Thriving too

Agendas vs Emergence

Hello y'all. How's tricks?

So today I was at an RSA Thursday talk on Manavodaya - values based development. And it really struck a chord with what we do at Social Spaces so I thought I'd share a few gems...

The basic premise of this way of working is a belief in capacity. People are the experts - they are steeped in their own experience and know much more about what is going on in their lives and ways to change things than you do. Professionals need to work with humility, understand the limitations of their role, and take care to leave power in the hands of people.

The alternative to this tends to be a pre-set agenda of people's requirements and a planned service. We, the professionals, know what your issues are and we have designed and will deliver the solution to you. Well meaning and often with positive outcomes, but perhaps not sustainable in the long term as it sets up a dynamic of professionals providing services to people with needs. Sounds pretty disempowering to me.

In contrast, the asset based / values based / social design approach seeks to make an initial connection on a human level, with no agenda. Well ok. Perhaps a bit of an agenda to help improve a situation or offer support, but an openminded manner in how this could be approached and the belief that the answers are to be found along the way together rather than provided at the start. Great things can grow from small beginnings. In this case, a conversation and a connection. ( Free pie anyone?)

Which leads me to a few questions...

If we think that collaboration and human scale connections are the way forward, how do we redesign our 'service' industries to facilitate this? Charity, public sector, education...

If funders need to be sold on positive outcomes and targets, and want to know where the money's going, how do we prove if the open ended approach is more fruitful in the end?

If we don't know precisely what the outcomes might be, how do we measure impact and share what works? How do we quantify the qualitative?

If people need to come to their own conclusions and definitions in order for change to be effective, how do we create a shared vision and work towards it? How do we tap into the amazing capacity and knowledge in each one of us?

Let's talk....

(You might have guessed I do have a few thoughts on this... but I'll leave that for another story.)
Pic: community asset map in production. Boothtown, Halifax.

Concrete Jungle

This Saturday, I spent a very enjoyable afternoon staring at a brick wall and bits of pavement in Dalston.

Or to be more precise, I was being amazed by the yellow and grey lunar landscapes of ancient lichens viewed through a spyglass, which have managed to find a foothold in the harsh urban landscape and thrive despite unfavourable conditions. And the amazing resurrection properties of a certain type of moss which instantly returns to green springy life from a freeze-dried state when spritzed with a little water.

Thank you to the wonderful Alan and Marion Rayner who brought their warm infectious enthusiasm for all things natural through the 'Naturemoments' tour at FARM:shop in Dalston - and opened our eyes to the patterns, colours and teeny tiny universes playing out beneath our feet. If we'd only stop to look a little more closely...

Follow Alan at @inclusionAL
Or read more on his website

Mud on Your Pants

 Mud on Your Pants (literal translation) is a project which is designing and building more playgrounds with natural materials (pic above) in Holland. 

It reminded me of an article in Good Magazine a while ago about natural playgrounds in the US.  The article quoted form research published in Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods, which showed that 'there is now new, compelling evidence that playing in natural settings has specific benefits beyond those associated with free play.' 

There are also many who would support kids being allowed more freedoms and less structured play.

I am pretty convinced that together with new evidence that exercising outdoors boost mental health that we should be doing more to tune into natural rhythms. 

Another great example of natural play is the adventure playground in Berkeley in California (pic below) where kids are allowed to play with crap materials - from loose wood to old tires - to promote creativity and responsibility.

Making Money While Making a Difference

 

Great article from Good:

"In this new series, Dev Aujla and Billy Parish explore opportunities for making money and changing the world—at the same time.

A little under two years ago, we set out to interview more than 150 people in their twenties and thirties in order to find out how they were faring as they set out to get paid to do good. We found a foundation to support us, we hired staff, we held focus groups, and we read everything we could that was written on the simple question that seemed to be on everyone's mind: How do you make money and change the world?

