short panel presentations before breaking out into group discussion guided by a set of related questions. There will be an opportunity to chat with other participants over lunch, plus an option to go for drinks afterwards.

12:30–13:00 Networking lunch

Session 1

13:00–13:15      Intro—Naomi Waltham-Smith (University of Oxford)

13:15–14:15      Panel 1

Will Jennings (University of Southampton)

Claire Ainsley (Progressive Policy Institute—joining virtually)

Phil Burton-Cartledge (University of Derby)

Jonathan Hopkin (London School of Economics)

Ben Ansell (University of Oxford)

14:15–15:00      Small-group discussion

15:00–15:15      Tea/coffee

Session 2

15:15–16:15      Panel 2

Ceri Davies (National Centre for Social Research)

Becca Massey-Chase (Institute for Public Policy Research)

Matt Johnson (The Runnymede Trust)

Aurelien Mondon (University of Bath)

16:15–17:00      Small-group discussion

17:00–17:15      Final closing discussion and next steps

More details of the full series can be found here: https://www.auralflaneur.com/open-workshops. The series is designed to raise awareness of the potential for research on music, sound, and listening to engage with and inform public policy. The workshops bring together academics from multiple disciplines with NGOs, grassroots and other civil society organizations, lawyers, and others working to influence policymaking. There is a focus on making time for discussion with the aspiration that we can work together to overcome the challenges in respective areas, including by considering how diverse academic work or expertise can be brought together and harnessed in socio-political and legal contexts. From these conversations, we hope to identify possibilities for collaborative opportunities and to expand the range of policy areas for which music and sound research is recognized as relevant and productive, beyond the sphere of the creative industries, health and wellbeing, and music education.