Our Big Society: the next chapter begins

This week marks a watershed moment for the Big Society for several reasons. Firstly because as the PM affirmed on Monday, it is here to stay. Government remains committed to it not just because it is the sensible thing to do, but because it is the right thing to do to bring about a social and not just an economy recovery. Second, because despite its broad appeal across party lines it is now a battleground between those who favour the false (and expensive) comfort of statism and bureaucracy, and those who yearn for a better, more sustainable and community-anchored way of life in this country in which citizens have more control over their lives. Third, because a barrage of the key policies and legislative bills that underpin and enable it are now launching after months of planning which has taken up much of my time and that of countless others inside and outside government to refine over the last year – from the Big Society Bank and vision for social investment, to Community Organisers, to local funds and endowments for building social capital, to National Citizen Service and the focus on employee-owned mutuals. But this flurry of policy also marks a shift because from now on the baton will start to be handed over to us to share in the building of it, whether as individuals or in our groups, as representatives from the voluntary, business or local government – harnessing the new opportunities, tools, and information that government has started to release. Big Society, rightly, is leaving the confines of Whitehall and Parliament (though in truth, it never was confined to it in the first place).

This is the reason why I have rebalanced my own time, because from now on, Big Society is about more than what happens in government. We have an opportunity to cultivate it not just in Westminster, but in our communities, families, and workplaces, building upon the great work that has been done by others all over the land over many years past. It will not be easy, but I’m excited about this next phase, which will be forged in the struggle between the dying vested interests who know that their time is up, and born in the rise and rise of the civic entrepreneur, people who know that the future belongs to citizens and who make it their calling to make it easier as pioneers to build bridgeheads and platforms for others to follow the trails they blaze. My main focus moving forwards will be to help these citizens, these civic entrepreneurs, from the heart of government, across the land, from Shoreditch, and in my own family. To help them make the most of the opportunities, tools, and information that are now being released for the benefit of every community in ways that make it easy for the rest of us in turn to engage.

I saw a number of such civic entrepreneurs at work powerfully recently at a visit last week to TechHub in Shoreditch, one of the projects I plan to put more time into as a volunteer both online acting as a guest blogger on TechCrunch and in person on Fridays. TechHub hosts technology start ups and businesses, providing a community for them all and affordable space, and is a key part of the move to create a Silicon Valley movement in East London. There is also a real commitment among those working there to ensure that the benefits of their investment and time spills over into the wider community and society as well. If you look closely, tech entrepreneurs are choosing to also be civic entrepreneurs, builders of the Big Society, making it easier for others to get involved. Three examples highlighted this for me during my visit. The first was in a start-up called Housebites. This model, developed by a successful tech entrepreneur, enables citizens to advertise their dinner parties online, which has the effect of connecting people who would not otherwise meet. But more than this, their aim is also to encourage the parties to easily raise funds for local and other charities, making giving both easy and fun. The second start-up that stood out is called Squadify. This business, whose site is still in alpha though you can sign up to be invited when its beta starts, seeks to simply and take away the hassle of organising sports matches, whether football, or cricket, or many others old and new, and make it possible to source last minute teams and communicate with people who may be around or have the time and skill to get involved. Again the social benefits of the model is one of mixing people who would not otherwise associate with each other, but there are also health benefits as well since the technology means fewer matches will get cancelled at the last minute for lack of players. In many ways, the model takes power away from professional clubs since it allows citizens to self-organise fixtures, though it is also possible for sponsors and clubs to communicate with members using it as a tool, creating a symbiotic relationship. The third initiative that stood out was one designed to help train up kids from as young as twelve from council estates to become software developers with mentoring from leading technology firms. The companies concerned did not feel the state-sponsored or university-based way of training up developers alone was giving them the flow of talent they needed so they simply decided to get more directly involved in nurturing local talent earlier. What is really interesting about all these models is that they harness the power of collective action, to do more any one of them could do on our own, and seek to weave civic action into daily life – not as something to be outsourced expensively to politicians or bureaucrats, but as something fun, linked to something we would want to do anyway for our own or our own organisation’s benefit.

