Our House brings People’s Charter conversations to Wrecsam Ffair

Wrecsam Ffair was designed to bring people together — and that included creating opportunities for conversations about how we participate in the communities we live in.

Among the organisations taking part was Our House, a movement focused on what it describes as “people-powered democracy” and the development of People’s Charters. Its approach invites communities to consider how power and democracy should work and to develop their own demands and actions around those questions.

Across Wrecsam Ffair, Our House gave visitors an opportunity to find out more about the People’s Charter approach and consider questions about participation, decision-making and the relationship between communities and those who make decisions affecting them.

For TCC, there was a natural connection between this activity and our Belonging in Our Community agenda.

Belonging means having a voice

Our Belonging in Our Community work is about more than celebrating the diversity of Wrexham.

It is about creating a community where people can meet one another, develop relationships, listen to experiences different from their own and feel that they have a place within the community.

That includes creating opportunities for people to participate.

Wrecsam Ffair provided one such opportunity. Over three days, people came together around music, art, food, activities and conversation. Not everyone arrived with the same experiences, interests or opinions — and they didn’t need to.

A healthy community doesn’t require everyone to think alike.

It does require opportunities for people to encounter one another.

From conversation to participation

Our House describes its People’s Charters as locally developed demands and actions about how power and democracy should work, with local conversations intended to connect into a wider four-nation process.

Whatever people’s individual views about the wider questions raised by that approach, there is value in creating spaces where people can stop and ask some fairly fundamental questions:

Who gets to make decisions?

Who gets heard?

What would make it easier for people to participate?

And what would a community where people feel they belong actually look like?

Those questions sit comfortably alongside TCC’s wider community organising work.

Our aim isn’t to tell people what they should think. It is to help create the conditions in which people can meet, listen, organise and make their own contribution to the communities they are part of.

A small part of a much bigger conversation

Our House’s participation was one element of a much wider Wrecsam Ffair programme.

The photographs below capture some of that participation and the people who stopped to take part.

For us, that’s an important part of what Belonging in Our Community means in practice.

Not simply asking whether people are included — but creating opportunities for people to show up, meet others, contribute and be heard.

Thank you to everyone who came along to Wrecsam Ffair and helped make those conversations possible.