The Big Society

Social Enterprises Are The Renewables of Big Society

September 1st, 2010

I was invited on Radio 4’s Today programme the other day to talk a bit more about the idea of Peak State, which I blogged about here first. They insisted on calling it a theory, when really it’s a bit of talking aloud from a man with a computer and an internet connection. Because I’m thinking I could stretch it out to a pamphlet (Marx had one of those didn’t he?), and because there were a couple of things that I’d have like to have said that I never got the chance to, if I may, I’d like to pick up the thread a bit again.

I won’t go over the whole analogy again, you can listen to it here, or read about it here. The basic idea is that it’s not that the State is dead / bad / useless, it’s that in some areas it’s not the most efficient way to deliver services. Going forwards, similar to how we’re looking at a mixed energy future, I’d suggest we’re looking at a mixed services future, where the State is a smaller – but still big – part of a greater variety of providers.

The conversation on the radio kind of ended there, just when it got interesting, because this suggests a number of things.

One, it paints a picture of what the future could look like. The lovely Anna Pearson suggested to me that one possible future in energy is giant wind farms / tidal wave projects, which take huge investment to set up and are funded at scale; alongside small solar panels on individual neighbourhood roofs, both initiatives working in tandem for the greater good. I think this paints a useful image of large-scale investment, alongside greater local responsibility at a grassroots level.

Secondly (and the key thing that I didn’t get to say), social enterprises, the third sector, the voluntary sector, whatever you want to call it, these are the renewables of the Big Society. Like renewables, they could be a cheaper, better and more sustainable source of literally, boundless energy. As many people have pointed out, this isn’t a new phenomena, communities have been supporting one another since time immemorial. For example, estimates suggest as much as 70% of social care is provided informally by friends, families and peers. Except now it’s called Big Society.

It’s interesting to note that this energy already exists, but like renewables, for it to be mainstreamed, so that it is in a position to do some of the heavy-lifting of public service delivery, it needs supporting. Investment in renewables doubled from 2006 to 2008 to $120bn / yr, and is increasing year on year. As a result, only now are we even able to imagine a world where oil is not the sole and dominant source of energy. Likewise, if we want to ‘wean’ ourselves off the State, then it feels like we need to create the room to nurture and provide the investment for social enterprises, the renewables of the Big Society.

Post by Adil Abrar

Tags: peak state, renewables, socent
Posted in Point of view | 9 Comments »

Making sense of Big Society

September 1st, 2010

There’s a lot going on in different places tagged Big Society, but as yet no clear story, so over the past week I’ve written a number of posts which I hope will help people make sense of the activity.
They reflect my personal perspective, so I’ve posted them to my socialreporter blog. The latest one – Evolving Big Society – provides a summary and the suggestion that we need to evolve a way of helping join up the many existing networks in the field with new initiatives that are emerging.
Steve Moore and Lucy Windmill recently organised an event, hosted by Communities and Local Government, which hopefully started to do that. It was mainly a briefing on the series of events planned around the country by Big Society Network, starting in Stockport on September 9.
However, many of those present were interested in keeping the conversation and networking going, and a smaller group were interested in the role of social technology in Big Society – so I’ve set up a space here on the Social by Social site. Anyone interested is welcome to join.
As Piotr mentioned in an earlier post, the Network is planning a new site, which should provide more scope for making sense and joining up. However, the essence of networks and networking is that activity occurs in many different places, so the site won’t attempt to be a one-stop-shop.
At present the best way to follow Big Society online is through Twitter. Even if you don’t have an account, you can see the stream of tweets here, tagged #bigsociety. I’m looking into better ways of aggregating and curating online content from all over the place, and if that’s also your interest, do please get in touch.
David Wilcox
david@socialreporter.com
@davidwilcox
BSN social reporter

Posted in Point of view | 8 Comments »

New logo and more to come

August 4th, 2010

You may have (or, more likely, didn’t) noticed a fresh lick of paint on our website logo, which has gone from “The Big Society” to “Big Society Network”. It is the first of a few tweaks we’re hoping to make to the site over the coming weeks and months. We’ll also be looking to put up some more details about the ideas and projects we are exploring, such as creating a ’social app store’ (an initial discussion of which can be seen here).

