The New Art Exchange (NAE) in Nottingham redefines institutional governance by embedding a citizens’ assembly not as consultation, but as co-leadership, transforming community members from passive publics into architectural agents of change; amid rising cultural closures and declining trust, the decision to dismantle a once-flagship street-facing gallery—seen by locals as alienating—symbolised a seismic pivot: aesthetic authority was subordinated to lived knowledge, and the threshold of the building became a porous membrane rather than a curated façade; instead, investment flowed into the cafe, reimagined not as a transactional amenity but a convivial civic space, catalysing Friday night gatherings, open mics and DJ sets that addressed a long-voiced local need: socialisation without surveillance or consumption pressure; this strategy, emerging from deep listening, led to a 48% increase in engagement by visitors from global ethnic majority backgrounds and a 22% rise in overall attendance, affirming not just participation but redistribution of authorship and accountability; executive director Adam Roe describes not a loss but a transfiguration of power, where legitimacy is now drawn from a mutual epistemology, one that embraces intergenerational assembly members—from fine art graduates to retired youth workers—as curators of relevance; across the UK, the model resonates: Birmingham Museum’s citizens’ jury called for later opening hours and youth-focused programming, while the National Gallery’s assembly experiments with long-term public strategy; scepticism remains, especially when citizen input is relegated to tokenistic exercises, but in Hyson Green—a neighbourhood historically framed by deprivation—the assembly has become an engine of civic dignity; Kathy, a retired resident, calls the process “invigorating,” precisely because it resisted extractive engagement logics and sustained reciprocity over performance; in a fragile cultural economy, NAE’s blueprint offers a replicable infrastructure of trust, rooted not in demographic representation alone, but in relational design, radical hospitality, and the ethics of relinquishing control.
