Building the Big Society, in a big society way

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[From this article, reposted in its entirety with the permission of Julian Dobson, author of Living with Rats, founding editor of New Start magazine, Fellow of the RSA, and a voluntary board member at the Centre for Local Economic Strategies. - Thanks Julian.]

The Big Society is here – at least in the sense that it’s official policy. And it’s been here for years, in the real action being done in thousands of neighbourhoods across the UK to improve places and create better opportunities for people.

Today New Start magazine and the National Association of Neighbourhood Management got a group of people together to look at how we can build on what’s been learned to ensure the Big Society ideas fulfil their potential.

We had people who are making social action a reality in places like Manton in Nottinghamshire and Church Street in Westminster; people with years of experience in community development; activists and academics; and people who are promoting creative ways of telling stories and developing conversations.

Whatever the Big Society becomes, there are pitfalls it needs to avoid. I posted some thoughts here a few weeks ago; Kevin Harris has shared some important insights on his blog; and Gabriel Chanan and Colin Miller have written a helpful analysis of the Big Society from a community development perspective.

Here are a few of my opening thoughts from today’s discussion [click here to see the discussion on ScribbleLive]:

  • First, the Big Society is not a painkiller. The savings to be expected from empowering communities won’t offset the effect of £6bn of public spending cuts, with much more to come. That doesn’t mean fostering more community control isn’t worthwhile. It’s just that if the prime objective becomes saving cash, it won’t work.
    The impact of the public spending cuts hasn’t really sunk in. People will lose their jobs. Often they will be people in households who are already struggling to get by. When the dirty work of deciding what should stay and what should go is passed down the line, there will be unpleasant and difficult choices.
    In that context, active and empowered citizens are not an alternative to decent public services. But a culture of community action will help us to become more resilient – to cope better with the shocks of spending cuts and create the smarter local infrastructure we’ll need in a more frugal age. A Big Society could nurture a generation of doers with the courage to show real local leadership.
  • Second, it needs to be based on evidence. If we want healthy and strong communities we need to examine what’s happened in the past. There is a wealth of information available, from academic evaluations of government programmes to local case studies. We need to use it.
  • Third, the learning has to be shared. There is little value in keeping it in a collection of obscure websites that few people use. But bringing it together and keeping those links, personal as well as virtual, up to date and relevant is a big job. It won’t just happen. And that sharing needs to take place in a variety of ways to ensure learning takes root: online, in print, in face to face exploration and more.
  • Fourth, a culture of sharing demands networks, not empires. We’ve had too many attempts to pool learning that have been stifled by the dead hand of proprietorial interference or simply neglected. We need a Creative Commons approach where learning is gathered but organisations and groups are then free to reuse, adapt and repurpose what has been done.
  • Fifth, there is no year zero. There’s always a temptation for a new government or a new wave of activists to imagine the rule book can be torn up and a new future created from the cauldron of creativity that results. That doesn’t happen. Trying to apply the principles of creative destruction to communities and social networks is, generally, a bad idea: you just end up with the destruction. So we need to recognise history, story and roots, as well as futures and opportunities.
  • The sixth point is that we’re here to help. Those of us who got together today, and many others who didn’t, have abilities to digest, communicate, facilitate, analyse and inspire and we need to work collaboratively to make sure this happens as a new generation of community activists emerges. There’s a huge amount of goodwill out there. We have to build on it.

The challenge for the Big Society Network, and for those seeking to engage with it, is to bring this all together in a way that recognises and respects its value, and then apply it in a way that inspires and motivates not only potential community organisers but also the people in local and central government who need to work with them. It’s a tall order. But we need to take that risk while there’s still an appetite for working in new ways.

See also: NANM director Ben Lee’s recap: Action not just Reaction; transcript of the liveblog at regenfuture (watch that space for the full report)

An open letter from Bill Berkowitz of Community Tool Box Re: “Taking Action in Your Neighborhood”

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I got this note from UMass Professor Emeritus Bill Berkowitz earlier this week, and with his permission have posted it here so you can share your own thoughts and suggestions. Dr. Berkowitz is a writer, editor, and core team member of the Community Tool Box, the most extensive web site on community health and development on the planet (which we featured here). His books deal with skills, ideas, personal qualities, and stories relating to community organization and improvement. Bill is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and a recipient of its award for Distinguished Contributions to Practice in Community Psychology.

