Thriving too

Community Lover's Guide: One down, many more to come!

Almost a year after suggesting we make a local edition of Hand Made, 9 March saw the official launch of the Community Lover's Guide to Rotterdam! A collection of 14 initiatives highlighting inspiring and creative ways in which people have been forging bonds and creating communities. Using empty spaces, shops, kids, food, greenery, sand, books, stories, art, and symbols in new and old ways has resulted in some amazing projects.

Making the book has been a thrilling experience. In showed me again how many people are actively trying to make their city into a better place to live. I decided to start the book with an introductory chapter explaining this feeling. So the first draft of this chapter was called 'For the love of public space'  because what I think all the projects collected in this book show is the care, pride and ambition people show for their environment and each other. But it didn't quite get to the significance I started these initiatives had.

So I ended up writting a different chapter called 'Desire Lines', arguing that we should see the projects brought together as social equivalents of the desire lines you see in public space. And just as city planners don't really know how to deal with these desire lines (ignore them, take them into account and make them into official roads, or pave them over from time to time to keep the appearance of the official world as the only way up) policymakers, scientists, media and fellow citizens also find it difficult to relate to these projects. They like them, but what is their particular value? I don't have an answer to this question, but have put it out there as an invitation to explore this with me.

We launched the book in a ‘Community Lover's Lab’ over the course of 3 days, in an empty shop on one of the main shopping streets in Rotterdam. People were welcomed in with a Pie Lab (offering free pie on a china plate), and invited to share what they wanted to see more of in their neighbourhood, and to add assets to a big map of the area. Some were just curious and left after a small exchange, others stayed for an hour talking about the neighbourhood, but also the economy, the value of money, education and coffee shops. It was a really fun and energizing experience.

more pictures of the lab can be found at: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/communityloverslab

Other activities included a conversation with a mixed group of project initiators, urban professionals and researchers gathering to try and find the right language to grasp the value and meaning of the projects brought together in the book. In turned out to be a very difficult thing to do; to have a conversation publicly allowing for doubt in understanding what is happening around us. It has led to a new experiment called 'Doubt-lab' in which we will be trying to find safe conversation formats to publicly express and work with doubts. More will be up on the Social Lab before too long – and it would be great to share others experiences.

You can find all the Dutch chapters here, or buy the book here. The English edition of the Community Lover's Guide to Rotterdam will be available online for free, and in hard copy print from mid-April. So keep a close I on Twitter (@mauricespecht) for the announcements 

We have also developed a 3 day ' Immerse Learning'  experience around the Community Lover's Guide to Rotterdam in which we invite people from abroad to explore and learn from these inspiring projects first hand. We call this trip 'Into the Field'. More details can be found here 

All in all what started a year ago as a quaint remark has now gone into its second phase. With the first book coming out, and other editions from different cities as London (Hackney), West-Alabama, Birmingham, Utrecht and Minneapolis around the corner, the potential of this project is becoming more and more clear to me. It's an inspiring way of building a local and an international network of people changing the world bit by bit.For an overview of all the future edition visit Community Lover's Guide to the Universe.

 

Unfinished Business

In the last two weeks a particular quality of community projects and spaces which seem to be working particularly well, has became clear to me: being unfinished as built in quality to engage people.This is counterintuitive to the way we have think about services or our public spaces. They are built around things being in order, sorted out, and meticulously planned out. (Social) Designers are very much consciously aware of this. They have all kind of possibilities of designing in, mostly unaware to us, a particular and desired kind of behaviour. Dan Lockton’s set of card ‘Design with intent’ offers 101 examples of things designers can do to influence our behaviour through design. His set of cards can be found here. Leaving things unfinished isn’t part of his extensive repertoire.

Thinking about changing people behavior through design has recently got a big push through the work of Thaler and Sunnstein on nudging. Their concept of a choice architecture deals with the same thing. Through this design thinking has been introduced to both a more general public and to a much wider variety of domains.

One thing we should remember is that people don’t always use the way things are intended. They deviate from the way things were meant to be used. A nice example in public space is offered by this picture (on the highly recommendable blog Urban Bricolage by Eric Hooge, a collection of people tinkering with urban space)

The caption of this picture reads: 

“A desire path (also known as a desire line or social trail) is a path developed by erosion caused by animal or human footfall. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width and amount of erosion of the line represents the amount of demand. Desire paths can usually be found as shortcuts where constructed pathways take a circuitous route.”

This deviating behavior already points to an openness in every design for users to explore particular ways of using it. But this deviant behavior is mostly seen, especially from the perspective from the designer or the planned world, as undesirable. But what if this openness is exactly what helps define a good public space or community project? And is keeping things unfinished as a design choice a way of designing in this openness? To explore this first two examples which made me realize ‘being unfinished’ might be a particular quality you could use and could help us explain their value and what it offers different from services.

The first time this became clear to me was while visiting the Arcola Theater during a study trip organized by Inspiring Cities. During this visit Ben Todd gave a talk explaining how the theatre came about and how it operates. There were many interesting things happening at this place, but one remark stuck with me ‘we try to keep the project unfinished to make people feel able to relate to it’. By keeping things open, you give people the opportunity to not only act as a user, a client or a customer. You give them the possibility to appropriate things, make them (part of) their own. From a user you are given the opportunity to co-own something. This doesn’t mean that you do not offer anything. It’s not about offering nothing; it’s about keeping a particular openness for people to relate to objects or spaces in a different manner than consumer mode.

 



The second recent encounter with the value of being unfinished occurred to me while visiting socialspaces.be at the Media, Arts and Design Acadamy in Genk. One of their researchers, Ben Hagenaars told about a former project of his, Animation Vegetation. In this project he has created 3D jute dolls filled with soil and grass to drop in the public space. Inspired by the graffiti movement, the dolls aim to generate more green spaces in public spaces. What makes this project interesting is that Ben has put a tutorial on his website which enables everyone to make their own. So he gives away a template to intervene in public spaces, thus enabling others to do something with it. Again this is a nice example of the added value of leaving something unfinished.

Leaving things unfinished invites people to engage with things in a deeper, more personal manner. It is an invitation to appropriate something, to make it your own, to add value and meaning to it. Moreover it hands over responsibility, ownership and control to people. It asks them to make something, not out of nothing, but at least make something happen. They can add their skills, knowledge, experiences and dreams. By keeping it unfinished people who join in later can still add something.