The results came in and we put them into a free e-book that has been downloaded thousands of times. In doing all this, and in hearing the stories of people that read the e-book, we realized one thing—the e-book was only the beginning. Today we are writing a full-length book on the subject and we are uncovering even more stories, examples, and strategies that are actually helping people get jobs."

Via: Anthony McCann

David Report: Time to Rethink Design

 I like the David Reports.  There is a new report out, questioning quite powerfully the role of design, asking for a focus on life cycle instead of lifestyle.

"Let’s face it; design is now a major source of pollution, as process and a phenomenon, design has degenerated into a state of aesthetic proliferation that has reached accumulative and destructive levels, in terms of loss of meaning, value, and identity." 

Hopenhagen

 We blogged about Hopenhagen in June. Their site now has nearly 450,000 sign ups. COP15 starts in a couple of days... Fingers crossed!

Waste and Hunger

Great new film made by Good and Whole Foods 

Thriving on Less

Obviously with a title like that I had to find out more.  Leo Babuata is a well known blogger at Zen Habits and has recently published The Power of Less.  Thriving on Less is a free book which is a companion to The Power of Less.  I do like this idea of a companion ebook very much, but I was expecting something pretty prescriptive, which it is really.

But I liked it very much non the less.  In 27 clear, concise pages, Babauta basically takes the reader into an alternative way of thinking - frugal - but very nice. 

So although it may read like a list of the *painfully obvious* for some, for many of us having them written down in this friendly manner is really helpful. It also includes a guide to getting out of debt.

I won't, however, be cutting my own hair - nice try Leo!

Leadership in a Paradigm of Respect

One of the exciting movements over the last few years has been the development of Web.2 technologies which enable all individuals with internet access to start a blog, connect to hundreds of people on social network sites and generally have a way of expressing thoughts and opinions without going through more established channels. The books Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky (which Matthew Taylor named his Best Book of 2008) and We Think by Charles Leadbeater, both explored the existing impact of these fascinating new flows of opinion, knowledge and awareness.  And the positive potential of the knowledge sharing alone is nothing short of mind blowing.  

However, I have been giving a lot of thought to this over the last few months in particular related to educational and social settings. The tensions which have puzzled me slightly have been:

• Although consumers and voters are more empowered to ensure that they have a 'voice' and method of redress and influence on the 'powers that be', can this potentially lead in some instances to negative but natural consequences? The line between activism and anarchy can be blurred one. Take for example 'student voice' in schools, do schools set up student voice to pacify or do they really listen to student opinion?  

• Can the ability for consumers and voters to voice discontent so immediately and accessibly lead to a type of fearful leadership - one where the concern for opinion and/or popularity is dominant in decision making?  Do we want our country's leadership, or school leadership for that matter, making important decisions based on predicted reactions to an elevated degree (they obviously have done this at times already). 

• If 'bottom-up' becomes the normal way of operating and we begin to trust 'collective intelligence' in all things, where does that leave leadership, and very importantly, expertise? 

So essentially these questions mostly concern the balance of power and knowledge, and while we now have the means to group and voice in potential numbers never before dreamed of, how do we ensure that the overall system remains balanced, and really intelligent?

I suggest that entirely new forms of leadership need to evolve which rely more on insight and understanding and less on vision, pacesetting or 'managing' people: one that goes far deeper than is currently common to respect both people and underlying forces as soon as these dynamics evolve. 

A very powerful example of this respectful leadership is demonstrated in the Positive Deviance approach currently being used in some very serious situations globally, such as malnutrition, girl trafficking and disease control.  As described, Positive Deviance (PD) is:

"a development approach that is based on the premise that solutions to community problems already exist within the community. The positive deviance approach thus differs from traditional "needs based" or problem-solving approaches in that it does not focus primarily on identification of needs and the external inputs necessary to meet those needs or solve problems. Instead it seeks to identify and optimize existing resources and solutions within the community to solve community problems."