I’d forwarded this email to some of my contacts in the neighborhoods movement, and with their permission will be posting excerpts from their responses here as well.

Hi, Leo – Thanks very much for your April 12 note. It’s so easy to be impressed by it – both by your statement of purpose and by the people you’ve been gathering around your ideas. I surely hope your work gains momentum, takes off, and soars.

In this note, I’m sending along a concept of our own, titled “Taking Action in Your Neighborhood,” which perhaps you might reflect and comment upon.

In some ways, it’s a variation and extension of Our Blocks. Some differences are that it’s more explicitly action-oriented, and more explicitly participatory. It also structures the content by topic, rather than have the user do it via tagging. And it centralizes and gives a specific focus for much of the needed neighborhood work.

What’s here could be a rather big idea, probably calling for both synthesis of existing content and creation of some new content as well. The potential payoff, though, could be very large.

So take a look if you can, and see what you think; we’ll be very grateful to learn of your own reactions, others’ as well, whatever they may be.

We’re also very comfortable with your sharing any or all of this with your other neighborhood contacts – actually we’d encourage this, since more feedback may both help strengthen this concept, as well as Our Blocks itself, and potentially lead to mutually-beneficial collaborations.

Thanks very much again, Leo, and be talking to you.

~~ Bill

* * * * *

In response to your note and request for feedback, I’m writing to sketch out some neighborhood thoughts, and more specifically around developing a centralized “Taking Action in Your Neighborhood” resource that I’d mentioned before.

We’d certainly be interested in any of your own thoughts you might have on this, especially (if the idea has merit) for moving this idea forward. I’m also copying Jay here, since this relates pretty closely to some work he has done.

Here’s the rationale: There’s a lot of neighborhood-related stuff in print and in cyberspace, which may not be very surprising. Much of what exists is both good and useful. A lot of it can be found on Our Blocks. Some of it is on the Community Tool Box, and I’m sure also on many other sites as well.

But a real downside is that it’s scattered all over the map – so if someone is interested in a particular neighborhood topic or issue, they might find themselves looking in a lot of places, and having to patch together what they need from a bunch of different sources. This is both time-consuming and often not all that effective.

(more…)

The GOOD Guide to Better Neighborhoods

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Recommended resource: GOOD Issue 19, The Neighborhoods Issue. GOOD started planning the issue back in January, inviting its readers to help plan and produce it. The printed magazine went out to subscribers this month, and pieces are being published online in daily increments. Dozens of good articles in the issue (here’s the rss feed), but in keeping with the Our Blocks focus on getting practical information into the hands of people who want to make a difference in their neghborhhoods, these are articles I like the best:

The GOOD Guide to Better Neighborhoods: A Neighborhood Manifesto. Closer to a Table of Contents than the Communist Manifesto, lists 12 articles from the issue that provide readers “with the tools you need to make your neighborhood more than just the place you live. What all these tips have in common is the fact that they connect you to the actual human beings who live around you—and make your neighborhood better as a result.”

Start a Community Garden. Tips from Marvin Yee, the community garden program manager for San Francisco: Find a plot of land; Secure some seed money; Put together a dedicated team; Draw up your proposal and begin talking to your neighbors; Contact your parks and recreation department with your proposal. For more information check out the American Community Gardening Association.

Throw a Block Party. Tips from Jon Lawrence, who puts on an annual block party for up to 300 people in Bloomington, Indiana: Form a planning committee and pick a date and location; Make sure it’s legal; Promote the hell out of it; Work out your budget; Decide on food; Plan entertainment and activities; Enlist volunteers; Wrap it up. More on block parties from Our Blocks here.

Meet Your Neighbors Without Seeming like a Crazy Person. Tips from Kit Hodge, founder of the Neighbors Project. Say “Hi”; Spruce up your outdoor space, and spend time there; Practice common courtesies; Hang out in your neighborhood, and shop locally; Get involved with your neighborhood in a formalized way. More crazy things you can do with the neighbors here, here, and here.