So where does this leave us. Should we just do nothing and leave it up to people to fill in all those things which we leave intentionally unfinished. No, that would be pushing it. Instead we should be looking at ways in which we could strategically built in the unfinished. To help me articulate this and finish off this post, I want to refer to a text by Joop de Boer en Jeroen Beekmans. They run a website 'The Pop-Up City' collecting examples of temporary and flexible Interventions in urban space. In the recently published book ‘The spontaneous city’ by Urhahn Design, they have written a text in which they argue that in a sense spontaneity is overrated, or maybe it’s too optimistic a view on how to work with and on cities. Instead they argue that we should not expect things to happen spontaneous by nature, we should try and induce spontaneous action in people. They call it ‘Artificial Spontaneity’. Although a good party has a spontaneous feel to it, it requires a lot of preparation. What this implies for designers is thus that is not about ‘the spontaneity of the intervention, but about giving rise to the spontaneous social interaction’. Leaving things unfinished is one way of creating such artificial spontaneity. I leave it at that, maybe unfinished, but ready for you to take it further wherever you want to. 

 

Social Spaces: Civic Engagement, Social Capital and Unemployment

A fascinating post on the Social Capital Blog details two recent studies in the US which show correlations between civic engagement and levels of unemployment.  At one end of the scale Nevada, where less than 5% percent worked with neighbours, has unemployment of 10% - 12%... while at the top end is Alaska, where 15% worked with neighbours, has unemployment of 0% - 2%.

While they are quick to point out that the study does not prove causation. However Bob Graham thinks that taken together with other studies that these finding will be proven real:

"Assuming this finding turns out to be real, one might wonder about the mechanisms.  My hunch of the most likely culprit is that in higher social capital places, firms are more likely to share the pain through across-the-board cutback in hours rather than concentrate the pain through layoffs and firings.  Levine and Dietz posit other explanatory factors:

• stronger social networks make it easier for people to get re-employed;
• civic engagement helps generate skills and confidence that translate into employability;
• civic engagement helps spread information that make it easier for individuals to learn about job openings or training programs;
• civic engagement produces higher trust and higher trust leads to better economic performance (although social trust wasn’t directly measured in the CPS survey);
• governments are more responsible and responsive in high civic engagement states; or
• people in more engaged communities may feel greater community attachment which leads them to invest more locally."

This study supports the idea that community and connection can have a real impact on difficult problems - working very much in the area of 'effects'.  In April I wrote about protective factors for young people in particular and the idea that a connected community would have the 'secondary effect' of helping support young people better than some of the more direct interventions.

Innovations in Consultation, Engagement ... and possibly Democracy

I wanted to write to share some reports on two fascinating events I recently attended focusing on community engagement, consultation and democracy.

The first was two weeks ago hosted by Involve and NCVO at an event focused on Local Engagement and Democracy, based on their superb qualitative research paper produced on Pathways to Participation.

Some of the key findings from the Pathways to Participation report was that from the 100 in-depth interviews conducted for the report there wasn’t a single report of a person being happy with a local consultation:

Interviewees’ experiences of formal public consultations were almost entirely negative. Concerns included:

• Consultation processes feeling tokenistic or repetitious, with lots of consultations on similar issues and no sense that anyone was bringing together the results.

• Decisions already having been made prior to the consultation, which was only carried out to meet a legal obligation or as a public relations exercise.

For many interviewees, these negative experiences reinforced an existing ambivalence and lack of trust in political processes in general. As a result of this lack of faith in the system, people often stopped attending consultations and public meetings and sought to express themselves in different ways; one interviewee’s experience of a consultation concerning the closure of a local hospital was that:

‘. . . it was so poorly done that you could say that’s why I went on the march in the end because I felt your voice wasn’t being heard as part of that [consultation] thing.’

This point was further re-enforced by Rhion Jones from the Consultation Institute at the LGinsight event on Tuesday ‘Improving Community Engagement’.  Rhion Jones argued that government was moving away from ‘evidence-based’ decision-making – to ‘permission-based’ decision making, where the rise in campaigning and activism was altering these dynamics in a purposeful way.

Personally I consider the poor consultation and permission-based decision-making described a very unsatisfactory scenario going forward – and as I commented at the Pathways to Participation event – it isn’t a status quo that we should be prepared to accept as the way to improve things in the future … that we need is to be more radical and self-critical about ensuring both democracy and good-decision making – which should go completely hand-in-hand. 

My comment on this included:

“Good decisions come out of everybody’s knowledge being pooled together. The citizens don’t know everything and the local authorities don’t know everything, but I think that good decisions come out of blending those two together. That it is quite a difficult thing to do. Poor decision-making can lead to unnecessary levels of local activism; there are necessary levels of activism and then there are unnecessary levels of activism, and those normally come about through bad decisions. Not only that, I think bad consultation actually wastes the very genuine opportunity to collaborate and design projects and services that draw on the intrinsic strengths of both citizens and government. That isn’t just about skills or knowledge or time. I think that we need to start to think much more about pulling on the imagination of citizens and local authorities alike. And that I think is why consultation is so important.”

.... But things are changing for the better - most exciting of all we are seeing Local Authorities that are taking a much more collaborative approach – moving forward the practice of consultation and engagement into the creative/collaborative space it needs to take if the full potential of citizens and government and professionals are to be utilized for social good over the long term.

Lambeth Council

Rebecca Eligon, Head of Strategies and Equalities, spoke on Tuesday about the ‘Co-operative council’s’ very practical and strategic efforts to engage in a new relationship with citizens, arguing that LAs need to expand their repertoire of research strategies and methodologies to really understand and surface citizen knowledge and capacities. This was exemplified by their swift actions following the riots – where the Town Hall became a vibrant and engaging space for residents to share their concerns and offer the ideas and talents to improving the places where they live.  Lambeth Co-operative Council is leading a much larger group of councils who are developing this new approach which looks to co-produce both services and communities.

Reading Council

In September Reading Council conducted 30 ward-based 2-hour workshops with local residents.  Using innovative, rich-research ‘talking tools’ and methods the workshops aimed to genuinely understand the concerns and desires of local residents, to paint a collective picture of what sort of communities people wanted to live in, but also aimed to change the conversation between residents and council staff to one less about linear services… and more about what transformations might be achieved by working together. The workshops were delivered by 30 council staff ranging across all departments trained specifically for the project. Resident feedback on the workshops ranged very positively from between 4 and 5 out of 5.

Norfolk County Council

Presented by Anne Tansley Thomas, Senior Consultation & Involvement Officer and Matt Dobin from Discovery, the work of  the council again looks to change the conversation significantly. Taking a workshop approach, using innovative activities, the council presented the work of the council to residents in a new way – resulting in a long-term piece of work that has gone a long way to effectively engage residents in knowledge sharing and decision-making.

Harrow Council

Harrow Council have been taking a very novel approach to consultation.  As described by Lindsay Coulson, Head of Communications, the council have taken to the high street with pop-up living rooms and gardens where local councillors have been invited to talk to residents in a very new-style of surgery.  Their Let’s Talk campaign has been integrated into much of their work and has received a great deal of praise from residents.

Perceptions of Place Report

If you get a chance please do have a read of the research report Perceptions of Place report by Keep Britain Tidy, presented on Tuesday by Joanne Butcher.  Of particular interest was the data on complaints from deprived communities being ‘the tip of the iceberg’… while in less deprived communities the level of complaints is more likely to be representative.

