This 2023 guide and toolkit reflects on recent experiences of Participatory Budgeting (PB) within the Gwent area of Wales, from early 2020 to January 2023. Produced by Shared Future, following qualitative research in Gwent, and building on our long experience of community empowerment, it focusses primarily on the wellbeing impacts of PB.

It contains overviews of the different processes delivered across Gwent, based on reviewing written reports, undertaking interviews with those leading the processes, engagement with members of the Integrated Wellbeing Network (IWN) that supports PB in Gwent, and with community members and groups involved, as bidders or voters, or in other ways.

It also covers the evolution of PB in the UK and in Wales, builds on existing good practice across the UK, considers different approaches to evaluating PB processes, reviews a range of existing and potential evaluation tools, explores attitudes and perception of different stakeholders, and finally develops proposals for taking a unified evaluation approach.

As well as collating information from across Gwent in high level summaries, it also contains a ‘toolbox’.  That is, a number of guides or templates to adopt or adapt as appropriate, as well as extensive references to further in formation. This toolkit is intentionally written to be a useful resource for those leading PB processes, rather than a detailed comparative analysis.

The detailed findings from our review of PB experiences in Gwent were delivered in May 2023 to members of the Gwent Strategic Well-being Action Group (GSWAG) and its partners.