In the York Guildhall – the historic meeting place of the Guilds and now the full City of York Council Chamber – there is a sign probably put up in 1891 (Figure 17.1). It reads: ‘No manifestation of feeling from the public will be allowed during the council meetings’. Lianne Brigham and Richard Brigham photographed and shared this photograph on their York Past and Present Facebook 17,000-strong group to much amusement: ‘typical!’.

Lianne, Richard and Helen Graham – as part of a previous research project – had noted a serious problem with ‘them’ and ‘us’ culture in local democracy. On one side there is a lot of ‘just moaning’ as Richard calls it, where the council gets blamed for everything and people are not constructive. On the other side, the council and other public organisations do not find it easy at all to respond to offers to help from local people and find it very difficult to find ways of sharing responsibility (Bashforth et al, 2015).

Victoria Hoyle, City Archivist, spoke at an event ran by Lianne, Richard and Helen called ‘What has heritage ever done for us?’, where she called for a closer relationship between the archive and creating democratic presents and futures: ‘I would like to see it used more as a resource by council officers and also by residents to access information about how the city governs itself … I would like to think that there is a future where “look it up in the archive”, “visit the archive”, “have you thought about the archive?”, is the first step in designing solutions to problems and celebrating our past achievements’. (Hoyle, 2015)