Thriving too

This is Community: Why the Clean-ups Are So Important

The analysis in the media of why the UK erupted in street violence last week have offered us a buffet of reasoning across the political spectrum.

We've been offered: greed, gangs, the recession, unemployment, bad parenting, cultural disintegration, harsh policing, lax policing, slack sentencing, attitudes, social norms, the media scandal, the banking scandal, the expenses scandal, government cuts, professional incompetence, social contagion, opportunism, backlash.  

We've seen the argument swerve dangerously (usually in the same programme) from individual responsibility to state responsibility - depending on which political party you are supporting. 

Finally the arguments ended the week  in a horrible intellectual heap of ridiculousness at the doors of David Starkey.

I offer my own brief observations with some understanding that a week on we have all pretty much had enough of the analysis and political point scoring. So I am sticking to some person thoughts from my own experience... and reflecting on things that have been helpful this week.

A great many young people involved in the riot activities in the last week will have been 'known to the authorities'.  It is unusual to go from a stay-at-home teenager to looting in one step.  If the are 'known' at all, they will have been on the system of several agencies, possibly including youth offending, social services, the police, education teams, employment schemes.  Having worked for a short period in a Youth Offending Team (YOT) I can assure you of the tightness of these processes in steering a young person through a system.  There is hardly a crack through which any small degree of anti-social behaviour can slip through.  There are endless rounds of meetings they must attend.  If they miss meetings they are back in court for further measures.  They are sent on courses, their parents are counselled, they go on restorative justice programmes, they do 'community service'....  Seriously, there is very little not deployed to reform and shape a young person's behaviour to a more pro-social way of living.  

The government has made cuts to Youth Offending Teams - and probably this is one of the many reasons why the violence erupted... but the professional practice of YOTs will not have altered much with the change in government.  

But my own experience of YOTs work, as valuable and important as it is, is that it does not compensate for what a caring community could do for young people.  Most kids with ASBOs are shunned by the community in which they live, the families are shunned and likely to schools exclude those children.  I wrote about these experiences in more detail in this post on Protective Factors, Systems Thinking and People Power.

The main point here being that communities can do for young people that no amount of services can do for them.  These services cannot give them a feeling of belonging, a feeling of importance, a sense that their talents and contributions to society are valued and valuable.  These services cannot help them build relationships with helpful adults, build their own social capital and empower them ultimately into economic independence and civic participation and contribution. There are things that only communities can do for each other.

The citizen-led clean-ups that happened across the effected areas in the days that followed the riots, lifted our spirits and gave us back a bit of hope that society hadn't quite unravelled in the way much of the press seemed happy to promote.  But they are much more important than simply extending hope.  They were statements of ownership across those neighbourhoods.  They were statements about the strong feelings of anger that local residents had towards the violence and the destruction of neighbourhoods.  

And the Local Authority clean-up squads couldn't send that sort of message.... and instinctively these local folk knew that the message was as important as the clearn-up and the message could not be delivered by the local authority.

I wrote recently about a programme in Chicago called CeaseFire designed by an expert in the spread of infectious diseases called Gary Slutkin who has used the power of community outrage as part of a detailed strategy which has reduced violence by 45%  - 75%.  Every time there is violence the community demonstrate against the violence. Note:  They don't march against the authorities to stop the violence, they march against the violent behaviours from their own community members.  They express a collective rejection of these behaviours.  As Slutkin says ‘for these communities violence is simply normal – we work to make it unusual’.

The Peace Rallies which have started to emerge this weekend are further really powerful examples of how citizens see this need to make social expressions of peace.

And this is essentially what these clean-ups have done, with the addition of showing pride on where these residents live.  And perhaps all rolled up that is why we have found them so heartening, and why more than likely they have contributed to the riots reducing. 

Now all we need to figure out is how to make young people get more of their sense of community from the clean-ups teams and less from their gangs - and thankfully that small detail is very much in our hands.

[For a more detailed and academic exploration of encouraging autonomy in young people I wrote this RSA article in 2008 following my own research.]

Pic: Notice board in Peckham where people posted messages of peace and tolerance.

 

Social Spaces: Real Time Farms

There are many social media driven platforms out there which are are going to waste... but Real Time Farms has enormous potential to drive proper change around food production - both perceptions and behaviours ... and works with the whole chain - from grower, to markets, restaurants, cooks, to consumers.  Look forward to this one spreading!

Big Society: Time for Outrage?

I am not sure how I missed this story - I have found it so interesting and I thought it worth blogging about in case other's might have missed it too?  