Share Your Yard (or Get Your Neighbors to Share Theirs). More space, lower bills, and enough pooled cash to install that solar-powered hot tub—there are a lot of practical reasons to share yards with your neighbors. As with any kind of sharing, however, it’s best not to go into the situation willy-nilly. Here’s how: Identify what you want; Approach your neighbors; Plan for a social space; Make an agreement.

Join a New-and-Improved Commune. Tips from Stephanie Smith of WeCommune and Alex Marshall of Brooklyn Cohousing: Decide on your community’s values early on; Keep lines of communication open; Trust the power of consensus; Enjoy the economic benefits of communal living; Learn from the success stories; Don’t think being in a community is the same as being friends.

Create a Neighborhood Clubhouse. Artists/Professors Ted Purves and Susanne Cockrell of fieldfaring ran, among other things, Oakland’s Temescal Amity Works and the Reading Room – a store that sold nothing. Their tips: Pick your vibe; Have a purpose; Make it inviting; Have a bathroom people can use; Tap other people’s talents.

Get on Community Access Television. Pepper public access television with shows by people with useful skills they can share with their neighbors. Here’s how: Figure out who runs the stations in your area; Respect the station’s ethos; Have a good idea; Get organized; Find someone who actually knows how to use a camera; Spread the word; Make a good show.

All images by Trevor Burks:

Survey of Interests, Needs, and Skills (INs)

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Here’s a tool you might be able to use to get a better appreciation of the interests, skills, and needs of your constituents, and to help them connect with one another, and with other local resources. You can download the pdf by clicking on the image below. You can also edit and download the form, in spreadsheet format, here (some formatting was lost in the file translation).

The form was designed for residents of multi-family subsidized housing communities. We didn’t use some of items from the original Capacity Inventory (Kretzmann & McKnight 1993), but kept them in a separate tab (Skills, column J), so you can just copy & paste as needed.

Most respondents completed the form in under eight minutes, with some, who answered the open-ended questions at the end of the survey, taking up to 15 minutes.

Matt Singh (a fellow founder of the Idealist Silicon Valley group) and I developed the form, which we derived (with thanks) from several sources:

We’d appreciate your feedback. And as we roll this out to more residents, we’ll need online/offline tools to make it easier for them to match their interests, needs, and skills with those of their neighbors. Any ideas?

Community Tool Box announces partnership with Our Blocks

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Very grateful to have Christina Holt and Jami Jones join the Blockheads. They do great work at the Community Tool Box, where I volunteer, and it’s inspiring to be able to work with them here as well. As more such stellar people and organizations join us in our efforts to bring you field-tested ideas and tools to make a difference in your neighborhoods, we hope to be able to serve you even weller (no that’s not a real word, I don’t think). Here’s CTB’s announcement:

Our Blocks

Collaboration is a key idea we at the Community Tool Box teach; Chapter 24, Section 3 to be exact.  We emphasize the importance of networking, coordination, cooperation and collaboration as possible relationships that can exist between organizations.

The Community Tool Box was recently introduced to Our Blocks, an online collaborative site connecting people who want to work together to make a difference in the places they live, work and play.

Purple Line

How does it work?

Their writers summarize materials online into concise, easy to read articles, filled with important tags, links and information.  They provide real-life examples of the work occurring in neighborhoods through their community stories.  Additionally, there is an extensive online library with lists of resources available for anyone interested in grassroots community building.

Capturing important topics, such as community engagement, grassroots organizing, and placemaking, the writers for Our Blocks summarize the work being done by coalitions, non-profits and individuals, highlighting their stories, the resources they provide to the greater global community and examples of real-life application of these concepts.

Their site serves primarily as a blog, with extensive links for their libraries, case examples and partners/featured collaborators, however they also use Twitter and other social media tools to network with the community at large.

Our Blocks is entirely supported by the efforts of volunteers. The co-editors are a collective group of individuals working in positions to support community health and development by advocating for improvement and change in their local communities.

Are you interested in learning more and even contributing to the efforts of Our Blocks?  Visit their site: http://ourblocks.net

We at the Community Tool Box are grateful for partnerships with organizations such as Our Blocks, as it brings to light our resources and allows us to share with the global community the tools we offer.  Our Blocks did an amazing write-up about us, which you can read here.

