Green Hustle Festival showed our system is broken but hope grows in the gaps left in communities

Our communities teem with creativity, yet it’s a resource governments have seldom nurtured, especially in the age of austerity and seemingly never-ending cost of living crisis. Thankfully in places like Nottingham, we’re nurturing it ourselves. And that, I believe, is leading to a genuine revolution in our politics.

Here in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire we have a wave of movements towards cracking open power. Our city just held Nottingham Climate Assembly – a full citywide Citizens’ Assembly six years in the making, powered by local volunteers, with 60 paid delegates chosen from over 600 applicants deliberating over two interactive days. The group was an unprecedented slice of Nottingham, and delegates have reported inspiring experiences. Experts on tap, not on top.

Resolve Notts is a citizen group which began as a response to government-imposed cuts, and now mobilises locals through grassroots community organising-informed ‘action listening’, broadening the local community organising. That’s not all Nottingham’s doing to creatively put citizens in power. We have the world’s first art gallery to be co-led (on par with executives and trustees) by an assembly of its community, in New Art Exchange.

These all came together at the Green Hustle Festival which took place last weekend. The festival began online in 2020 and now takes over a large swathe of the city including its way-leading Green Heart at the centre of a housing-led rejuvenation. This is an idea with roots in a local petition followed by a first community meeting on Reimagining Broadmarsh which was the crescendo of our first event.

The Green Heart is a result of pure people power, resulting from a unified citywide cry for nature and celebrating our local heritage – which has a fair bit to do with a certain Sherwood Forest, formerly spanning from the North of the county all the way down to the city whose castle was razed by local people in rebellion at the constant power struggles it hosted. Excitingly, the Woodland Trust, working alongside local organisations Sherwood Forest Trust, is about to embark on a 6.5 year project to explore, map and reengage people with what’s left of the original Sherwood Forest. This weekend we continued the community-wide work of restoring it, displaying 350 trees on the fountain of the city’s Old Market Square as an immersive pop-up forest, promptly planted permanently at our Aspley People’s Forest project, adding to 10,000 already planted by Green Hustle CIC via local volunteers.

This was just one of around a hundred activities ranging from sport tasters to live art, fashion making and catwalk, puppetry, a social dining table about half the length of our massive square and a pay-as-you-can community kitchen which served more than 1,000 hot meals. Besides all that there was city gardening, guided walks exploring our green, creative streets, all sorts of volunteering opportunities, help with literacy, money and home energy, and so much more.

We have a mantra of ensuring anything anyone could need for a day out – food, water, all activities and entertainment – was all on offer for free – thanks to community partnerships, local businesses like It’s in Nottingham, Experian, E.ON, Savoy Systems and Nottingham College, and in-kind contributions from Nottingham City Council, emergency services, and universities. These institutions are amongst those waking up to the potential of empowered, connected citizens.

A long list of other groups in other places burn a bright light forward for public servants, too – rooted in listening, co-creation and co-ownership are Civic Square Birmingham, Hastings Commons, Positive Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland, Cooperation Hull, Coalville CAN in Leicestershire, Thrivemind Village in Derby, East Marsh United in Grimsby, Citizen Hub St Neots in Cambridgeshire and spreading nationally. The UK-wide Our House people’s charter campaign.

This is just a slice of what I, as a Nottingham-focussed practitioner, am aware of. On my rough assessment parallel participatory movements are quietly tucked away just about everywhere. They’re reimagining power and who holds it, and demonstrating that the intelligence of many always outwits the few. And it’s not just that, it can have a transformative impact on those who get to participate in the process too.

Carnegie UK just published a report on how institutionalising deliberative democracy in UK parliaments can improve democratic wellbeing – I’ve long called for such a ‘House of Citizens’. Author and citizen futurist Jon Alexander is calling for a ‘Department Of Citizen Empowerment’ (DOCE) in every government.

Read more:

• Big Issue’s 100 Changemakers of 2026: Environment and climate
• Taking action against climate change could also help end the need for food banks. Here’s how
• The climate crisis is on our doorstep. How can we keep eco-anxiety in check?

Miriam Livin, director of participatory programmes at Demos, just held public deliberations around immigration on behalf of the Home Affairs Select Committee, with 35 participants in each of three locations – North Tyneside, Leicestershire and Renfrewshire, which found common ground even across profound divides. This is the level of revolution in thinking and practice we need across Westminster, where I happen to be on the way on Green Hustle business as I write – I’ll do my best to leave the door open behind me.

Solutions to climate and nature crises and a fairer, more equal and resilient society are coming not from above, but below. We can see the system we’ve been sold is failing, what matters is what grows in the gaps. It’s those ‘weeds’ in the system which we need to nurture.

Our can-do communities are finding ways to blossom, often in places where the challenges are greatest. Governments need to stop and smell the flowers.

Adam Pickering is Green Hustle Festival co-director, facilitator and a PhD researcher in social greenspace stewardship

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