Building the Big Society, in a big society way

[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)