Are there other Local Authorities that are engaging with citizens in ways that genuinely attempt to change the relationship to a more creative and collaborative one - let us know - everyone is interested ....

How do you think consultation adds or harms real democracy and good-decision making?

I will end this by quoting Rhion Jones from Tuesday “"wanted: more candid consultation - tell the truth"

Big thanks to Rebecca Eligon and Neil Wholey, from Westminster Council and Chair of LGinsight for their invitation to ‘speed workshop’ on Tuesday – phew! ... and to Tim Hughes and Simon Burall at Involve for inviting me to comment on Pathways to Participation –  even suffering the odd joke! 

Lewisham Muse

So y'all could be forgiven for thinking all I do is eat my way round London, but here we go again... This evening was a civilised affair at the Deptford Muse - a series of simple meals designed to foster conversations between people who might otherwise never cross paths. Informed by the work of Theodore Zeldin,(founder of the Oxford Muse) and produced along with the Lewisham Young Mayor and advisors, it was designed to support young people in developing their creative and personal potential. The conversations were themed around "Inventing new kinds of work".

To help things along, there was a menu of questions for diners to pick from as conversation starters. I was on a table with Reece (18) and Rochelle (16), and Jono (of indeterminate age) who paints and teaches. We had a great debate about how the world of work generally doesn't currently allow you to be very creative, or flexible, and that it's too based around money rather than what makes you happy. And that the education system isn't really geared for helping young people get ready for the world - just for exam results.

On a positive note, the young people there were bright, articulate, compassionate and all round very impressive! I asked if their generation were the ones that would turn it around. It was 50/50 tipping point whether they'd all be living The Good Life, or turn into blobs with robots doing everything from us like WallE. Hmm... I know which one I'm rooting for!

The Muse makes a come back on 9 July as part of Lewisham People's Day

Social Spaces: Citizens: A Manifesto

I love a good manifesto.  They are often spirited and insightful, and at their finest also inspiring.  Non more so than Benjamin Ramm's  'Citizens: A Manifesto'.

Not to distract from the ideas expressed, I have found this work beautifully written.  Ramm begins:

"Democracy lies dormant, yet even in slumber the term ‘citizen’ retains a sense of wonder. To act as a citizen is to give expression to an egalitarian ideal; to be civic-minded is to be conscious of the influence of individual action."

and goes on to articulate very many thoughts and ideals that really resonated for me.  Below are a sample of some of the points from the Manifesto that I particularly liked.

• A citizen has power. He exercises it every day, actively by choice and passively by neglect. A citizen considers how this power affects others, and does not abuse it: he respects his power and that of his fellow citizens.

• A citizen evolves, and in the process enriches his society. His citizenship is never static but is realised in each action and interaction. A citizen renews his citizenship every day.

• A citizen is not a cynic. Cynicism is the refuge of the powerless.

• A citizen promotes democracy in the workplace, advancing collaborative models such as cooperatives and mutuals. Citizens support mechanisms that place them at the heart of decision-making, such as participatory budgeting and citizens’ juries, and champion sortition as a means of developing an engaged and knowledgeable citizenry.

• A citizen is present, not represented; and in attendance by consent.

• A citizen challenges a culture of low expectations. Citizens are ambitious – for their personal growth, for the welfare of their community, and for the development of their society.

• A citizen does not treat all activity as a transaction. He knows that what is valuable cannot always be understood in terms of what is useful, and that many profitable pursuits render no material gain.

There is a great deal in this manifesto which speaks to citizens taking back what is theirs in terms not only of their rights... but also their responsibilities and creative capacities.  One of the things that Ramm does so well is to describe the citizen with the most thoughtful and positive human characteristics.  The potential of the citizen lies in individuals exercising their capacities - but Ramm also cleared points to the fact that these skills are learned through practice and engagement. 

• A citizen nurtures the spirit of citizenship. He understands that the exercise of civic virtue is habitual, and that fluency comes with practice.

The manifesto makes a huge contribution to the emergent school of thought about assets, human strengths and the desired switch from consumer to citizen, and from David Gauntlett's Making is Connecting, where he reflects:

"Rather, the point is that doing things for yourself, and making things with others - making the world your own, and making your mark on the world, rather than merely receiving a manufactured environment assembled by external others - is absolutely central to our health and wellbeing, as individuals, as families, and as a society."

As Ramm himself describes:

"The evolution of a civic consciousness calls for a transition from consumer democracy to civic democracy, from an approach that mimics the market to one that places choice in an ethical framework. At present, individuals are consumers of public policy, not participants in shaping it..."

Well done to Benjamin Ramm for a beautiful piece of work!

And if you are in the mood for manifestos here are a couple of my favourites from very simple and another from the DAAC 

Together With Love We Will Make This Citadel Glorious.

A theatre company in Birmngham is explosring the small things it can do to make the city better, 

On a microcosmic level, how can an individual improve life for the collective whole? What small change can one person effect that touches the lives of many? What if, in this City of a million people, everyone took just one minute each day to tidy, dust, mop or polish a square of communal space. How would our citadel shine then?

Stan's Cafe has been looking around its home City and spotting small things that could make it a better place. Realizing how easy it would be to step in and take on a few of these little tasks the company is under taking a series of performances to improve things.

On 24th May the company will position itself at the Arrivals Gate at Terminal 1 of Birmingham International Airport to provide a warm welcome for visitors and valued citizens returning home.

On 25th May the company will be providing a friendly concierge service for the taxi rank at Snow Hill Station during peak periods.

These are the first two in a planed sequence of actions. If you would like to help either by volunteering your time to this project or by submitting your suggestions for future acts of improvement we would be delighted to hear from you.

Together With Love We Will Make This Citadel Glorious.

N.B. As of the end of September Stan's Cafe will cease to be funded by Birmingham City Council.

Interesting.

 

For The Love Of Public Space: Accidental Seats

Maurice posted here about For the love of public space.  I found another great example of taking ownerships... and responsibility for public space.  Rainer Spehl produced this 'Accidental Seats project - Seating outside a cafe in Berlin - joint project with Martino Gamper. A selection of Timber and found Objects from the streets, 2004.  Beautiful!

Big Society: Chicago's many community thinkers, connection and interruption

 

Jane Addams (1860-1935) just filled in a big hole in my understanding about communities, and our various strategies and approaches to making them better.  I knew very broadly about her, but only recently discovered more about her work through my research around Saul Alinsky and community organising.

Jane Addams was the first woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.  She campaigned for woman’s rights and social reform… and she has become a fascinating and much admired figure for me, providing a working example in history of the creative collaborative approach I have been proposing in recent blog posts.