But it does not all have to be about technology. Civic entrepreneurs include social entrepreneurs who have found ways to help others replicate their models and fund them sustainably and resiliently, business people who make their business and facilities a means for citizens to take action and greater control over the lives, the community organiser who builds a local movement online and offline, the group who took over the pub and who wrote it up for others to learn from their experience, the large charity that realises its assets, brand, and balance sheet could be used as a tool to empower local citizens to help achieve their mission, the public sector worker who engages in creating a mutual and then creates an intermediary that helps others do the same, and the cultural leader and trendsetter who decides to use their influence to drive fashions that also benefit society. And as new opportunities presented by the shift in power from Whitehall to localities present themselves, exciting platforms become possible which we can only dream of today. Such as outpatient hotels in reformed NHS hospitals and mutuals that make it easier for relatives to care for their recovering loved ones using online booking tools, made possible because the provision of such services have been opened up through the Public Services Reform Bill. Such as out of the box toolkits that make it easy for communities to take control over and have the access to finance needed to manage their local libraries and facilities using powers and information made possible by the Localism Bill. Such as websites that help to plan school trips which take the hassle out of doing all the planning, linked to more streamlined CRB regulations. And many many more such platforms for action.

As the past months have shown, the way forward will continue to be challenging. But we have now embarked on the journey and there is no way back – history and an ageing population resulting in fewer tax payers are on our side – forcing us to find a different, more local, more empowering way of running our society. Big Society is too big for Big Government, that attitude which says government and the bureaucracy must do, fund, and support everything. Those who want to bring Big Society down must now contend with the fact that it is and always has been all around us, growing all over the country, presenting no one obvious target, and at work even within their own ranks. Once you start to find ways of doing things more locally, with others around you, with only the most essential support from outside – once you start to take more control – it is infectious, and hard to resist long term. There will of course continue to be attacks and cynicism, and I and others may have to bear the brunt of it. But my family and I are willing to endure it, since we have nothing to lose, and the sacrifice will be worth it if it leads to the real improvement we all deeply desire in the villages, towns, and housing estates that media and politicians alike have struggled for so long to transform through action from the centre alone.

So join the movement, lead it where you live, let us build those bridgeheads that make it easier for citizens to get involved whatever their constraints and backgrounds. Get in touch; I and many like me are here to help and encourage you. If you are building a platform for change harnessing the information, opportunities, and tools that are coming on stream, or want to find out how they can be harnessed for your platform, get in touch at GovAdviserBigSociety@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk. Together we can make it happen.

Unlocking hidden wealth (Part 1) – finding time

A number of commentators have argued that people do not have the time to get involved in Big Society. Traditional surveys on civic participation over the last decade in the UK indicate that this may be true. Indicators such as volunteering levels appear to have plateaued, with recent falls occurring in 2009-2010, and few people attend public meetings. At first sight, this would suggest that the degree of civic action taking place has already peaked and is healthy but with little room for growth, leading one to ask whether there is any more capacity left.

But there are several problems with this analysis. The first is that there are indications that while the headline levels of volunteering have been relatively static, there is a danger that as the population ages it is increasingly carried out by fewer and older people, who do more each year as others do less, ignoring the potential for others to be more involved who have become less engaged of late in ways that fit their lifestyles, constraints, and circumstances, such as the young. The second, more serious point, is that the headline data does not capture often the many informal activities that would not be classified as volunteering, but which represent civic engagement, from the greeting of a neighbour to attendance at a club, to blogging on a hyperlocal or social media website – all the stuff not captured in formal economic statistics including most of the time we spend online, at home, and with our neighbours and in our communities.

In fact, more granular surveys suggest quite large numbers of people are willing to get involved in activities that affect them. Today’s IPPR/PwC report, Capable Commmunities: Citizen-powered public services has found that 42% of people would attend a regular meeting with their neighbourhood police team, and 18% would volunteer at a police station. 20% would be willing to commit to mentoring a child struggling in the education system, and 46% said they were willing to keep an eye on an elderly neighbour and 33% said they would regularly drive an elderly person to the shops. Over 90% however believe that the state should retain responsibility for delivering most key public services – that there still remains a role for the state.

