Thriving too

Leeds Leads

I spent an enjoyable day yesterday walking the length and breadth of Leeds in the sunshine - checking venues and meeting people in preparation for the annual Slow Food UK all group volunteer meeting next weekend.

First up was Vik from Left Bank Leeds - a huge church building that was bought to stop it falling into disrepair and is run by a group of volunteer trustees as an arts and events venue. It's a beautiful space, with sunlight streaming through the windows and a quirky red sofa in one corner. The acoustics are absolutely mad - and one fat furry bumblebee buzzing round sounds like there is a lawnmower in the room.

A quick lunch stop at Pickles and Potter, who are doing our catering. Owner Lorna is passionate about good food, and carefully sources her ingrediants from local producers.

And onto the Meanwood Valley Urban Farm to meet Robert. There is a class of primary school children playing with soil and worms. With a calm soft slow voice, he explans the work the farm does with disillusioned young people from Leeds. There is garden including ponds and walkways, vegetable allotment from which they cook up soup together, and even the main farm centre building was built by the young people. Getting them qualifications, raising their self-esteem and giving them new chances outside of a system that doesn't serve them for a variety of reasons.

They are also part of a breeding programme for the rare white face Yorkshire sheep - with less than 1000 animals left it's a population on the edge of extinction.

Such a great day, such lovely people doing amazing work. I recommend a visit.

The Laundry Project

The Laundromat Project is a community-based public art non-profit that brings arts programming to laundromats in the Greater New York area through two core programs: Create Change Public Artist Residency and Works in Progress. Both programs seek to raise the quality of life for people whose incomes do not guarantee broad access to mainstream arts and cultural facilities.

Totally brilliant!

 

[wow!]

 

Friday evening just gone I was sitting in Goodenough College listening to a variety of speakers share their vision of 'In 10 years" at a TEDx conference with some colleagues and friends from my previous job with the RSA.

We heard Christian Busch of Sandbox talk about socially aware business models, Jan-Emmanuel de Neve shared his work on the genetics of happiness, and Bia Carnieiro on the ways that sport can develop young people from her work in Brazil.

I went out feeling full of ideas, and carrying a goodie bag with Penguin books and some tea bags, both of which I have tucked in to this weekend. (I've not read Alain de Botton before, but 2 pages in and it seems interestingly wide ranging and poetically detailed...goes quite well with a strawberry tea.)

So this evening, while I'm sat re-hemming a dress from the thrift shop that needed a few inches less frump before being wearable, I tuned into again, and the film above reminded my why I love it so much and how amazing we really are.

Counting Sheep

I have seen a couple of good films recently, both distributed by Dogwoof who do documentaries and social issues film.

The first was Sweetgrass - about the last of the Montana cowboys leading their flocks to summer pasture. I'll admit it's not a particulary pacy storyline, but I was strangly hypnotised by the sight of thousands of woolly white rumps bumping up and down the mountains. And several long shots with the camera low down in the flock where you are surrounded by breathing, snorting, baa-ing and trotting hooves.

The second was South of the Border (at the wonderful 6 Billion Ways event) - about the political changes in South America, and the mainstream media's portrayal of 7 of its elected presidents. Which opened my eyes to the stereotypes I had soaked up without realising it, and the power of the Western media to influence perceptions (all the more worrying with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp taking over more UK press...)

So settle in, get your popcorn (salted for me please) and open your eyes...

(The lovely sheep above resides at Church Farm in Hertfordshire. MWAH)

Does Education Lead to Happiness?

 

Via: BM Design

Big Society: Learning How Mixed Models and Social Business Become Sustainable

Three bits of information in the last few days has really focused my mind on the vital need to support new mixed models.

One of the central themes I discuss in the Travelling Pantry workshops is looking at projects which blur the lines between business and community, some of my main examples are Pie Lab and People's Supermarket.  Pie Lab is a community at its heart, while People's Supermarket uses a membership model to keep down prices and ensure participation.

On Thursday I had the pleasure of holding what turned out to be a Travelling Pantry Surgery at an empty shops project in Stirchley Brimingham run by Inhabit.  The Pop-Up Arts Tea Room has been running since the beginning of the year and the space has been made really beautiful by contributions of photos of local people under the heading 'I am Stirchley' and drawings and other art work by local children (more pics here).  The great project is being managed by Dr Samina Zahir of Hyrbid Consulting who are delivering a number of these Art Tea Room projects for Birmingham council.  The Tea Room itself is fairly straight forward - a fully funded temporary project delivered to the community.

