LEXINGTON, Ky. — It was five years ago when artist and Lexington native Richard Young decided people needed to know more about what goes on in their city government. He was inspired to start CivicLex, and now, CivicLex has been recognized nationally. 

Young, 32, calls CivicLex a nonprofit education organization that fosters civic health through education, media and relationship building. He said his vision is a Lexington in which all residents can meaningfully take part in the decisions that shape where they live.

“We’re kind of a weird organization. There aren’t that many other organizations out there like us,” he said. “We’re sort of both a media and, to some extent, a news organization. We help people understand what’s happening in the city government, but we do that in a way that’s a bit different from most.

Young often hosts in-person workshops and provides other opportunities for people to connect with people in city government to learn alongside each other. It is these types of initiatives that garnered CivicLex, the Next Challenge Community Service Award by the American Public Media Group. Out of 400-plus media organizations across the country, it chose CivicLex as the sole recipient.

Richard Young, executive director of CivicLex. (Richard Young)

“I think bringing people together is really important,” he said. “It’s a distinct aspect of what we do, but we also do a lot of work with the city government to help find opportunities to strengthen the ability of residents to get engaged in city government.All of our sort of media and news work is really in service of trying to get more people engaged in city government, but then we’re also working on the other side of the coin to make it easier when people do get engaged, that the engagement is taken seriously.”

Young is a practicing artist that has been working in and around civic engagement and community development for almost a decade. He said he has a deep interest in how creative processes can positively affect democracy. 

“We have seen CivicLex’s impact in big and small ways,” he said. “We can obviously track people that use our resources and we can see how people use our weekly newsletter to get engaged–there are links in those newsletters to email council members–and we can see that people click those and use them to send emails about things in the news. We see our impact in granular ways and in larger ways that are maybe a little harder to define and things we can’t take 100% responsibility for.” 

Young said in 2018, about a year after CivicLex began, most Lexington City Council members ran unopposed. This year, every seat is opposed and so is the mayor’s. 

“We’re not pushing people to run against city council members,” he said. “We recognize having more people engaged in civic life and engaged in city government is healthier for all of us. We also know that many people running, both incumbents and challengers, use our resources and share our resources to help make their positions known or to show that they’re engaged with what’s happening in our community.”

No matter how much Young works or ideas he implements, he said he feels as though his work will never be finished. 

“There’s no arriving at a point where you think everything is great and you don’t have to do anything else,” he said. “It’s continual growth, and I think about city government a lot that way. A lot of times when we talk about how we can strengthen how our city government engages with residents, and people think it’s a critique of city government — like that they’re not good enough at doing that. Like anything else, sometimes it’s doing really well and sometimes it’s not. Our view on it is more like if it is doing well, it can still do better.

Young was adamant that CivicLex is not an advocacy organization.  

“It would be really easy for an organization like ours to be an advocacy organization and take positions on issues or push people toward outcomes,” he said. “There are organizations in town that do that, but we don’t, and are pretty strict about that. We have never taken a position on any issue. We don’t speak to support or oppose any issue or candidate. I think that was kind of strange for people at first. We’re doing all this to help people understand issues. I think there is some skepticism around that, but we work really hard to make sure we’re taking a neutral and non-antagonistic approach to what we do.”

CivicLex, with a full-time staff of three, is funded through grants and donations.