Stepping back from the statistics, there are three principles to unlocking time so that citizens to get more involved, however large or small, in the Big Society.

Many people have time, or can create it

The first is to realise that there is often more time available than there might appear to be at first sight. For many, if they care enough about an issue and getting involved in society, various alternative time-consuming activities can be displaced (e.g. watching television, an activity already declining among some segments in society). It also only takes a few people to increase the levels of civic engagement that are most of use to society, such as the 3 percent who attend public meetings, to have ripple effects that enlarge civil society, even if most people still do not get involved in such an intensive way. There are also many people in certain demographic groups and at certain stages in their lives who will have more time than others which could be harnessed, if they were to be asked and supported in doing so. Groups such as the recently retired (of which there are every year now an additional 900,000), or those classed as incapacitated either physically or mentally (8.6 million people in the UK are registered disabled), and those who study full- or part-time (2.4m), who work part-time (7.8m). Such groups can often be seen as unable to participate in society as problems rather than having and being assets within communities. This suggest there is huge potential if it can be unlocked in certain segments of society, and where there is an interest in getting involved.

Those who genuinely lack time can trade it

Even where people lack time for whatever reason, whether as a single parent or busy working person or student, there are existing and innovative means for unlocking time to help make the most of the hours that are available for mutual benefit. The first of these is the increased use of mutual aid and bartering of services. Where neighbours and people are connected, arrangements can be created, for example sharing in childcare arrangements or caring for the elderly that can save and release time. These can be further formalised through activities such as time banking, or service credits, in which citizens can actually trade the hours they may have available (e.g. at the weekend or during the summer or over Twixtmas), in exchange for support when they need it to unlock hours for community and social activity (e.g. to get baby-sitting support to attend a meeting or football match with a participating time credit partner who has underutilised space or tickets). A final means by which time can be unlocked is through co-operative and mutual or community ownership of assets. Where citizens feel ownership over a facility or building, they can feel a greater compulsion to invest time in it, both because a strong tie of affection has been established, but also because such an investment will lead to a return whether financial or psychic further down the line.

Services can be configured to unlock time

Much of Big Society however will not necessarily require all citizens to invest vast amounts of time, since for most, their ability to participate in it will be mediated by public, private or voluntary services that have been adapted to work with citizens to harness the little time they have when they engage with the service. So the time used online or waiting in a queue or recovering from an operation could be harnessed to enable citizens to have a greater say, or find out more about the activities in their area, or to make participatory decisions that affect their lives. So services can be delivered more in the community, ideally multiple services at once, reducing travel time and going from one official to another. The rise of citizen games could facilitate real-world problem solving and giving even for busy commuters using online and mobile technologies. Certain services could involve taster sessions to allow citizens to not have to commit upfront to long-term engagement, such as with the National Childbirth Trust courses, which in turn feed longer-term participants. And chains of service providers can enable complex challenges to be tackled by the very committed but in scalable ways, harnessing the deep commitment of the few to benefit more and more people. Finally, we could probably do a lot more to make it easier for citizens to get involved in formal statutory processes and make them more inclusive, particularly for those from lower income backgrounds. Do we have to have so many meetings? Do they have to be held at times when only those that are around at that time can make them? Can we use technology such as mobiles and blogs and social media to hold ongoing conversations? Can we have meetings where people actually congregate already, such as in shopping centres and community centres and cafes? Could the format of the meeting be less dull and more interactive? Could meetings and consultative processes be run by locals in their front rooms or on the back of existing activities such as drop ins and meals on wheels deliveries and in the course of community organiser conversations on doorsteps? Could we reward attendance at such meetings with time credits? Maybe people do not go to public meetings not because they cannot be bothered but because the format of those meetings no longer fit our busy lifestyles and how we like to operate, and therefore need to be adapted.

 

Unlocking time through credits

Time credits appears to be one of the most promising developments that could help fuel the growth of the Big Society in years to come. The challenge, as I have learnt over the past week or so, will be how to build it to scale.

