Information, advocacy and community action

The information and advocacy project work which is discussed in this chapter represented central, core functions for the resource centres, as envisaged in the Boyle/Gulbenkian tradition. As Chapter 3 has set out, the Community Work Group reemphasised the 1968 Gulbenkian study group’s overall pluralist approach to the ‘broader consideration of the role of community work in a democratic society’. Community work was, the group reaffirmed, a ‘means of giving life to local democracy’. 1 Central to such an ultimate objective was the significance which the group placed upon participation mechanisms, in general, and upon the communication systems which would be required both to inform those to be affected by public policy proposals and to ‘extend the means available to a wide range of groups in the community to express their views’.