Encouraging increased citizen engagement

The project called Initiative '92, which produced A Citizen's Enquiry – The Opsahl Report on Northern Ireland, gathered 554 written and taped proposals for ways forward in Northern Ireland. The initiators of the project were concerned that the people of Northern Ireland were being reduced to mere spectators at their fate and felt that an independent commission of inquiry with no limitation on ideas submitted to it would help answer a widespread desire among all kinds of people for a new means of expressing their views and hopes about the future. Ideas came in from all over, including Sinn Fein and Republican prisoners in the Maze and Crumlin Road Prison. A linked opinion poll in Britain, the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland was published in July 1993. The project received the Political Social Inventions Award 1993 of the Institute for Social Inventions.