Last week I spoke at an event hosted by the Young Foundation looking at the Just Add Spice model of public sector time credits. And yesterday at the Cabinet Office, I attended a seminar given by Edgar Cahn, regarded by many in the field as the father of timebanking globally. He gave a number of insights from work he has carried out recently in the US which I have captured below and started by claiming that the core economy (the economy not captured by GDP data but covering everything we do for each other in the home and community and civil society) is the ‘operating system of society’ (sounds familiar). He shared a number of innovations which he has been trialling with various States and with the Obama administration including:

• youth courts in Washington DC to which 70 percent of non-violent juvenile crime cases are now referred using time credits in which young people sentence other young people to community service (including to jury service in the same courts) that have reduced reoffending by over 50 percent
• school-based time credits for older pupils to mentor younger ones to help them read and study which has reduced truancy and improved test scores
• ‘Homecoming Academy’ time credits which are used by ex-offenders to help each other settle into life after prison in which they serve the community by providing safe passage to kids in gang areas to get to school and to mentor kids who truant back into school
• eldercare credits (similar to social care credits) to enable care to be given to the elderly inside and outside hospital (changing lightbulbs, befriending, and other practical support)
• lawyers using time credits alongside a community to help close down crack houses and regenerate an area (could also be used in other cases where professional help is needed such as with asset transfer)
• university scholarships granted in exchange for time credits earned
• work apprenticeships using credits as part of the process of being trained (here the credits act as a kind of credit history analogous to that used in microfinance)
• timebanking in Chinatowns to help provide translation services

Key enabling ideas that could support the scaling of complementary currencies and time credit usage included:

• creating incentives and prizes for ‘frequent flying’ to reward those who had served the most and to celebrate commitment
• tying in time credits into procurement and changing the latter to recognise social value and the leverage of time credits bring in (in the US,Cahn has discussed with the Obama administration a citizen time match being a requirement of public contracts where possible)
• hybrid social enterprises which run with lower financial overheads and utilise time credits to create value and achieve their mission with communities online and offline (rationing the limited money available)

A lot more needs to be done to help scale up time credits, removing barriers in commissioning, in perceived and real risk, to educate the population at large, and to embed this approach in our public, private, and voluntary sector systems and mindsets. It could however be a third leg alongside public sector paid for services and pure volunteering in the quest to help release more citizen capacity (just as social investment is emerging as a third leg in social funding alongside public sector spending and philanthropy).

In Shoreditch, I’m part of a time credit scheme called the Timberwharf Timebank which has gotten some traction since its recent launch, and started to show benefits for participants in terms of improved wellbeing and mental health. The key challenge now is to scale the model learning from the above and to find partner organisations across Hackney willing to offer opportunities (finding willing individuals has curiously not been a problem, it is more the opportunities for them to help others that have been needed!). We are looking for members, be they GP clinics, schools, parts of the local authority service provision, and others from the private and voluntary sectors who act as anchors in the area. The deal is that partners provide both timebanking opportunities to share skills and where they can rewards (such as free use of space in offpeak times or services; cinemas and sports venues even offer seats; taster sessions and consultations). The timebank is currently looking for more opportunities for people to help others, so if you live or work in the area and have service opportunities and/or underutilised assets and capacity that could be used as rewards to offer either as an individual or organisation, get in touch.

Discovering Shoreditch past and present

Boundary Community Launderette

A few months ago I moved into the Shoreditch area from neighbouring Bow having lived in East London for nearly ten years. I’m attracted to it for many reasons: it’s an artistic, entrepreneurial, and technological hub, has a lot of social problems alongside tremendous wealth, and is a place where a lot is going on that feels quite big society in many ways, even though politically it is heavily dominated by Labour (which as I have argued before has roots in social action which are well worth reviving by its new leader).

