Big Society: Yours Mine and Ours

In 1968 the film Yours Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda came out.  As a proper child of the 60s my 4-year-old self thought that this looked like just the way to have a factory-style family:  High scale, attractive outputs with not too much individual attention to detail. (Seriously, never underestimate the synthesising ability of 4-year-olds)

I was reminded of the film yesterday when some friends,  Julian Dobson, John Popham, David Wilcox and others announced that they were starting Our Society.

As Julian writes:

“Let’s call this space and this service Our Society. It’s not Big Society, but it engages with and complements it. It should be a social enterprise, bringing together those who are already thinking differently and helping others to do so. It can create an informed, agile network of energetic people who can develop collaborative solutions to thorny problems. It can combine the advantages of digital technologies and social media with social innovation and local engagement.

 Big Society is the government’s story of how to do so; Our Society is ours – a critical friend, a space to explore, and a crucible for practical action. It recognises that social change starts at the margins, not in the mainstream – with people who are prepared to step out and experiment, rather than with those whose job is to implement policies.”

The gem for me in the Our Society concept, and John Popham and I touched on this when we spoke earlier in the week, is the need to gather and promote brokers and facilitators ...as Julian outlines:

"... we need glue-ers as well as doers. What I mean by that is people who can broker, facilitate, network the networks, put people in touch with each other, and appreciate the whole as well as the parts of the jigsaw."  

This is imperative and after the 20 October could in fact become desperate.  The councils and communities may not realise this yet, some do I know, but this type of expert facilitation is going to make all the difference in the coming months. I hope that people with these vital skills will flock to Our Society for this purpose. 

I have also been trying to think about Our Society in the context of the Big Society Network and Social Spaces and dozens of other organisations and networks working on ‘Big Society type things’. In many respects what Julian has describes is very similar to what Big Society Network aims to do in the long term, but what is apparent is that there is discomfort working in pre-labeled spaces – particularly when it comes to inviting other people into projects or processes – a bit like inviting your friends round to have supper at someone else’s house- someone perhaps with a different set of house rules.

So I can see why Julian, John and David have chosen to create a new space that feels more like their own, and I particularly like Julian’s accompanying blog photo labeled ‘we all need space to experiment’. So true.

But what is still slightly unclear in my own mind is how this fits with what is going on elsewhere. This week I delivered the first 3 Travelling Pantry workshops in Sheffield, Stoke-on –Trent and Birmingham.  The re-occurring theme of the week for the most community-based workshops has been about creating some new sorts of ‘common spaces’ – both inside and outdoors (see example pic from Sheffield workshop below).  The sense is that although there are spaces in the community that look like possible common spaces e.g. the park or the community centre, because the local community has had no hand in making or shaping them they don’t feel like common spaces.  They just don’t feel comfortable 'doing things their way' in these uncommon spaces.

Nat Wei spoke of 'extending what we think of as our home' in his recent speech ... and there are many signs that this is not just a philosophical ideal... but a human drive for connection in new ways.

And there are currently very few examples of where these 'new style' community common spaces have been created successfully.  In Hand Made we highlighted Mess Hall, Pie Lab, Mens Sheds, Middlesborough Urban Farming Project and Fallen Fruit.... but we need more of these types of imaginative examples... in all the myriad of forms they could take.

So how do smaller networks, organisations and projects engage with Big Society if they don’t feel completely comfortable in the space?

And how do we, in these different projects, ‘engage and compliment’ as Julian suggests, building and adding rather than fracturing what could be a hugely supportive and important brand – especially if it is socially constructed, as I suggested on Friday?

For Social Spaces, and we have discussed this thoroughly in our Development Team, we see ourselves very much as a ‘specialist innovation project’ ….. looking specifically at the moment at citizen-led community innovation – so we are looking at a range of different models around stimulation, learning, how to spread innovation from the fringe to the mainstream ... and most importantly frameworks for collaboration.  In one sense we could be viewed as an R&D department, bridging and building on some of the outputs from think tanks, citizen-based practice and academic research.

But we are hugely appreciative of the Big Society agenda in its ability to raise awareness and support all our collective work and help communities engage with our experiments. Matthew Taylor said that he saw the RSA as the think tank for Big Society, and I could see Social Spaces described as a 'practical innovation boutique' (one of many) for Big Society.

With all this in mind, in this current landscape, I would suggest that the positioning of Our Society needs to be very carefully managed.  With their overarching aims matching the Big Society Network in many respects there is a *possible* danger of it being perceived as My Big Society rather than the Our Society they clearly want to create, in other words, another labeled house where not everyone will feel comfortable? Perhaps the challenge/opportunity is how Our Society can become, and be perceived to be, properly non-political rather other other-political. Ben Toombs at the RSA has published some interesting posts recently on values and engagement here and here.

In Yours Mine and Ours, they had to occupy a completely new house to accommodate their 18 children.

I hope in the coming months we can have open and transparent conversations about this issue – it seems to be vitally important. If we are all learning together… can we come to create a truly ‘common space’… a space that we make and shape together?

Perhaps we also need to start talking about these issues not in terms of enclosing structures such as houses or umbrellas... but instead in terms of exposing and collaborative structures ... platforms and bridges and mosaics.... 

 

Comments

[Julian Dobson]

Platforms and bridges and mosaics are what I had in mind, Tessy. Community Links in east London, an organisation I very much admire, has a policy of 'no wrong door' with the people they contact.

I don't see Our Society as an enclosing structure. I see it as skills and conversations and networks, but also about the work of building relationships and connections. That has to happen in a huge variety of ways because the connections have to be personal. And - in my view - it has to happen outside government because relationships and skill sharing and brokering are things government is not good at.

The Big Society Network occupies a position where it engages with the Big Society enthusiasts, but struggles with those who don't share the government's philosophy or perceive it as politically driven. So Our Society, if you like, is deliberately separating the learning and sharing about social action from the politics as currently expressed because it isn't obligatory to have both, and offering a bridge for those who may not share the government's ideology but do want to engage with social action.

This is work in progress and I think your comments are helpful - we want to keep the discussion open and shape our thinking around that, but start to experiment with doing as well!

[cyberdoyle]

I see the big society, our society as a watch, with cogs and jewels, but after reading your post I can also see it as a web. A spider's web, where the people are the core and the links they make are the web, forever growing, catching more, spinning more, and the wider it goes and the more links in it the better the people will be.
In the old days all this happened over garden walls. Now we do it digitally. We all need a connection to the pipe to help us spin our webs. Please don't forget the millions who can't get a connection, and those who don't want to. We have to include those too.
I see big society as the driver for investment in the communications infrastructure. I see our society as us helping ourselves.
Each has his own part to play in the timepiece. Without us it won't keep the time. The smallest cog amongst us is probably one of the most vital components of the watch. And some are jewels.

[David Wilcox]

Thanks Tessy. Julian defines the territory and purpose. Your engagement with the idea of Our Society confirms for me that it is worth exploring and experimenting. Cyberdoyle reminds us that the system needs many movements.