What's the story?
How can we help? We love hearing from our members and readers. Whether you have a story that’s ‘publish-ready’ or the germ of an idea that might support your work, let us know!
We’re always happy to hear from local government. Write a piece for our blog, let us know what you’d like for us to cover in our members only briefings, or maybe you have an idea for LGIU’s podcast. We’re all ears (or whatever the text equivalent may be).
Submit an idea via the form. It goes straight into our editorial review so your idea can become our mission to get it to tens of thousands of local government in councils around the world.
You don’t need to fill it all out – just a few words might be enough to get us started, but we have space for you to link to or upload content. If you already have something written up, see our blog submission guidelines below.
Blog post submission guidelines:
We want to share interesting practice and opinion by local government elected officials and paid staff from around the world. We are looking for stories about your problems and solutions, focused on the local context, but with lessons, learning and inspiration for practitioners in other places. You can submit a case study of work you’ve already done or maybe a problem that you’re working on now or a common challenge that’s facing local government.
General guidelines:
- We’re looking for original content that’s never been published elsewhere. If you would like to repost something, please make sure to let us know that and that the author and original platform are ok with it being republished and share the link to the original post.
- Focus on practice, not partisan politics. Of course local government is political, but avoid being partisan.
- We recommend blog posts be between 400 and 1200 words.
- Use a friendly and informal tone.
- If you want to submit a picture, please make sure to include attribution and that image is either copyright free or you have the creator’s permission.
- Include an author bio of about 50-75 words with the job title that you’d like to see displayed.
Want more information about how this works? Check out our FAQs
Get inspired by previous submissions
We’ve shared articles from elected representatives, councillors, mayors and commissioners as well as local government staff, project teams and partners. We also highlight practical research findings from academics.
Local government projects and profiles
We welcome stories from project teams and local government staff. Here are some great examples:
Councillors' stories
We publish opinion pieces and develop profiles of the work of elected councillors around the world.
- Mayor of Glen Eira calls for major shake up of local government in Victoria
- Cllr Trish Robertson shared information about Highland Council’s transportation strategy.
- Councillor Janet Gardners’ work on domestic violence in England.
- Kelly King of Maui County in Hawaii, bio diesel and circular economy.
Partnerships
We highlight the work of partners and organisations that work with local government.
- How local government can improve political literacy and democratic engagement from Shout Out UK
- Celebrating the first local council clerk week in England and Wales – Society of Local Council Clerks
- Building dementia friendly communities from the pavement up Dementia Friendly East Lothian
Academia
While our Local Democracy Research Centre works directly with academics on substantial research, we also welcome research highlights to bring findings to practitioners.