In the past Shoreditch was also a hotbed of citizen-led social reform. Shaftesbury worked with others here to establish education for those on low incomes such as the Ragged Schools here. This was also close to the birthplace of the settlement movement in which those connected to universities settled students in slum areas to live and work alongside local people through whose efforts according to Wikipedia “settlement houses were established for education, savings, sports, and arts”. Octavia Hill was also active in and around the area, pioneering reforms that lead to the establishment of Royal Parks and social housing all over the country. Shaftesbury also started social franchises for ex-chimney sweeps and beggars called the Shoe Black Brigade in and around the area to help them make an alternative living.

Today there are tremendous challenges as well as opportunities. Hackney and parts of Shoreditch are known for their high levels of poverty, there are problems with gang violence and shootings, and high levels of turnover in the population and over-crowding among both the immigrant and white population relating to housing shortages, and while the council has clearly improved services over the years since it had to be taken over, there is still a huge amount to do. But once again there are examples of social reform from the Mayor’s Fund backed City Year initiative, to the Headway head injury charity’s centre whose Timebank I have recently joined (see this Guardianarticle on the potential of time credits to transform public services), to the work of Citizen’s UK who have recently hired a community organiser to work in the area funded by the Mayor’s fund which also supports the Playing to Win initiative led by Greenhouse schools with Street Lead, London Youth, working with schools and youth clubs to tackle social problems using sports and games;  to faith-based initiatives led by local churches with the support and interest of organisations such as Street Pastors.

Shoreditch is undoubtedly very different from many parts of the UK, particularly compared to rural Cumbria which I visited a few months ago hosted by MP Rory Stewart. In Penrith, the concerns were more about access to broadband, and more control over planning to create homes for young people who would otherwise leave for the cities, and community transport since public transport could often be quite limited. In Shoreditch, the issues are more to do with people not knowing each other, crime, and unemployment particularly for young people and men. But there are similarities as well: from a desire in both places for more multi-use community spaces through which local services can be delivered by a mix of the people themselves, the state, and voluntary and community enterprises; to an interest in sustainability whether it be in anaerobic digesters in the one, or city farms and guerilla gardening in the other. Above all there are paradoxical similarities to how poverty may need to be approached in both places, which is surprising given how one is extremely low density and the other extremely high density compared to other parts of the country. I was shown in Cumbria the farmhouse of a lady who was a widow on state benefits and one of a million people who are classed as in rural poverty. Recently, my church leader told me about a man he helped in Shoreditch who had racked up thousands of pounds in debts having been repeatedly sent warnings and notices because a) he had been misdiagnosed when getting his benefits such that his dyslexia was not picked up and support not provided to help him cope with it, and b) because the energy company had mistakenly read the wrong meter and charged him instead of his neighbour for the energy used. In both cases, a local neighbourhood group is able to do far more and at a more human, granular level, than the state ever could, no matter how much non-existent money we pump into it. In the case of the rural widow, she would not have been picked up by the state’s statisticians since super-output level data in her area does not identify her (the farmland and property around her tend to be inhabited by wealthy farmers or second-homers). In the latter case, the managerialist approach taken by the state using databases and call centres and tick-boxes failed to ensure enough time was spent observing the man’s life and the difficulties he faced, which would have been easier and possibly lower cost had he been part of a group of citizens, encouraged to get out and about rather than isolated at home. This is why I am passionate about groups, particularly those with a range of people from different backgrounds in them, supported by the voluntary, government, and business sectors, but not dominated or bypassed by them unless a high level of professional skill and interaction is genuinely needed. This is why I am working with others to establish the Shoreditch Group, a bunch of local citizens, philanthropists, and neighbours who want to help to bring change and improvement to the area, meeting in the pub once a month (if you think you are one of them, get in touch via #NatWei and let’s meet up!).

