Thankfully, while politics and the Big Society are intertwined because it represents a vision and a debate about the kind of country we want to build together, I’m also increasingly clear that it is here to stay. This is because the Big Society (or whatever you want to call it) builds on thinking from the internet – it is about a change in the way we operate, about releasing information, power, and people in their streets and institutions, and supporting people to take as much or as little control over their lives from whomsoever currently hoards it – mainly government, but also other large vested interests. Once you have had a taste of the freedom offered by the internet, can you imagine going back to life without it? Yes of course there will be challenges, just as there were with the creation of the internet, with those who would seek to disrupt it, and enterprises that harnessed it that have come and gone – and it had its critics too. But it is here to stay, for better or worse, and generally for the better.

So how does one get one’s head around it? Well it very much depends on what you want to do with it – again like the internet.

If you are interested in it as a political idea, its origins in history, and as a governing philosophy, then I recommend searching and tracking what leading politicians, thinktanks, and commentators have to say about it as well as historical writers such as Burke, De Tocqueville, Oakeshott, Hobson and Hobhouse or modern ones such as Seldon. If you want to follow it in terms of policy – as in how the government is seeking to support the building of it – then I recommend tracking what government departments are saying and announcements at the Cabinet Office which lists and reports on progress in a number of key areas. A lot of umbrella groups and communications specialists organisations have created guides and are running conferences on the Big Society to help contextualize the policies as they are being developed for different sectors and stakeholders. A useful recent guide on the policies being developed can be found here.

If you want to get involved and respond in some way to it either as an individual citizen or a group of citizens, as an enthusiast, or as an institution, there are a myriad of routes to finding out more. As a citizen or group of citizens, look out for the work of the Big Society Network, which aims to be a background organisation, whose campaigns will have mass appeal and will seek to remove barriers to your getting involved where you live in Big Society, led by one of the founders of Comic Relief and the Big Lunch, Paul Twivy. Their flagship project at the moment is the development of a citizen’s mutual called Your Square Mile with tools, signposting, and peer support to help you get started to change those things where you live you feel strongly about and to make it easier to go from having no understanding or desire to make a difference to becoming more engaged. There is also nothing to stop citizens from getting involved either through local charitable activity, in local democracy, and by literally setting up their own initiatives, if that suits them. For activists, there are a number of informal spokespeople working on different elements of it such as Phillip Blond at ResPublica who is concerned about how it can change the relationship between citizens and business/the market and other non-governmental organisations, Paul Twivy at the Big Society Network for those interested in making it easier for the less engaged to become engaged, Richard Reeves – formerly head of Demos – for those interested in its relationship with left-leaning thinking whether through the Liberal or Labour movements, Gavin Poole at the Centre for Social Justice exploring its relationship with a more humane and nuanced understanding of poverty, and Will Perrin who looks at how Big Society relates to practical social media technologies and how these can be harnessed to transform deprived areas and in turn bureaucracy itself.

For those particularly interested in the impact Big Society will have on how institutions operate, I recommend following Matthew Taylor at the RSA who is looking at how businesses, voluntary organisations, or local government agencies may need to change their modus operandi to respond to the challenges and opportunities it offers to their engagement with citizens. He has done a lot of work with local authorities, large membership organisations such as the National Trust, and through social media to explore how to create more open citizen-led institutions.

How do all the pieces fit together? Well the different levels are all being developed at the same time, rather like internet servers, browsers, and websites or apps being created all at the same time, or like an ecosystem coming into existence with minerals, and large and small organisms evolving in real time. The governing philosophy is really about creating culture change to move away from the almost literally bankrupt(ing) ideas of the late 20th century about the relationship between citizens as passive recipients of state and non-state welfare and services, to their being more in the driving seat and to change the assumptions about how we should and can live our lives. The policy agenda is about creating specific legislative and non-legislative powers for citizens to take up in every department (“public sector reform”), creating financial, organising, and enduring capacity to enable citizens and citizen groups either directly or with the help of social enterprises to take up those powers (“social action”), and strengthening really local groups with formal and informal powers (“neighbourhood empowerment”). The citizen led approach is about together tackling all the barriers to mass citizen participation at a local level, recognising that these are formidable and finding solutions so that everyone can have good reasons for getting involved, demand and use local powers, and can have repeated experiences of citizen engagement that better fit their lifestyles and expectations and which lead to active involvement in local groups.

Phew! There is enough here to fill a book. In fact, a group of us are starting to put together a guide, mainly for activists, for those interested in building the Big Society, which will be a collaborative online project. Watch this space for more to follow!

No doubt I will have missed out loads of detail and other organisations. Do comment with your thoughts and plugs for other activity underway and organisations involved in any of the above areas, though I cannot claim to endorse everything that is posted as a comment, and comments will be moderated. It goes without saying, despite many commentators and twitterati’s best attempts, that not everything these days that goes by the name “Big Society” is in fact bona fide. Sometimes, the name is evoked to try to protect an organisation that is having its funding reduced (“So much for Big Society”), or to describe an action someone intends to take or is about to take like running a public service (“I’m taking out the trash and doing my bit for Big Society”), or as a synonym with the fight against poverty. Such comments show how many though not all understand the once in a lifetime shift taking place and how wedded many are to the idea that government and large organisations must do and be everything, so much so that you could in fact replace “Big Society” in such comments with the word “government” without changing the meaning. The key test of whether something is Big Society or not is about whether it represents a genuine shift in power, whether the power of information, decision-making, and/or people to us as citizens without compromising on the quality of a given service affected, and without the vulnerable and poor being adversely impacted overall when the measure is taken together with other social justice actions happening at the same time.

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