Neighborhood-based community building handbooks recommended by Jim Diers

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“Few people in this country know as much about community building as Jim Diers,” said  Fred Kent, President of Project for Public Spaces (PPS). From 1988 to 2002, Jim led Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods which is “widely known as the most innovative effort in the U.S. to empower local residents” (John P. Kretzmann, Co-director or the Asset-Based Community Development Institute).

Jim’s been dragged all over the world by people and orgs keen to learn from his real-world experience as a community builder. He’s currently on a tour through Ireland, England, Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, and the US. (It’s not really a book tour, but a lot of the discussions revolve around the ideas and practices detailed in his must-read book Neighbor Power.) Yet he somehow found time to answer my request.

In my own experience as a community organizer, I’ve found that it’s so much easier to get things moving when people don’t have to first invent the wheel. So I like workbooks. Our Blocks recently featured one workbook,which I thought was the best I’d seen so far. I asked Jim if others came to mind. He said he’d give it more thought when he had more time, but off the top of his head:

  1. The Organizer’s Workbook, published by the Indianapolis Neighborhood Resource Center -  a roadmap to discovering, organizing and engaging your neighborhood. (This is the workbook we’d previously featured, as noted above. Incidentally, I corresponded this week with INRC Executive Director Anne-Marie Taylor, who said she’d “love to hear how folks outside of Indianapolis are utilizing this Workbook”.)
  2. The Great Neighborhood Book, by Jay Walljasper, published by PPS. (In the Great Minds Think Alike category, this book was also recommended to us by UMass Professor Emeritus Bill Berkowitz, Development Partner at the Community Tool Box.)

Not a workbook, but something Jim brought up in relation to my plans to do community-building work in the Philippines: From Clients to Citizens – Deepening the Practice of Asset-Based and Citizen-Led Development (pdf) – Conversations from the ABCD Forum, July 8 – 10, 2009. Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. Edited by Alison Mathie and Deborah Puntenney. December 2009. The Coady International Institute published this under a CC-ANSA license, very nice of them.

Thanks for your recommendations Jim.

Other recent articles on Jim Diers by friends of Our Blocks: Jim Diers on citizen action by Kevin Harris at Neighborhoods; Getting back to Government Is Us at Socialreporter (which includes a beer-powered interview by David Wilcox). You can also find Jim’s talks on The Youtubes, three of which (so far) we’ve added to our Videos collection. Not recent but still fresh, this hour-long conversation on KUOW (note: turns out there’s a difference between mating calls and meeting calls).

Public Participation Process Planner

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The process planner helps you choose participatory methods that are suitable to your situation. It also helps you plan your process. You answer a series of questions which are compared to a database of methods to determine which methods best fit your needs.

The process planner will suggest a list of methods. It is often a good idea to combine different methods at different stages of a decision making cycle.

You can choose between the following options:

1. The full version of the process planner contains both short online questionnaires and supporting text to help you think through the options available to you. We recommend this for new users.

2. The quick version of the process planner is limited to just the questionnaires. Choosing this option means you will be able to choose a method quicker but you will not have access to the useful supporting information. This option is mainly for advanced users.

3. The supporting information pages where you can view the guidance on planning participation processes without having to click through the questionnaires. This option will not help you choose a method.

4. To find suitable methods you can also use the methods advanced search .

If you are unable to find what you are looking for elsewhere on the site you can post a question for our experts to respond to.

from Public Participation Process Planner via people and participation.net – the public participation public engagement website. People & Participation is based on Involve‘s successful book (pdf) by the same name which was launched in 2005. The book provides a useful summary of participatory methods and practice but given the number of methods and speed of the development of new methods it is impossible for a printed publication to stay accurate for long. The reason for transferring People & Participation to the web is to allow us to maintain more, and more up to date information about participation. It also allows use as the site user to add your knowledge and experience making the site a truly collaborative experience, something that a book simply cannot do.


Practical ways to engage with your community

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Community empowerment is about motivated people actively engaged in making a difference to the places they know best. Residents need to know how they can get involved, and councils need to know how to help them do so. These methods and tools should help make engagement easier.

from Practical ways to engage with your community via Improvement and Development Agency for local government (IDeA). The IDeA supports improvement and innovation in local government, focusing on the issues that are important to councils and using tried and tested ways of working.