Daughter and heir of a wealth businessman in Chicago, Jane Addams bought a building in Chicago and called it Hull House.  Hull house became both a centre for community and learning and expanded into many different buildings over time.  What surprised and delighted me when reading about her work, was the similarity of Hull House and the ‘presence’ approach being used by Willem and Nol in their project in The Hague, which I blogged about here. Basically creating a hub in which ideas can be germinated and propagated – but very gently, and very people-led. You can read in more detail about the workings of the house, but the bit that interests me is her approach.  She was a collaborator and a connector.

“Hull House made Addams famous, giving her the opportunity to put her ideas to work on a larger scale. Good with a pen and a skilled orator, Addams began speaking out on local and national issues. She soon cast aside her disdain for politics, becoming adept at lobbying for concerns close to her heart: accomplishing women's suffrage, abolishing restrictive immigration policies, improving poor working conditions, and achieving equality for African-Americans.

 What made Addams so effective at promoting her vision was her ability to build coalitions. She abhorred conflict -- a product of her childhood growing up in a testy household -- and could always see both sides to an issue.”

She also offers us one of the first examples of strategic community map making, which I am so involved in developing myself.  Below is an example of a map she produced on the areas nationalities, but she also completed many others – including on income etc.

But what of Jane Addams legacy?  Why has the work of Saul Alinsky endured to the present day and Jane Addams’s work hasn’t? The answer is really hard to understand, especially as she was so prominent in her lifetime and her work and approach had so much impact.  Despite her unpopular passivist stance in the run up to WW1 she regained the national affection before her death.

Maurice Hamingtonhas written a riveting essay comparing Addams and Alinksy:

“It is not coincidence that Chicago produced two of the most important figures in community organizing of the twentieth century: Jane Addams and Saul Alinsky (1909-1972). Chicago was a center of social upheaval as exhibited by the Haymarket Riots of 1888, the Pullman Strike of 1894, and the Race Riots of 1919 (as well as race riots in the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s). This city’s social unrest existed in dynamic relationship to ideas about social change and reform fomented in Chicago as witnessed in the settlement work of Addams’ Hull House, the socialist work of Eugene Debs’s American Railway Union, the urban research and social theorizing of the “Chicago School”[i], and the Back of the Yards organization founded by Saul Alinsky."

In the essay Hamington suggests that Addams, despite Alinsky’s expressed rejection and disdain, may in fact have influenced his work in a meaningful way, being the forerunner of community intevention in the same city, and feeding in her thinking to the Chicago University.  

Hamington writes:

"Marie Weil lists various United States social movements with significant female leadership, and no one is associated with more movements than Addams. Despite this delineation, Weil falls prey to gender perceptions, claiming:

Despite a rich and proud heritage of female organizers and movement leaders, the field of community organization, in both its teaching models and its major exponents, have been a male-dominated preserve, where, even though values are expressed in terms of participatory democracy, much of the focus within the dominant practice methods has been nonsupportive or antithetical to feminism. Strategies have largely been based on “macho-power” models, manipulativeness, and zero-sum gamesmanship.

I would qualify Weil’s largely accurate description by suggesting not that the field has been male dominated, but that the portrayal of it has been. Much like Alinsky’s effort to depict himself as using necessary masculine methods over and against inferior feminine methods, history has masked the successful communitarian and cooperative efforts of women organizers as anachronistic. In this manner, feminist community organizing is hidden behind the acclaim heaped upon male organizing. The feminist process of reassessing given historical truths reveals more grassroots organizing than is commonly attributed.”

Over the last couple of weeks I have tried to grapple with and understand the differences in approach between the classic or ‘formal’ community organizing models, and the more creative changes process I have been unearthing through studying new types of emergent case studies.  So far, in studying over 100 case studies of citizen-led (but not ‘organised’) initiatives that create positive change in communities, I have identified 5 different major change processes that build collaborative capacities in communities.

I see a great deal of divergence in how communities are coming together themselves to collaborate for positive change, using predominantly new ideas and thinking around the ‘power to do’, rather than the ‘power to decision-make’.

So what of the commonalities?  I see one major thing in common – the need to connect people: to campaign in the case of ‘community organising’, to collaborate in the case of these new emergent models.

Another commonality is an assumption that some type of activation or stimulation is needed in communities to create new type of outcomes.

What about communities that are extremely overactive already? Returning to Chicago I have made some study of the work of Gary Slutkin, a man with experience of reversing epidemics such as aids and cholera and tuberculosis, who turned his attention and understanding of infectious control on the problem of violence in Chicago neighbourhoods.

Slutkin discovered that when he studied the pattern of violence it looks in every single way like the spread of disease. And in an identical way he has approached preventing the spread of an invisible virus, he has reduced violence in the areas he has worked by 45% - 75%.

While new models of activation work on connection, Sluktin’s primary change lever is interruption.  He reduces connection.  Frontline workers drawn from within the community are trained to start conversations with people who might be thinking of acting or reacting violently.  They interrupt the thoughts and they interrupt the connections between violent gang members – they work to transform thinking.  They also connect in another way – whenever there is violence they organize local demonstrations.  Not directed at authorities – directed at the violence – basically saying ‘we don’t want this anymore’.

They have found that when the frontline workers are around things get cooled down, when they aren’t people get killed.  And over time this combined activity has changed the social norms… As Slutkin says ‘for these communities violence is simply normal – we work to make it unusual’.

With these examples we have one axis with campaigning/conflict vs creative/collaboration and on the other we have connection/activation vs interruption/deactivating.

And last but by no means least, Chicago offers us John McKnight, who developed the amazing Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) approach to helping communities collaborate and build on their ideas and talents. 

"Society is buzzing with ideas" - an interview from the Grassroots Channel podcast

First published here.

Meet Rinske van Noortwijk and Corian Hugenholtz-Sasse - they make wishes come true.

To listen to them talk please click here. (find the Grassroots Channel in iTunes)

I met them both in Rotterdam, invited through the wonderful Maurice Specht to speak to the Association of Initiative Brokers ( @inimakelaar ) in Holland, organised by Rinske. Two days before, Tessy Britton and I had been in The Hague speaking to senior civil servants from Dutch central government.

They kept asking us what they could do to help citizens do the simpler things that made sense in their communities. Scale-ability was constantly on their lips. I was urging them to be careful. Stepping back, getting out of the way is one way government can help citizens just get things done. Find simple ways to give people small amounts of no string attached help was the other - what I call "learn how to slip someone a quiet tenner".

Militant Optimists and New Radicals

Tessy wanted something more practical. She wanted government to support the people who have the skills to nurture community, to connect people, to amplify what is possible in communities. The people David Barrie calls Militant Optimists, the sort of people who appear on the Grassroots Channel and Tessy brings together through Hand Made. She wants government to recognise and support the people who follow here 12 rules for new radicals. here are the first three compared with older form of community organising:

RULE 1

Alinsky (Old/Conflict): "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood.  