For example if there is 70% malnutrition in an area, the PD approach is to study the 30% who are not suffering malnutrition, despite being in identical circumstances, and educating the 70% on these different (or deviant) behaviours which are helping them survive or thrive. Interestingly, the PD approach often doesn't seek to change the underlying causes for a problem, but rather aims to help people work round and within the situation by adopting good survival behaviours.  One example discovered that a family's management (storing, using, understanding) of salt within the household had a huge impact on the health of the family. 

In US hospitals trying to reduce the spread of MRSA, the PD approach led to discovering some innovations that simply would never have been thought of without actually doing the jobs and working in the hospitals. For example, one innovation involved sealing disposable overalls into latex gloves, a deviation from normal practice, which is one of a number of new measures which reduced MRSA by up to 50%. 

The inspiring thing about PD is that it is a leadership initiative which respects the knowledge of people in its employ, as well as respecting the rights of the person to have an opinion.  Essentially it seeks to draw out and harness  'informed opinion and ideas' which, although not always fully appreciated, is quite different in terms of its usefulness to 'opinion'. 

Progressive types of leadership have the potential to be so exciting: not simply managing people and finding ways of getting them to fulfil the organisational goals, but with an intrinsic curiosity and respect for other people's understanding.

Although PD is now a specific approach in these global social concerns, it is essentially an assets-based approach which researchers in psychology have looked at for a number of years and led to the new branch of psychology called Positive Psychology.  Asset-based research aims to examine the behaviours and characteristics of emotionally and mentally healthy people, in order to replicate and encourage them more widely.  

Howard Gardner named the Respectful Mind as one of the Five Minds for the Future, the other four minds being:  Disciplined, Synthesising, Creating and Ethical. Imaging those five minds employed together in leadership makes the potential for so many problems to almost melt away, and Web.2 to become a place for genuine, rather than false or uninformed dialogue .... 

Innate Goodness or Capacity of Good?

Having read about the personalities involved in the creation of the Natural History Museum in Short History of Nearly Everything by the wonderful Bill Bryson, my daughter and I were delighted to find that at the top of the main stairs, Sir Richard Owen's statue has been replaced by Darwin's statue. Sir Richard Owen, although creating The Natural History Museum, was a rather dislikable character by all accounts, so finding Darwin brought from the coffee shop to the top of the stairs was something that please us both. Darwin is only there temporarily, for Darwin's 200th Birthday , the celebration of which will occur on February 12, 2009; it will also be the 150th Anniversary of the publication of On The Origin of Species. In September 2009 the Natural History Museum will also open the stunning Darwin Centre. (pic below)


Since reading Primates and Philosophers I have become fascinated with questions concerning human's innate goodness and instinct. If the success of the new Batman film, The Dark Knight, is anything to go by, many other people are interested in the delicate interplay between good and bad which seems to make up humanity. For many, the most remarkable moment in the film was when two groups of people decide not to detonate bombs, even when their self-preservation is at stake. We seem to want to believe that we are innately good. (I realise that this is a bit like comparing Jane Austen and Star Wars, but it was a subject that was on my mind when I saw the film...)

De Waal describes how in his view, when considering morality that ‘actual behaviour is less important than the underlying capacities.’ (De Waal, 2006) De Waal further explains that:

"This distinction was understood by Darwin, who looked beyond the actual behaviour at the underlying emotions, intentions and capacities."

Richard Dawkins received criticism and was accused of dualism when he ended The Selfish Gene with the following words:

"We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators. (Dawkins, 1976)

In the 30th Anniversary copy of Selfish Gene, Dawkins defends his original statement by explaining:

"…it is perfectly possible to hold that genes exert a statistical influence on human behaviour while at the same time believing that this influence can be modified, overridden or reversed by other influences. ...
Our brains have evolved to the point where we are capable of rebelling against our selfish genes." (Dawkins, 2006Ed)

The intensely complex moral question of whether humans are innately bad, as believed by exponents of Veneer Theory, or that we are innately good, and have evolved to be good, as believed by De Waal, is an important one. However, what is really as interesting is our capacities. Within these capacities are our abilities to learn and develop during our lifetime, not rebelling against our instincts as Dawkins suggests, but understanding their influences in ways which help us choose to become thoughtful and fully integrated and cohesive human beings.

