Having formed in the early Summer this year, our North Staffordshire DSC has been busy working on both local activity and support for the UK National Collective’s Take a Break from Brexit Campaign, due to our main city, Stoke-on-Trent, being called a ‘Brexit capital’ with a 70% EU Leave vote in 2016.
In our local activism, we decided to identify a number of local organisations and events in which we could embed ourselves and spread the word about DiEM25 by means of workshops and forums. These were to be planned and delivered in a means whereby local people can link their own concerns and issues to policies that we provide solutions to in our eight policy pillars.
In November we delivered workshops on participatory democracy at the Stoking Curiosity Festival; then in December, workshops on Transparency and Participatory Budgeting in the context of healthcare at 1000 Big Workshop Day for people setting up enterprise and social support groups related to health.
From New Year we will be collaborating with UNITE (Community Action) at both the local and the national level, as well as the YMCA, the largest international youth organisation, with projects throughout Europe and beyond.
So how did we arrive at this stage? By drawing on all local contacts and organisations we could think of; making a list; attending some of their meetings or events; and talking to the organisers about DiEM25. They were soon offering us space to share our workshops, and without exception very interested in our aims and principles. We have a Loomio Channel called ‘8 Pillar Power’ which all are welcome to join! We are ready to go in the New Year with members in Dublin, Lisbon, Amsterdam, Bonn, and Warsaw on the channel and interested in working together with us to develop these workshops and more.
We hosted a launch of the Take a Break from Brexit campaign in December, and we arranged activities for attendees to come up with campaign strategies. These include pop up cafes, stands, forums, as well as art and theatre workshops.
We’ll be taking a short rest but meeting up on January 2, 2019 to fight the current Brexit options offered by the British government (bad deal or no deal). We hope you will join us then.

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