Britton (New/Collaborate): “Power involves creating spaces where ideas, energy and people are connected together from within all sections of the community and local government to create positive communities” This involves careful facilitation and creating safe spaces where everyone can share their opinions and contribute positively. There is no enemy in a community.

RULE 2

Alinsky (Old/Conflict): "Never go outside the expertise of your people." It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone.

Britton (New/Collaborative): “Always reject ignorance in favour of building skills and knowledge.” There are many new ideas and methods that result in creative solutions that make people and communities stronger.

RULE 3

Alinsky (Old/Conflict): "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty.

Britton (New/Collaborative): “Whenever possible, instigate dialogue, so that everyone shares the same knowledge base to design solutions.” Look for ways to increase security, trust and responsibility.

Rinske and Corian are just those sort of people: militant optimist, new radicals: For nearly a decade they have been running Greenwish:

Greenwish means more space for sustainable initiative. We encourage people to implement their sustainable ideas. If people do what they really care about, people are very passionate. It is this force that will really accelerate sustainable development. Greenwish promotes the interest of government, civil society and business in social initiatives. We want to see more cooperation and more is learned from social initiative. Greenwish support promoters with advice and contacts. We represent the interests of promoters to policymakers and politicians. Greenwish advises government, civil society and business in what they can do for initiatives and vice versa

Originally they were funded to connect community ideas to the people who can help make those ideas happen. Sometimes they might connect a citizen to a government programme, sometimes to a private supporter, sometimes to another citizen - often to all three. Each year these brokers make around 200 things happen that would otherwise have gone by the wayside. They know people, have ideas, are networked and like finding the easiest ways to get things going.

"Society is buzzing with ideas"

Listen to them talk about it here:

• We met many people with good ideas to contribute to the community who need a little bit of help. We ask them waht do you need to make your next step and can we help you.
• We're interested in what gets people enthusiastic and why they are doing it.
• Government funded for some time, now in transition.
• Value is being known and trusted by people government wants to work with, it is still difficult to find government that works that way.
• It can take patience to make an idea real. Over time enthusiasm builds
• 200 initiatives supported, health, food, energy, participation
• Common currency is passion, it is always a struggle.
• People in places always have ideas - we get ideas easily. "Society is buzzing with ideas."
• We are the first believers for anyone with a crazy idea to help society
• Looking for new concepts for making our added value clear to the government, Tessy Britton gave me new ideas of how we should make that more clear. Big Society is a new way for government to stop thinking for citizens, instead allow citizens to think for themselves.
• There are so many ways to make what is happening visible through social media without having to push the information. Ask them to make themselves visible.

 

For the love of public space: guerrilla gardening and public responsibilities

A couple of weeks ago I attended a public lecture by Richard Reynolds from www.guerillagardening.org He gave a lecture about the history and public significance of guerilla gardening. I really enjoyed his lectured and it even inspired me to start my own, very small, guerrilla garden just in front of my garden.

But besides bringing me into action, I also have been thinking about two things Richard told during his lecture. First was his story about a particular patch they had done in London. It was a piece of land in the middle of a traffic junction marked by concrete and some wild bushes. Together with other guerrilla gardeners they had turned it into a beautiful piece of land with lavender and later tulips. It looked really stunning on the pictures he showed us. But the story he told was even more stunning, or maybe we should say tragic. For one day he had a conversation with a newly elected, young and engaged borough councilor about public space, its maintenance and the role of government. Richard argued that a lot of public spaces were badly attended to by the municipality. At this point he was interrupted and the man said, ‘But Richard we also have patches of land we take care of very well’, and he referred to the patch beautified by Richard and his fellow gardeners. The man was momentarily shocked and a bit embarrassed, but the conversation went on in a very friendly manner.

What interest me in this story, is the fact that he took notice of it, knew about it officially, and did not take any action against it. For here are some people who are ‘illegally’ taking care of a piece of public space. It’s the word illegally which is intriguing here. For what has happened over the last 100 years is that we have made our authorities solely responsible for our public spaces. We as a public expect the government to take care of our public spaces (‘that’s what we pay taxes for’) and public officials think it is a task for professionals to develop and take care of public space (‘it requires a certain expertise’). We have decided that the development and maintenance of public space is a task for government. We made public space into a professional responsibility which in turn has made taking care of public spaces voluntarily something to be ridiculed, felt anxious about, reacted to with disbelief, protested, stopped, even given fines over. We have created a situation for ourselves in which both we as citizens and as public officials seem to believe it is natural for others to take care of our public spaces. Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost the language to talk about the fact that some people take care of public space themselves in a positive manner or ordinary manner.

I recently had a discussion about this with an alderwomen in my borough in Rotterdam. We talked about a particular example just around the corner from where I live. Here some residents have made a sandbox around an old tree. First, because they were fed up with the dog poo that was there day in day out, but secondly they had two small children. So partly dealing with a public problem, partly out of personal interest, they – together with some neighbors – built this sandbox. After a year it is very well used by many children and lots of parents meet there, talk with each other etc.  It has taken a piece of pavement – which is public space – and by erecting a structure there changed its meaning, value, but also partly who is (or feels) responsible for it. Where first is was a place people passed through, they now meet each other, have a chat, and the children play with each other.

When I told this to the alderwomen, she told me she knew about the place, but not officially. For if she would know about it officially, she would have to take a stance. Either condoning it (like the man in the first example) – with the chance of it somehow causing trouble and than having to deal with the fall out – or take some action. Taking action, she said would involve either 1) make a contract with the residents about maintenance and responsibility/liability, or 2) have it demolished and possibly fine them,  because residents cannot take over public space in that way or 3) have it demolished but,  given its social potential, create a policy in which all residents could apply for such a sandbox in front of their house, thus taking over responsibility (and subsequently sucking all the energy and live out of this particular practice).

So here we have a great example of residents taking care of, and even enhancing the quality of public space without any intervention (moneywise or from a community workers or such) and the only possibilities the city has is not knowing or taking over (part of) responsibility. Is this something we really want? Shouldn’t government be able to somehow know of these things, celebrate them or use them to inspire other, without taking over responsibilities? I guess it is time we have a good discussion (maybe not in words, but through actions) about where the boundaries of the responsibilities of the state are when it comes to taking care of public space.

Of course, there are lots of arguments to be made against people taking over parts of public space. But the strict ‘no’ we now have as a standard reaction seems counterintuitive and counterproductive to me.  I guess what I argue for is that we start questioning this ‘natural’ feeling we seem to share that government is there to take care of public space. It is time we rethink and redraw these boundaries; that we again try to develop a positive, ordinary language in which to talk about people taking care of public space themselves (public space as something which is not public or private, but rather common?).

