Who Wants to Be?

On tour from the U.K., Mikey Weinkove is the originator of “Talkaoke”, a method of stimulating face-to-face conversation in the public spaces and thereby enriching democratic participation, which is the aim of Weinkove and his non-profit group The People Speak.

As part of The People Speak’s 2017 Segue tour, Weinkove has spent the week in residence at The Street Theatre, facilitating several interesting democracy activities.  The last of these, Who Wants to Be?, makes the night’s takings available for the entire audience to spend as it decides to.

The decision-making process was not a free-for-all.  Weinkove outlined the process at the start, and kept to that fairly closely, and it was interesting and revealing: sometimes inspired (when ideas underwent transformation into much better ideas), sometimes frustrating (when an “idea” represented nothing more than enthusiasm for unthinking political correctness), but, surprisingly, often funny.

The notion of group decision-making in an open forum is fascinating, requiring a skilful facilitator and a willing “electorate” to make it a positive, respectful, and powerful vehicle for bringing to fruition a decision for the general good, even if it directly affects only a few; the ability to come to a decision to use our common wealth in this way is testament to what may be possible on a larger scale.  It was heartening to see how much care and consideration audience members gave to allocating most wisely what was, for each individual, a very modest sum of $20.

One crack in the process did show up, when vote-counting began before Weinkove had explained how to go about voting; this one-off aside, though, the process was rewarding, even fun.  When The People Speak next operates in your location, you may find it rewarding to participate.

John P. Harvey