Big Society: Travelling Pantry and The Problem With The Grass

Nothing makes my inner geeky garden designer sigh quite as much as the sight of a well manicured patch of grass.  It speaks to a sense of both order and beauty.  I tell you this only to emphasise now much I appreciate grass and how important it is having it cut well and regularly in order to make a neighbourhood look and feel well cared for. (Except in the US where the water used to irrigate lawns is unsustainable.  In soggy Britain this isn’t quite such an issue)

Grass cutting is also beginning to develop as a discussion example on issues of Big Society and citizen participation at local level… wrapped up in the question ‘who is going to cut the grass?’

I have been thinking about grass in the context of the first Travelling Pantry workshop to be held tomorrow in Sheffield. I have been putting the finishing touches to the planning and thinking about the best way to talk about why we have chosen an ‘asset-based’ approach for this project.  And thinking about the grass problem has been helpful.

If we broadly say that Big Society Thinking is about helping people make their communities and their environment their own - becoming more responsible for how their community functions, looks and feels – where does grass cutting fit?

The Travelling Pantry project is trying to help people develop creative community projects, make new things from local people’s enthusiasms and skills and use the material resources already available in the community. What we are doing differently from many community based workshops is that we not going to be creating a ‘snagging’ list for the community. There is nothing wrong with snagging lists of course – it just isn’t what we think we have time for at this particular stage.

There are a number of really very inspiring community projects which focus on maintaining (or even better refurbishing) the community  - and making your environment beautiful for the community is a wonderful and creative thing in itself.  The difficulty with the problem-solving format in a workshop situation in my experience, particularly if you start with grass cutting, is that typically, at community level at least, all these roads lead to ‘maintenance thinking’.  Once you have started, it becomes a list of pot-holes and dog mess, road works and graffiti and litter … and half an hour later you are talking about ‘hoodies’ being loud and rude and how lonely elderly people are and how bad the NHS is, and why aren’t trains on time, or the leaves collected quicker … and before you know it you are a sad heap of exhaustion and frustration just thinking about the terribleness of it all.

So we didn’t think we would do that.  At least not for the first couple anyway.

What we are planning on doing is thinking less about maintenance issues and thinking more about creating new things, new ways of doing things with new ideas and people – with an strong eye for how young people and older people and other people with less social capital, but loads of talents, can be properly included.

Maintenance after all can be pretty boring.  There is a lot of satisfaction in a clean house, and stacks of clean laundry are nearly as breathtaking to me as a manicured lawn but it really isn’t that exciting to the average person … is it? At least not to start with.

We know that people will come to the TP workshops with an open mind.  We are hoping to take them through a highly researched – but still experimental and innovative - process of asset-based community development: mapping assets and co-creating new ways of approaching community projects.

All this thinking in the car reminded me of the meetings I am lucky enough to have with Louise Macdonald from time to time.  Louise is Chief Executive of Young Scot (this fact helps me sleep at night)… and whenever I meet with her I feel that the world expands through her influence – possibilities open up before your eyes – things you never thought of before seem possible and exciting.  And she has never once talked about cutting the grass.

So there it is – my rationale for the Travelling Pantry workshops being asset-based, and why the intention is that participants will hopefully leave with a practical asset map of their community, a pipe to a whole host of tools and skills they can explore after the workshop and head full of possibilities. Rather than leaving with a list of chores... important as they are!

While the conversation on Big Society remains focused on services and 'fixing' issues in general, perhaps we are wasting precious time ... that we would be better spent talking about how citizens can be supported to re-configure their community in truly transformative, exciting and original ways. And to do that you need to know what's in them already.

Comments

[Jerry Stein]

AS LONG AS YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT GRASS YOU OUGHT TO ADD IN WHITMAN:

A Child said What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
….
I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see and
Remark, and say: Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
…
And now it seems to be the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.

[Laura Billings]

Totally agree with the assets / strengths based approach. Much more productive, and more fun to focus on the exciting possibilities and mowing the lawn is easier when you're all re-energised again.
Best of luck with the first one - can't wait for the Slow Food one in January!