Language has within it the resources for change, yet some rearrangement of elements will be necessary and new connections need to be established. New sense has to be made of something; it has to be new, yet still has to be intelligible. If we lack the new, we are forever trapped in tradition; if tradition is entirely absent, the new will be unintelligible. (Aletta Norval, Aversive Democracy)

PS: I started out saying there where two things about Richard Reynolds lecture which stuck with me. The other being that he does not see guerrilla gardening as something political, but as fun. That for him was a prime driver for why people get involved. I will go into this in a latter post.

 

Pendrecht University: a foolish gesture from a jester

Having met Tessy during a recent trip of hers to the Netherlands I organized (which she has blog about here and here, she has given me the opportunity to ‘ think out loud’ on this site. I am trained as a philosopher, am in the final stages of finishing my Phd studying practices of citizen participation, and am now an independent researcher and organizer of ‘positive urban connections’. In my blog posts I will combine these worlds in theoretical musings on some of the interesting practices I have visited during my research or meet in my day to day work. Having been trained in writing academic papers, writing blogs is a new experience for me.  But they say you only learn by doing, so here we go … 

‘The jester brings vitality and wit to make us laugh. Yet the comic mood of the jester’s clowning only sets in sharper relief something else we know. The jester has a serious side and allow us – if we will but look and listen – to laugh at ourselves, to see ourselves as others see us, to take that crucial step in developing the focus of inquiry whereby we expose ourselves to ourselves (Torgerson, 1992, 233)

The South of Rotterdam, home to 200.000 people has recently been described as one big deprived area with problems of ´undutch proportions´ given its scale and longevity. Not the place one normally associates with important innovations in democratic governance. Or than again maybe it is. Whereas the well to do have only scarcely to do with government, it is in these difficult areas that residents have a lot to do with government. And so it is here that they experience firsthand the fact that our governance system developed in the 19^th century, is largely inadequate to deal with 21^st century challenges. It is here therefore that the need for democratic innovation might by biggest. And from needs grow experiments.

I have been involved in a research project (together with Henk Wagenaar) over the last couple of years searching these kinds of experiments and innovations in democratic governance. One of the most interesting practices I encountered during this research project was the Pendrecht University. Pendrecht is one of those deprived areas in the south of Rotterdam mentioned earlier. When former minister Vogelaar drafted a list of the worst 40 neighborhoods in the Netherlands who would be eligible for extra financial support, Pendrecht came in second (for a more positive depiction of Pendrecht by one of its residents Mario Bosch).

 

In these testing circumstances, and born out of a joke and a tragedy, residents created the Pendrecht University, based on one basic rule: residents are the professors of the university and the professionals and public officials working in the neighborhood are its students. Before exploring the implications of this basic rule through Torgerson’s notion of the jester quoted at the beginning, a bit more on how a joke and a tragedy together can lead to democratic innovation.

Because the story of the Pendrecht University starts from a reaction to a big tragedy. After the shooting of a small boy while throwing snowballs, the neighborhood received a lot of bad press and became a national symbol for all what was wrong in our most deprived areas. Born out of frustration with this, residents organized a memorial service and a joined inter-faith Christmas party. It became obvious to residents that there was a lot of positive energy available in the area, if only they created the right opportunities to let it come to the (visible) surface. Exactly such an opportunity was created out of a joke.

 

At that time some students from a Dutch university where doing field studies in the neighborhood concerning safety. On one day they had to take exams at the University and do interviews with residents during a ‘pancake party’ organized in a particular street. Given the physical distance between the two locations, this seemed impossible. It turned out to be the start of something beautiful. For one of the most active residents, Bien Hofman, approached one of the primary schools in the area to see if they had a spare room in which the students could take their exam. They had, and after securing permission for the students to actually take their exam of campus , the director of the school jokingly said to the residents: ‘now we have our own university, the Pendrecht University’. This joke stuck inside the head of Bien and together with other residents and the community worker developed a plan for the Pendrecht University.

The Pendrecht University became a platform for many activities in the neighborhood, giving residents the opportunity to take the lead in what the discussion in the neighborhood should be about. Organizing meetings, theater plays, a search for the soul of Pendrecht, and even hosting the Pendrecht Olympics, are just some of the examples of what has transpired over the years under the banner of the Pendrecht University. And in all of these, in one way or the other, they try to give form to this basic rule which turns citizens into professors and professionals into students.

The effect of this reversal of roles can most easily be seen when we look at the kind of public meetings – on topics such as safety in the neighborhood, the role of the media, the redevelopment of the housing stock, and the economical development of the main square – they have organized. The Pendrecht University, by putting citizens first, gives the floor to the residents first, who thereby set the stage for the meeting. It offers a script which allows residents to play a much more active role in talking about their neighbourhood, giving room to personal stories, anecdotes, emotions and actual dialogue. Through reversing roles, on reflection, what you see happening in the Pendrecht University, is a challenge of all kinds ‘standard operating procedures’ ingrained in the way we think of and design our public meetings. It challenges what counts as important knowledge, and thus who is an expert. By putting resident – literarily and figuratively – up front their knowledge takes center stage. Instead of abstract figures, generative concepts, or technical plans, local knowledge gains an important position.

 

And this brings us back to the jester  whit whom I started this post, For as Torgerson states, the fool, Torgerson’s latter name for the jester, ‘obliquely bears witness to unwelcome insights that test the limits of what may properly and safely be said. When employed in the administrative sphere, carnivalesque language and logic generate unconventional perspectives that promise to enhance creative problem solving in the face of complexity' (Torgerson, 2003, 128). And this brings out the challenging element of this ‘foolish gesture’. By turning things around, reversing what is top and what is bottom, they not only reveal new possibilities, but also lay bare the limitations of more traditional tried and true solutions. The carnivalesque idiom, Torgerson argues, ‘might provoke unwelcome insights that could expose established power as irrational rationality, thus placing on display an emperor without clothes' (Torgerson, 2003, p. 128). But rather than showing that the emperor is wearing no cloths, as Torgerson states, I would say that the Pendrecht University shows us that the emperor is out of fashion and in need of a new wardrobe. Not in the form of haute couture in the sense of democratic theory, but in the form of practical things one can wear on a daily basis.

(in 2010, the Pendrecht University won the Voluntary Prize of Rotterdam)

• Torgerson, D. (1992), Priest and Jester in the Policy Sciences: Developing the Focus of Inquiry, Policy Sciences, Vol. 25, pp. 225-235
•     Torgerson, D. (2003) Democracy through policy discourse, in Hajer, M.A. and Wagenaar, H., Deliberative Policy Analysis. Understanding Governance in the Network Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Big Society: Move over Alinsky... Here Come the Militant Optimists and Social Artists... Part One

Saul Alinsky is fascinating.  An activist from the 30s until he died in 1972, Alinsky defined the concept of ‘community organising’. He worked first in Chicago, then in hot spots around the US, wherever he identified the oppressed, poor and powerless.  He worked tirelessly to drag power back to individuals away from corrupt or overpowering government and organisations.