Stephane Hessell released a 3 page pamphlet in France last October entitled “Indignez-Vous!” which has sold over 1.5 million copies.  The number of sales on this slim volume – sold for €3 - is pretty remarkable.

Hessell is 94.  He lived through the WWII, was active in the French Resistance, survived concentration camps, was involved in drafting the Declaration of Human Rights, spend much of his life as a diplomat and an active agent of positive change.  His experience and his life are significant factors in the spread of this recent work… but its timing has also contributed perhaps to how his message has been received.

So what is his message? I have read and reread it over the last couple of weeks – an English version here – wanting to blog about it, but thinking how important it is to drawn honestly on his text.  ‘Time for Outrage’ is a call to action on both political and social justice issues. Hessell draws our attention to a number of negative issues currently alive and well in society, examples include the widening gap between rich and poor, the powers of the press (ironically given the recent press scandals), the treatment of immigrants and more controversial issues concerning Israel and Palestine.

Here are some of the interpretations.. and further questions I have made from Hassell’s piece:

-       He asks for people not to ignore things that are happening subtly through the effects of social norms etc – such as showing a lack of respect to immigrants. The insidious permeation of behaviours, which add up to a terrible negative culture.  

-       He asks us to wake up to how the powers have been at work very quietly to dominate decision-making …. As well as waking up to our own contributions to the situation through passivity and via our smaller contributions.

-       He asks us to get active… but to work through peaceful means.  In fact his closing statement is ‘To create is to resist; to resist is to create.”

I recently read the book Willful Blindness by Margaret Heffernan and reading Hessell’s essay resonated with some of the things that Heffernan talks about.  In Willful Blindness Heffernan catalogues all the ways that we are blind to the bigger truths, sometimes in our personal lives, but also in work or public related ways.  One example is how the subprime mortgage crisis occurred not because of an individual ‘someone’ doing something hugely stupid (although Alan Greenspan ....) … but because literally 100s of people, at hundreds of organisations, across all levels, turned a blind eye to what they saw directly in front of them.  Individual employees were approving multiple mortgages on the same property on the same day.  It is a fascinating book with dozens of examples of how the mind works to make us ‘not know’ things that we sort of really do know but don’t want to confront even with ourselves. 

In another example Heffernan describes a firm in the US that kept a mine open for years with full knowledge that the high levels of asbestos in the dust was killing not only the workers in the mine – but the whole town.  When this knowledge was revealed publically the town did not want to know either – despite people actually dying around them at ridiculously young ages.  Most shocking in that story was the small fact that the head teacher at the town’s school did not reveal the fact for 5 years that the school’s running track was build on foundations of waste from the mine.  For 5 years after knowing the risks to health the students still performed athletics on contaminated dust!

What must things be like for Hessel – to live through one of the most shocking instances of crimes against humanity – to win – to make all sorts of huge and fundamental strides towards creating a better world – such as writing the Declaration of Human Rights … only to see some of those gains slip quietly away due to inattention or passivity or lack of knowledge or insight? It does feel as though Hessell is shouting …in frustation.

The questions that Hassel asks are ones that many have been asking for a long time:

-       How do we make obvious things that are often so slow or so invisible that we don’t see them until the full impact has been gathered. 

-       How do we take responsibility for our individual behaviours – knowing that they contribute powerfully to the collective that shapes our social culture.

-       How do we ‘create to resist’?  What does that look like?  Is the call that Hessell makes here a call to encourage citizens to pro-actively shape the world they want to live in – a ‘call to action’ rather than a ‘call to arms’ which its title initially suggests?

Hessel's work is controversial in many ways - there are many who are trying to dismiss it or criticise it - there were certainly many points that I noted seemed in need of further investigation.... but I can also see that there are many reasons why this commentary has drawn so many people in France to buy it, why it is so timely... and why Hessel's voice within this text has made it's appeal so strong.

I see many points of comparison with Big Society, a concept I still wholeheartedly support. Isn’t Big Society after all, at its most fundamental, a call  ... or an idea, to help people get more involved in shaping society – rather than simply acting as consumers or critiquing society from afar?

Imagine 1.5 million copies sold of a leaflet talking about Big Society? Can't see that happening somehow....

 

Parenting

 

  There have been some interesting items on parents this month, not least my own parental angst as I help guide my oldest child apply for university.  The complex set of feelings associated with the applications are not unfamiliar.  I want her to extend herself to the fullest ....I fear that the possible failure will be upsetting....