What is interesting is that two young women who came to talk that afternoon were planning on opening a full time community cafe.  They had been thinking about doing this for... 7 years.... and had recently held some successful Community Cafe events in their local church.  The aim is community, the cafe is the vehicle.  In the course of our conversation we started to discuss funding options, how to make the cafe viable as a business etc, but also about the possible benefits of bringing in a membership model to help sustain the cafe beyond the purely commercial concerns, and to use local membership as a vehicle to help the community feel a sense of shared ownership and a desire to contribute to the running of the cafe long term.

  

Yesterday I looked up one of my favourite community cafe examples in Chicago to send to these two enterprising ladies in Birmingham.  We blogged about The Backstory Cafe last year, and they promoted their aims as:

"Backstory is a business venture that eschews capitalism; social change is our true bottom line. 

We believe stimulating public spaces play an important roll in fostering positive social change. Through our programming, we aim to become a hub for creative cultural activity and collective learning.

... we serve as an inclusive gathering space where people from diverse backgrounds can meet, interact and build meaningful relationships. " 

I fell instantly in love!  So imagine my dismay yesterday to find the cafe is now closed! On the remnants of their site they write:

"While the many people involved over the years were growing a business, we were also engaging in what is best described as a 'hopeful human endeavour'. so although the cafe is now closed, hope remains that this quite corner of Woodlawn will be home to a new initiative when the time is right" 

Also yesterday I see that People's Supermarket have been issued with a court order for non-payment of a £33,400 rates bill by Camden Council who have refused to give them a discount on business rates, despite their social model.

There is of course the whole argument about Big Society helping to make these activities on one side and breaking them on the other - including of course the cuts, but also in other thoughtless ways such as this example.

I wonder if to some degree the pop-up or temporary mindset, while creating great opportunities to experiment, is also making us think too short-term about projects.  I personally have a very strong belief in the protective and bolstering effects of community - and I am very clearly focused on this aspect of Big Society Thinking.  But to ignore the scale of change required is a serious oversight.

These community cafe's, co-op supermarkets, community village shops, skill sharing, community growing... any citizen-led community projects that require people to volunteer every week or month over the long term to survive, requires not only some supporting infrastructure, but also a proper understanding of their value and a determination to learn what it takes to make them work.  

These projects are too important to be at the mercy of small fluctuations in sales or volunteer time, or lack of council understanding.  We are still trying to understand what it will take to make them sustainable long-term, with their particular design, in their particular context, with their particular local individuals. It is really great that David Cameron took the time out to visit People's Supermarket a couple of weeks ago.  It is only by understanding the real value of these projects will they be protected to learn and grow. 

Big Society: Singapore's 'void decks' as brilliant Social Spaces

Now this really is interesting!

In the UK we are all about *pretending* not to control things at the moment.  Most discussion about 'behaviour change' is about how we get people to do more of the things we think are good for them ... without them noticing.  With 'nudge' this goes event further ... how do we get people to make good choices ... without *ever* noticing....

So it is quite refreshing to see that in Singapore - famous for top-down regulation - they just call a spade a spade and do something about it. I see a great tension between nudge and Big Society, as does Andy Gibson... so although I appreciate that in Singapore there is a lot of authoritarian thinking, there is also quite a lot of honest at play here in the social policies, something rather absent in nudge practice.

I have blogged about the 'taking back' of social spaces in Singapore quite recently, but a new article shows that to prevent racial enclaves forming (a natural human phenomenon) in Singapore the have a strictly enforced social policy that in every public housing estate that the flats are apportioned in accordance with Singapore's ethnic mix 77% Chinese, 14% Malay and 8% Indian.

All public housing estates have spaces that they call 'void decks' which are shared open spaces under the apartment blocks. One and half million people in Singapore live in public flats and make use of these spaces for recreation or 'collective idling' but are also used for weddings, fitness activities, childcare centres ... even funerals!

Throughout the Travelling Pantry project we have been finding communities with limited or no access to 'community spaces' ... several live examples of 'community management' (rather than council) restricting access to these important spaces.

Two further ideas where communities create their own spaces:

In Israel communities frequently club together and rent a local house which they use for community events and activities.  A shared house...

And marvellous Dan Thompson wants us to create lots more common spaces and make them all yellow!!! Pic below!