He was controversial at the time, but has continued to get attention and stir things up until today.  Alinsky is much more well known in the US than in the UK. The coalition government has recently announced that its Big Society community builders will be trained with the influence of Saul Alinsky and Paulo Freire.

Hilary Clinton was offered a job by Alinsky, which she turned down.  But she did write her college thesis on Saul Alinsky, which became famous for having been sealed for the duration of Bill Clinton’s presidency.  Obama, aged 21 at the start, worked for 3 years as a community organiser for the Developing Communities Project – and offshoot of the Alinsky network  and both his and Clinton’s references to Alinksy have left current Republicans curious, in a sort of ‘we’ll have some of what he is having’ way, characteristic of ballot box losers.  While they have used Obama's links with community organising against him, examining Obama’s extraordinary and unusual election victory, financed by the huge collective of small donations, left the Republicans with a sense that Obama knows something that they don’t.  And they think it has something to do with Alinsky. There are books written on this subject. (interesting on this from the Washington Post)

I would like to present here the idea that Alinsky thinking, which is indeed still alive and well, is increasingly being recognised as appropriate today only in very specific situations. Both ordinary citizens and professionals working in communities see that new research, tools and methods are showing that there are far more long-term and effective ways of building positive communities. In Hand Made, David Barrie called these new people Militant Optimists (which has really taken off on Twitter), I have been calling them Social Artists, but whatever label you give them, they are very different from Alinsky followers.

Alinsky was a ‘community organiser’. For him this term was about extracting power from the government and organisations and giving it the people.  His methods reflected the desperation and deep political and financial inequalities of those times.  He worked in an era where ‘direct action’ was gaining ground in the civil rights movement – actions that are still admired today.  Malcolm Gladwell spoke with passion about these gains through direct action, which I wrote about here (and also covers some of this ground).

From a summary of Alinsky principles written by Eli Goldblatt from his book Rules for Radicals a few principles are characteristic of Alinsky’s approach include:

1. Draw on the inevitability of class and group conflict as well as the unpredictability of events for your creativity to invent tactics that fit the moment (19).

2. Be guided by a broadly defined sense of self-interest, taking on multiple issues, and encourage all other participants to do the same (23, 53–59, 76).

Alinsky was an emotional intelligence specialist.  He knew the mobilising effects of anger, and the mass mobilising effects of lots of angry people.  He systematically knocked on doors, having one-to-one conversations with people, looking for self-interest around which to agitate conflict.  It was very successful

On the one hand Alinsky is a hero of the oppressed, using his skill and intellect to rouse defeated and downtrodden communities into fighting back some of the power to improve their communities and diminish inequalities.

On the other he was a person that thought that the ends justify the means and used all means to effect change, however negative.

And both I think are true.

His methods were controversial even at the time.  He didn’t just make predictable enemies with the establishment, who he was challenging directly, he was also criticised by people working in the civil rights movement and feminists, where certain groups distanced themselves and created new organisations.

In Stir it Up: Lessons in community organizing and advocacy Rinku Sen highlights some of these critiques.

According to Sen feminists criticised Alinsky on four fronts: “community organising overemphasised intervention in the public sphere, does not allow organisers to balance work and family, focused on narrow self-interest as the primary motivator, and relies on conflict and militaristic  tactics.”

“Feminists also object to Alinsky’s view on motivations and tactics. Feminists argue that women-centred organising is not motivated primarily by self-interest, and idea that was paramount in Alinsky’s theory, but by compassionate sympathy for vulnerable members of the target community and the community as a whole. Feminists also contend that Alinsky’s emphasis on conflict runs counter the many successful women’s organising efforts what emphasise cooperation and compromise to generate neighbourhood improvements. In part because many women-centred organising efforts often looked like and led to service provision, organisers in the Alinsky tradition of conflict would not recognise them as organising, even though they also involved regular people in fighting for institutional change.”

There is a lot to be learned from Alinsky - We need to know what we are learning, and be careful about how we might apply methods today that emerged from a completely different era.

When David Cameron says that Alinsky inspires him - which aspects is he talking about?

1. The empowering of communities to take more control of their lives and neighbourhoods?
2. The methods of injecting an outside ‘community organiser’ into a community and seeking out self-interest and conflict as tools to engage and mobilise?

I suggest that it is the first one… otherwise we are in for one very rough ride with Big Society?

Part 2

In tomorrow's blog post I will be talking about why Militant Optimists and social artists are bigger, better and more effective than anything Alinsky managed, and particularly right for *our* time.

I will tell you what they do, how they do it, how to recognise one and introduce you to a few of them I am lucky enough to call my friends … as well as introduce you to some amazing young social artists I met around the country through the Travelling Pantry. I will tell you why we need to find more of them, encourage them to share their emergent practices .... so we can see more of them appear everywhere.

And if you can’t wait that long you can start by reading David Barrie’s essay on Militant Optimists.

Park(ing) Day 2010

Did you know today was Park(ing) Day? No? Me neither. But now I've discovered it I can't wait for next year. The information here is taken from a press release issued by the organisers so excuse the Americanised spelling. Do take a look at the photgraphs on their website, who knew parkign spaces could be so much fun?

— In cities around the globe today, artists,activists and citizens will temporarily transform metered parking spaces into public parks

and other social spaces, as part of an annual event called "PARK(ing) Day."Originally invented in 2005 by Rebar, a San Francisco-based art and design studio,PARK(ing) Day is a grassroots, “open-source” art project that challenges people to rethink the way streets are used. “In urban centers around the world, inexpensive curbside parking results in increased traffic, wasted fuel and more pollution,” says Rebar’s MatthewPassmore. “The strategies that generated these conditions are not sustainable, nor do they promote a healthy, vibrant human habitat. PARK(ing) Day is about re-imagining the possibilities of the urban landscape.”

Since 2005, the project has blossomed into a worldwide grassroots movement: PARK(ing) Day 2009 included more than 700 “PARK” installations in more than 140 cities in 21 countries on six continents. This year, the project continues to expand to urban centers across the globe, including first-time PARK installation in Tehran, Iran. Over the four years of PARK(ing) Day, participants have broadened the scope of PARK installations to fulfill a range of unmet social needs. “From public parks to free health clinics, from art galleries to demonstration gardens, PARK(ing) Day participants have claimed the metered parking space as a rich new territory for creative experimentation, activism, socializing and play,” says Blaine Merker of Rebar.

This year Rebar will launch PARK(ing) Day Paris, in partnership with French cultural organization Dedale (dedale.info). In Paris Rebar will unveil “Blades of Grass” - a set of fifty mobile, modular devices that can be used to improvise and define public social spaces. Constructed of 9-foot tall bamboo poles and durable nylon fabric, each “Blade” can be carried by an individual and transported by bicycle. On PARK(ing) Day, Rebar will lead a bicycle tour through Paris, tracing a route from the south toward the city center. The route is inspired by an unrealized proposal by early 20th Century landscape architect Jean Claude Nicholas Forestier for a greenway across Paris. More information regarding local PARK(ing) Day activities and a global map of all participating cities are available at parkingday.org.

