Where next for Anywhere but Westminster?

I love what John Harris and John Domokos have been doing with their ad hoc video journalism project “Anywhere but Westminster” for the Guardian. Theirs was an inspired decision four years ago: to travel around the UK to cover national politics rather than stagnate among the self-absorbed and self-obsessed of London’s media and political pools.

Their coverage has been refreshing and realistic – far closer to the dynamics of what’s happening on the ground than what you could learn from watching the national broadcasters – the BBC, ITV or Sky and the first twos’ regional offshoots.

Now they’re asking for ideas for what to do next. My answer would be to focus on the various experiments in political innovation that are popping up around the UK’s four member countries – things like Frome’s Flatpack Democracy – which John Harris himself wrote about last year.

The Sortition Foundation is another interesting initiative. On the 10th and 11th of June it will host Harm van Dijk and Jerphaas Donner, the founders of the G1000 in the Netherlands, to help launch the G1000 in the UK. The G1000’s aim is to assemble a representative, random selection of people from a selected community to deliberate their areas political priorities.

I hope to be there myself to start gathering material for a follow-up series of articles to my book Fraudcast News – How Bad Journalism Supports Our Bogus Democracies.

https://cdn.theguardian.tv/mainwebsite/2016/04/22/160425ABWexplainer_desk.mp4

For six years, John Harris and John Domokos have travelled the UK to get a sense of British politics away from the Westminster bubble. Meanwhile, old-fashioned two-party politics has crumbled amid a rising sense of discontent with the status quo. For their new series, the pair are back on the road, hunting down radical new politics in some unlikely places

Where do you think they should go? Send them your suggestions