When asked why we should teach people about emotions and other biological human functioning I suggest that understanding how we function serves to increase our abilities to choose how we behave. I believe that it potentially increases our capacity for good, just as education does more widely. Muhammad Yunus discusses our capacities in the most inspiring way:

A human being is born into this world fully equipped not only to take care of him or herself, but also to contribute to enlarging the well being of the world as a whole. Some get the chance to explore their potential to some degree, but many others never get any opportunity, during their lifetime, to unwrap the wonderful gift they were born with. They die unexplored and the world remains deprived of their creativity, and their contribution. (Yunus, 2006)

Dance everyday - just like this!

Mindapples are go

Andy Gibson has come up with a great idea, which I am hoping that I can support and help develop.

Andy's idea is to ask people what are the 5 most important things they do regularly to help them maintain their mental wellbeing.

He has set up a Mindapples blog and a very quick online survey to get some initial responses to see if this idea would develop into a campaign for better understanding of mental health - in the same sort of way that the 5-a-day campaign worked so brilliantly for healthy eating.

"But if you can care for your body by eating an apple, or going for a run, then why not the equivalent for your mind? By supporting individuals to take care of their day-to-day mental health through simple activities, we can make mental health an issue which is relevant and important for everyone. If successful, this campaign could transform the definition of mental health, break down the social divisions it brings, and promote a healthier, safer society."

Please take the initial research survey and help us see where this could go.

The Future of Online Networking

The debate continues... how do we bring the face to face together with online networking.
I think this is possibly what it will look like .... very soon. Particularly in social innovation circles. Take a look.

Stolen directly from Scott's blog

The Fog Begins to Lift?

The number of UK doctors prescribing exercise for treating depression symptoms has risen by 17% in just 3 years. The survey reported by the BBC showed that the benefits of exercise included the releasing of natural endorphins, less social isolation and better body image.

I wonder how long until doctors start prescribing longer break times for children again?

Matthew Taylor on 'Why life is good'

Matthew Taylor is the Chief Executive of the RSA and has recently published an article in New Statesman. Having recently become an enthusiastic Fellow of the RSA I was particularly interested in Matthew's article entitled 'Why life is good' which discusses, among many other things, societal pessimism and its effects on personal and societal agency.

The content is balanced in a way only possible through synthesising extensive research and an insightful understanding of how many convergent thoughts and academic disciplines are now connecting, like a giant puzzle, to give us clues as to how the individual human element really works and contributes to, or detracts from, a flourishing society. Ensuring clarity in our perceptions is vital if we are to lead positive and determined social progress.

This article is brilliant! This blog has always been about publishing actions and perspectives on the world that can collectively give us a glimmer of realistic optimism. Highlighting it really adds to that ....

The last paragraph reads:

"Personal forces of the modern world, people are prepared not only to believe in a better future, but to work together to build it. Tackling climate change offers a fascinating opportunity to interweave stories of action at the individual, community, national and international levels. This potential will be fulfilled only when we provide spaces for collective decision-making and action that speak to the same vision of collaboration, creativity and human fulfilment that progressives claim to be our destiny."

Favourite website of 2007

This blog has seen over 100 postings this year about lots of amazing and different people and projects and websites and I would like to thank the very many people who have taken the time to send me information and news for this blog. Without any doubt, Thriving Too's popularity is due to the contributions of it's readers :)

One site has remained a companion all year - The FLOWmarket project is remarkable because it is one of the few which combines beautiful design with such a powerful message. Not only is the focus on environmental issues but also on the human aspects where we struggle to remain balanced as well. FLOWmarket is about how we are, how we think and behave and our impact on the world around us.