Ever seen a government act Idea Friendly? We’re looking for examples

I want to ask you a favor, for one of your fellow readers. They’re looking for examples of how a local government embraces the Idea Friendly way of thinking. Do you know of any? 

Here’s the actual request. I think you can probably relate! 

Thank you for such a great video! We are trying to emulate your idea friendly model. We are getting great traction, having raised $50k within our community of just 1,000 people to purchase an art piece that will hopefully get tourists out of their cars for a closer inspection (and spend some of their money in town).

Perhaps the biggest stumbling block we have faced so far is local government attitude. They are very much the old school way of doing things. Where things take years to come to fruition and only after a number of feasibility reports.

One local official is desperate for this to change, trying to follow through with the local governments commitment of embracing ABCD/Idea friendly community development model. But he is meeting resistance with a few councillors that what to control and micromanage everything.

They also seem to think that they are smarter than the community they represent. Like sometimes when a project has a huge wave of support in the community there are a pocket of councillors who think the community is just a dumb mob and they know better.

Do you have any good examples about how local government embraces idea friendly, rather than ignores/resists?

This one positive official is wanting to propose a whole new process on how ideas are presented to council and what funding they can set aside to support big ideas but is struggling to know where to start.

A lot of the projects we desperately need to tackle are Main Street focused, which the council owns a lot of land, so they are a group of officials we need to engage with rather than avoid (which is probably what we would all prefer to do!) 

If you have an example of how a local government (any type) has been open to new ideas, hit reply and tell me. And please let me know if I can share it with others. 

Keep shaping the future of your town, 
Becky

PS –  Did you see this awesome downtown Idea Shop? It’s a college/community store/makerspace/workshop and all-around idea worth copying.