Unlike in moderately dense areas, where aspects of Big Society have often been in existence through local assocations, neighbourliness, and public services funded through taxation as well as local fundraising*, our most dense urban areas or peripheral estates and most rural areas are having to create new forms of Big Society which are interesting and often novel and present potential glimpses into the future as we seek to reinvent the welfare state and re-empower the citizen and citizen group in the face of technological, demographic, and economic transition. It does not seem an accident that Hackney and Shoreditch is seeing and has seen for many years a bewildering amount of lifestyle transformation, with the rise of the organic and sustainable urban farming movement and services (see Hackney City Farm), the harnessing of web-enabled community arts to bring people together to regenerate run down areas (see I AM HERE run on the Kingland and Haggerston estate), and multi-use community facilities such as the Boundary Community Launderette (a not-for-profit community business run by volunteer directors that washes clothes, lends books, acts as a gallery and raises money for charity). Groups like these are showing us how to draw communities together and unlock the potential that exists in them. There is furthermore a curious obsession with bikes (I have to admit I tend to walk more than cycle since the drivers round here terrify me!), and a profusion of the kind of fascinating slightly anarchic social media driven citizen-led movements and hyperlocal activity that Tessy Britton writes about, as well as the kind of more “old-fashioned” neighbouring which often faith groups in the area are starting to rediscover which John McKnight calls us to live out in Abundant Community.

This is an environment which has fostered the rise of social movements for centuries, and seems increasingly a difficult place for Big Charity and Big Government to penetrate or transform for the better. But I agree with Bubb that there are opportunities here for partnership between larger and smaller charities, the state, and citizens and citizen groups to help widows and the isolated, and everyone else alike and empower them in turn to help themselves and others around them. There are ways that Big Government, Charity, and Business can harness models to do this more effectively such as social franchising (see Foodbank and the People’s Supermarket), the “freemium” model (give your IP away for free and provide value added support, a model which Alcoholics Anonymous kind of follows), and classic joint ventures to reach the unreached and connect them with supportive local groups and services.

So to conclude, I’m excited to be here, excited to get to know my neighbours, and definitely up for learning and listening. There is going to be, given its political and social make-up, huge debate about Big Society or other participatory approaches to the relationship between the citizen, state, and voluntary and business worlds here as much as there will be all over the country and around the world in the coming decades. Julian Dobson’s point that there is still much to be done to build a consensus on the way forward is as true here in Shoreditch as around the country: how will we harness what can be fickle voluntary action, alongside what can sometimes be clunky monolithic state provision, together with markets that are not always moral? I think part of the answer is around understanding citizens, giving a voice to those who don’t shout the loudest, and empowering them to redefine a new settlement that fits best their individual and our collective circumstances. So here’s to the Big Citizen, to big citizens everywhere, and to Shoreditch – my new home.

Next post: Dealing with the Great Transition using big society participatory approaches in local government

* There are still many exceptions in moderately dense areas: I have been told wealthy commuter belts can be particularly alienating, where affluenza and social isolation, and the ability to purchase most of your services seems to coincide at times with high levels of family and community breakdown

Reform versus Revolution

In case you hadn’t noticed, I love social reform. I’m just not so sure about social (or political) revolution. The amazing thing about this country is that despite having gone through two dramatic technological and economic shifts over the past few centuries  (agricultural and industrial) and now as we experience a third (information) – all of which invariably tend to widen the gap between those that have and those that do not – we have a track record of finding ways to reform our society and politics, rather than resorting to physical and bloody revolutions. In other countries around the world, and still today, this was not always possible. Somehow the anger and sense of injustice here was channelled into solutions that more people could benefit from: electoral reform in the past, the rise of the free press, of steam power, education for all and the welfare state.

Great reformers, whether Wilberforce, Shaftesbury (my favourite), Gladstone and more recently Beveridge, knew that to effect long term change and achieve social justice, they needed to widen the net of support beyond their base of activists, and include among them the general public and those with the skills and resources to not only win the argument, but also to implement a different future.  So anger about slavery was directed towards enlisting public support through reasoning and ultimately legal and economic measures to move the country away from dependence on slaving as a source of growth, which paved the way for its eventual abolishment. So anger about about illiteracy was turned into a desire to establish the first non-governmental schools for the poor. So anger about the crippling poverty from unemployment and depression led via the war to the welfare state in its original, enabling form. All without the scale of unrest and bloodshed that dogged countries overseas.

