Recent News and Blogs

Monday 8 February 2010 10:00 by Mark Butler

Making the Case for Involvement

The Young Foundation say involvement through Local Authorities will only start when they assume citizens already have power, a strangely counter-intuitive starting point. We say its more important the relevance of involvement is shown to disbelievers and sceptics by the generation of evidence of impact on today's tough decisions - on doing more, better, for less.

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Friday 29 January 2010 13:20 by Graham English

Dont ya just love to be asked to help?

I fear 'co-production' will just be about cutting the costs of production, by shifting costs, and time requirements, onto the consumer, whether explicitly and consensually or not. Meaning 'co-production' becomes potentially exploitative, taking advantage of people without the power to resist. But it doesnt have to be that way, if we allow co-production to embrace the deeper concepts of co-design and co-creation.

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Friday 22 January 2010 15:10 by Graham English

Missing the Point of The Public Health Manifesto?

Some of those who want to see real change in our approaches to Public Health are in danger of shooting themselves in the foot. Approaches to taking forward the worthwhile ideas in the Manifesto must themselves be engaging and involving or it will take decades (again) to make progress.

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Friday 15 January 2010 17:10 by Mark Butler

Built to last?

Like good architecture we need good involvement to transform our public services - from the equivalent of buildings as impersonal and inadequate machines to live in, to become the equivalent of living spaces reflecting real human need and hope, articulated by the users themselves.

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Tuesday 8 December 2009 10:15 by Mark Butler

A Language to inspire?

Terms like community engagement, public participation, even involvement - do not set the juices racing. And we need a language that WILL inspire!

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Welcome to Fontis
Fontis screen logo

We aim to transform the quality of public services, public life and well-being in the UK by improving the practice of involvement, engagement and participation.

We will do this by
  • leadership and advocacy for involvement at all levels across the public domain
  • a membership network connecting people who share our aims Click here
  • an innovative resource centre providing an authoritative and comprehensive guide to practice
  • investment, with others, in effective ways of enabling more people to be involved in decisions that affect them
  • capacity development for individuals and organisations
  • support and challenge to thinking on policy and delivery
Making a Difference

We believe these different components, brought together with passion and expertise, will make a difference that isn’t otherwise possible.

Our aim is to be flexible and diverse, adopting different structures and ways of working appropriate to what needs to be done –- a new model of operating which grows, challenges, supports, campaigns, and creates new bridges which support involvement and active participation.

We’d like you to join us - to show your support for our objectives to find out more about how we work to help us get there!

To register click here

To find out more about each of the work areas, simply click on the topic above