Am I a helicopter parent?  Defined as overparenting an article this week in Time talks about a marvellous parent backlash to overprotecting:

"The insurgency goes by many names — slow parenting, simplicity parenting, free-range parenting — but the message is the same: Less is more; hovering is dangerous; failure is fruitful. You really want your children to succeed? Learn when to leave them alone. When you lighten up, they'll fly higher. We're often the ones who hold them down."

The article goes on the describe their parent polls that highlight the effects of the recession:

"A backlash against overparenting had been building for years, but now it reflects a new reality. Since the onset of the Great Recession, according to a CBS News poll, a third of parents have cut their kids' extracurricular activities. They downsized, downshifted and simplified because they had to — and often found, much to their surprise, that they liked it. When a TIME poll last spring asked how the recession had affected people's relationships with their kids, nearly four times as many people said relationships had gotten better as said they'd gotten worse."

I certainly started life as mostly a 'free-range' parent and this new move away from overprogramming is all beginning to sound rather wonderful... but is it that simple?

A new paper published by DEMOS Building Character: Parents are the principle architects to a fairer society' describes how good parenting can make a huge difference long term.  This paper is fascinating and in a more professional/formal vein on Matthew Taylor's blog I have praised the authors for an important and balanced piece of work.  

Since reading the paper I have been reflecting on my own parenting style using the axes described by the DEMOS report (below).  I have also been thinking about the style of other parents I know... and am struggling with the idea of the consistency implied by these descriptors.  I am more often warm than hostile... but I move across the scale between permissive and controlling constantly.  I have teenagers and I consider that they need a degree of flexibility and this is context specific.  And being a human I also have different moods.

Outliers + Violence

I love Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers. I enjoyed Tipping Point and Blink as well, his other two books, but Outliers has come for me at a time where so many of its themes have been swimming around in my head for some time.  But as usual Gladwell stitches these ideas together with lesser known, but hugely illustrative, research studies.  Add an engaging narrative.... and of course his unique thinking and perspective taking and you have a wonderful book!

There were several themes I wanted to talk about - too much for one blog post.  So today I wanted to talk briefly about violence, social norms and honour.

If you ask a teenager what upsets them most about time at school, mostly likely one of the things they will mention is being socially excluded.  When teaching personal development to teenagers one set of my lessons explores ideas around becoming more outward looking and taking a more 'networked approach' to their social relationships.  One of the exercises asks students to find an opportunity to strike up a friendly conversation with someone outside of their existing friendship group, and to monitor and briefing describe the experience.  A simple task.  

The de-brief and discussion which follows is fascinating and shows this very simply exercise to be really experiential and helpful for students to see how difficult/easy it can be to risk extending friendship to others, even people they see regularly.  This has worked really well in all the schools I have researched in, with one exception.  In one school the students said that they couldn't do the exercise because it would end up with someone getting hurt.

In Outliers Gladwell describes a research experiment which examined the 'Culture of Honor'.  You can read a description of this here.

The results of the experiment showed that while one group of participants showed little emotional response to an insult (in this case being called an 'asshole'), others responded emotionally and physically much more strongly.  The difference between the two groups was found to be in their cultural origins, in this case from the Northern or Southern part of the Unites States.  What Gladwell is talking about is 'social norms', and what I experienced in the classroom was also about 'social norms'.

Gary Slutkin (pictured above during his talk at the Pop!Tech 08 Conference) returned to Chicago after spending years in Africa fighting AIDS, TB and cholera with the W.H.O.. Slutkin noticed that the violence plaguing his hometown exhibited all the signs of an infectious disease. The spread of violence was as powerful and as invisible as a disease. It was a social norm.

Since applying epidemiological principles Slutkin has reduced shootings and violent crime in inner-city Chicago neighborhoods by as much as 75%.  The two disease control strategies that he has deployed have been: interrupting transmission, and changing central behaviour.  But instead of stopping the spread of disease he has reduced the spread of a deadly social norm - violence.

What Gladwell's perspective added, as well as the illustrative study and accompanying story, was the word 'honor'. Violence is an extreme, misguided and wrong reaction .... but there is something in understanding this dynamic better which makes me see these young people a little differently.

In the UK there is, quite correctly, enormous concern about levels of knife crime.  The difference between Slutkin's intervention and traditional 'Crime and Punishment' methods are threefold. Slutkin's approach is effective, progressive and intelligent.  Crime and punishment is seldom effective, progressive or intelligent.  Currently the approach in the UK is that if insufficient policing and punishment isn't working, then more policing and punishment must be needed.  Rather that looking at fresh and informed new ideas.

Does this make it a social intervention policy more likely to trailed and adopted by Labour or Conservative government?  

For a quick film snapshot of the current state of the enormous prison populations in the US click here