 

Awareness part 2

So as promised, another nice story from my couple of days at UK Aware environmental expo recently...

I also met Amisha Ghadiali, who is a "Activist for positive social change. Entrepreneur. Designer. Writer. Campaigner. Connector.". So she has several strings to her bow! One of which is an alternative election campaign ThinkActVote

ThinkActVote is trying to inspire people to be more active citizens in their everyday lives, not just at election time, And to start you off, they are asking people to answer the following question: “What’s The Future You Choose?”

They will be compiling the most powerful of these statements, and photography of people taking part into an anthology that will be hand delivered to the Prime-Minister after the general election.

You have until midnight on May 5th to add your voice

An Anatomy of Youth

 Demos has published a very interesting new paper by Celia Hannon, Charlie Tims called An Anotomy of Youth. I found this paper remarkably insightful and interesting and would recommend reading it!

"As they enter the next decade, British young people are in a precarious position — demographically, economically and politically. Stereotyped by newspapers, sensationalised by marketeers and pigeon-holed by politicians, our cultural narratives about young people are not fit for purpose. It is little wonder that young people are more alienated from formal politics than at any other point in recent history. But that matters, more now than ever.

And here is a picture of Charlie Tims with my youth at the Power of 8 Open Weekend.

How Unemployment Hurts us All

 
 In an article in USA Today, Thomas Sander and Robert Putnam have been highlighting some of the important key findings of new research, published by Chaeyoon Lim of the University of Wisconsin and others, into the effects of unemployment.

The findings include:

+ Unemployment badly frays a person's ties with his community, sometimes permanently.

+ Unemployed Americans are significantly less involved in their communities than their employed demographic twins.

+ The jobless are less likely to vote, petition, march, write letters to editors, or even volunteer. 

+ They attend fewer meetings and serve less frequently as leaders in local organizations.

+ Sociologist Cristobal Young's research finds that the unemployed spend most of their increased free time alone.

+ High unemployment rates reduce the social and civic involvement even of those still employed.

+ Americans with jobs who live in states with high unemployment are less civically engaged than workers elsewhere. In fact, most of the civic decay in hard-hit communities is likely due not to the jobless dropping out, but to their still-employed neighbors dropping out.

+ Beyond civic disengagement, places with higher joblessness have more pervasive violence and crimes against property.

+ They have more fragile families with harsher parenting, and higher rates of mental disorder and psychological distress among both the unemployed and the employed. 

+ The jobless shun socializing, shamed that their work was deemed expendable. Economic depression breeds psychological depression. 

+ Above all, in afflicted communities, the contagion of psychic depression and social isolation spreads more rapidly than joblessness itself.

With unemployment in the US just toping 10% for the first time in a quarter century these findings are serious.

Nee-naw, nee-naw

I had a leaflet through my door this week introducing me to my Safer Neighbourhood team and informing me that they are tackling youth anti-social behaviour in Coopers Close, which is nice to know.

They also want to hear from young people about what issues they face, to help the community teams work more effectively.

Go here to do the survey online, by 31st October

Park Life

Hola amigos! Long time no blog...

So I'm heading back into the fray with an interesting example of civic engagement by Tower Hamlets council in East London.

I was in Victoria Park recently and spotted posters asking for input on the redevelopment of the park, and lo and behold, on the council homepage, a link to an online questionnaire for community opinion on the current plans.

If you're in Tower Hamlets, get over there before the end of Nov 09 to tell them what you think.

If you're interested, I want better loos and better lighting. I like the idea of water features, but I think the 'urban beach' might just get full of doggie poo and fag butts :(

Steel yourself

Deep breaths, clenched fists, here comes another JUGG-ER-NAUT!

No, not really. But instead, an interesting archive project from the folks at the Social Futures Institute in Teeside all about the steel industry in the North East and its social impact. They are also doing good works to engage the public in their local history, and they're looking for volunteer engineers...

Go here, they'll explain it much better than me.

Simple Acts for Refugee Week

It is Refugee Week 15 - 21 June and they are running a Simple Acts campaign.

There site has lots of materials, toolkits, events and ideas.  

"Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality." 
Ian McEwan

1 small lesson for organisations about supporting network innovation

Two organisations in the U.K. - the Royal Society of Arts and NESTA - are carrying out research in to how people can innovate in networks, rather than either on their own or simply with the person the other side of the waste basket.

In another part of the park, J.D. Stanley at Cisco has been working hard for several years on Digital Swarming: or how to combine inputs from people, machines and other data sources, digitize them and place them on to networks. 

All of this work falls in to the category of trying to understand how people can create, collaborate and share new ideas across dispersed places and spaces.

It's exciting, important and without a doubt what matters in a world in which the connectedness of people, information and technology is all-pervasive. But is there something missing?

Sometimes, animals don't relate but share stuff and copy one another.

At other times, states or experiences change by accident or projection.

In other words, some relationships form on the basis of what writer and Kentucky farmer Wendell Berry once called sympathetic vibration and saw in the behaviour of a violin:

The A string of a violin is designed to vibrate most readily at about 440 vibrations per second: the note A. If that same note is played loudly not on the violin but near it, the A string may hum in sympathy.

Put another way, what may matter in networked innovation is not just mechanics or structure, but also tone - a tone that's set not just by trust but also momentum, and the design of a stage upon which people feel able and want to perform.

Image of Eliasson installation courtesy of Anna Maria Leon, horses by grandylion, window reflection by lux fecit.

If You Don't See It

A project by Piece Studio If You Don't See it aims to:

 "....raise awareness surrounding the social problems facing our cities. Many issues are swept under the rug, hidden from a large part of the population. As long as these issues are kept “out of sight,” nothing will be done to fix them. The goal of If you don’t see it is to empower everyday people to get the word out, take action, and help solve the problems."

Inauguration Voice

 

Inauguration Day in Boston may prove to be a little unusual. Manefesto!Slam is planning to perform manifestos while riding a biodiesel bus around town.

They are asking for participants!

"Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 - Inauguration Day - 7-9PM.
We invite you to stand on a soap box to read, sing, dance, scream, build, perform – to SLAM! – your own (or your favorite) manifesto. In this celebration, we will climb aboard a bio-diesel bus and drive through Boston broadcasting our individual and collective voices throughout the city. Join us to manifest the visions we have, the politics we feel, and the movements we revere."

Via: Jane Marsching Via: Groundswell Collective

Challenging

UnLtd and Changemakers, two of the big players in youth social enterprise and development have launched the Big Challenge

A chance for young people to tackle the biggest problems we face in society today, with development money and project support up for grabs.

Inspiring stuff.