So the real question, Julian, in response to your thoughtful and eloquent letter, is not whether I or others are prepared to engage with and accept anger at the coming cuts and the speed of them, but how we deal with the situation together. How we deal with it not just in government, but also at the level of affected and unaffected institutions working in partnership with those that have alternative resources to government whether from philanthropy, business, or direct from citizens. And how we ultimately figure out how to channel our anger into real local (and sometimes national) solutions.

I’m angry as well. I’m angry that the previous government led so many social organisations down the garden path which meant that when the inevitable reductions in public expenditure arrive, they have been left exposed and vulnerable – a result of Big Government style funding. I’m angry that the process has to be done so quickly because to not act now would mean things would be worse later when the country is forced overnight to act as it did in the past – but that it suits those who no longer have to make these painful decisions to cast blame rather than to share responsibility. I’m angry because what is happening affects my family too, with a number of local services we use being potentially affected here in Shoreditch.

But I choose to harness that anger and direct it to finding solutions. To looking in government at how we can smooth the transition where possible, encouraging philanthropy to support organisations at risk and bring in new skills so they can diversify their income away from government, and to finding ways longer term to join up budgets and make them more locally-led by citizens, reducing the waste and overheads that comes from overcentralisation and allowing funds to flow to social enterprises and other providers so long as they can convince people rather than Ministers that they can genuinely help them achieve their aspirations for their neighbourhood. That’s why I and others are working to build a long-term social investment sector that harnesses the tremendous wealth we create as a country and directs some of it towards helping to scale what works, so that sustainable funding is no longer totally subject to the vagaries of politics or elections or the IMF. And that’s why I’m engaged in thinking through with other citizens how we can save our local services innovatively, such as by co-locating services and raising local funds to run them more autonomously, and by going back to local government funders and landlords with alternative business plans and proposals that make sense and which allow more to be done for less.

To do all of this requires more than just anger and angry people. It requires a joined up movement at all levels first to get the angry and the “not particularly angry” to work together by showing the latter what life is like for those on the margins; second to team up those with resources with those that do not have any and harness not just their money but also their skills and networks; and third to recognise that we can aim higher and not just tackle the economic and financial challenges that this once-in-a-lifetime generational shift poses, but also build real prosperity which is not just about money but also about social connection and the poverty of isolation – which affects people of all classes and backgrounds. To just be angry (at government) and have no solutions is divisive and can alienate those in the mainstream who might otherwise get involved and help. To turn that anger to constructive reform is to follow a noble tradition which will invariably help lead us out of the crisis which we all face – a crisis which otherwise threatens to turn into a bitter, unforgiving, bloody revolution that will once again set community against community – the opposite of what Big Society is all about.

Getting started

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has” – Margaret Mead

While I don’t agree with everything that Margaret Mead stands for and said, her phrase which I quote often sums up pretty much everything I’d like this blog to be about: how we as citizens can come together to make a difference through the Big Society, social reform in general, and – to give it some local flavour – in Shoreditch where I and my family live.

It has to be said at the start that what I write here is in a personal capacity, and these words should not be taken as either government policy in the light of my role as a Government Advisor for Big Society, nor as the definitive textbook on 21st (or 19th) century social reform in which I have had an interest that extends to before Big Society emerged as a concept and policy approach. And I’m definitely not an authority on Shoreditch which is itself a pretty unique place and an exciting and fast changing one.

But I am going to try to help make sense of what is going on in and around this phenomenon called Big Society, building on previous posts I have published on the Big Society Network’s blog. I’m also going to reflect on previous eras of reform led by such historical figures as the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who inspired me to launch several years ago an organisation called the Shaftesbury Partnership to incubate new approaches to social change. As for Shoreditch, well I and a bunch of thoughtful, committed citizens are in the process of setting up an informal network called the Shoreditch Group, with a passion around improving our neighbourhoods and tackling poverty in all its various forms locally, about which I hope to blog more later. While I am not formally or legally linked to any of these organisations anymore to ensure they maintain their independence from government and politics, I do wish them well and commend them for their work. Maybe together and through this blog and others like it we can change the world we live in.

I’m going to try and alternate between blogging about Big Society, social reform, and Shoreditch between each post. We’ll see how it goes. Next up, Navigating the Big Society.