So please throw in any suggestions for how we should redesign this website. For example, one idea we’ve been considering is creating a new space that recognises and reposts Big Society conversations / comments made elsewhere — a sort of Big Society Conversation Central — which will complement the Social Store (which rather than covering big society discussions, spotlights specific exciting examples of big society in action).

-Piotr

Posted in Uncategorized | 16 Comments »

Big Society in the North lifts off

July 30th, 2010

The Big Society in the North launch this week – pre-viewed here – was a great demonstration of the potential for mixing expertise in community development, social enterprise and social media to the benefit of local communities. There was also thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion of the wider issues raised by the Big Society idea, as you can see from the videos I shot.

I was personally delighted to find support for the idea of a Social App Store, and the possibility of practical testing of tools for social action in local communities. I’ve blogged a full report here on socialreporter.com. I’ve written there on the Social App Store:

Broadly the idea is that there’s decades of expertise in local social action and community development, so let’s not re-invent the wheel. On the other hand, it is very scattered, because funding regimes and organisations’ natural self-promotion does not encourage easy navigation and linking of resources. Those in the main networks will happily swap news of the latest reports, toolkits or smart tools … but then walk into any local meeting in government, community or voluntary sector and there’s maybe 10 percent acquaintance of key resources across the fields. That drops to near zero for any new neighbourhood activist. Just Googling gives you a bewildering mass of resources, and the best stuff may not be online anyway. Even if you find what you are looking for, it may not be in a form that is easily digested and used. There’s too often more thought for the funder than the customer.
So – how could we find or develop useful stuff that’s as easy to use as a mobile phone app, downloaded from the Apple store or Android market?
These need not be tech. One of my favourite examples of a really simple app is the one-page waiver proposed by the National Association for Neighbourhood Management, enabling you to cut the grass on publicly-owned land. John Popham found some great ideas when he visited one of the Big Society vanguard areas, Eden District. Car sharing, village welcome packs, planning applications online, connecting second home owners, using the schools’ IT network.
The idea of the store is that it will be a market place, and so success will depend partly on how it is framed (who manages the space) and who will pitch up with some goodies. (I’ve had some terrific inspiration from Anne McCrossan of Visceral Business on how we might blend experience from retail, social media and open business approaches … more on that another time).
On the night in Sheffield I was delighted that marketing and social media specialist Clare Mackenzie was keen to pull together the discussion and report back, as you can see above.
I’m responsible for taking the store idea forward for Big Society Network, and I’m excited by the possibility of collaboration with Clare, John and other talented and enthusiastic people I met in Sheffield (and then with others).
Meanwhile back in London we’ve been thinking how best to make the store idea real, and decided that a first step is to create a simple showcase of the sort of apps we are talking about. I say create, but in the spirit of open co-design and co-production it will be more a matter of seeding the showcase and then inviting people to put up other ideas. That will also help us think through what might be an app and what not, and who might decide. We’ll need a core group of collaborators and ways of ensuring that the apps are what people really need, not just what we want to put in a store. Sheffield seems like a great place to start with that. (… awaiting early challenge from Birmingham:-)
If you want to keep in touch, I’ll keep reporting back on SocialbySocial, where you can also join in discussion. I’m also in discussion with one network who has the sort of site we might be able to semi-clone for the showcase and more structured discussions. If someone has done it already, let’s see if we can borrow.

Here’s other links I referenced in my post.

Earlier posts on Big Society Network
Looking North for Big Society realities
Big Society in the North event Amplified
Explorations in no-man’s-land: Julian Dobson
Videos from BSitNorth event
Big Society in the North – first event: Emma Lees CDX
Big Society in the North : John Popham
Big Society launches in the North: Inside the M60 report
big society, little hope?: Saul Cozens
BSitNorth on Twitter
Discussions about the store at SocialbySocial
Building the Big Social Apps Store – report of July 6 BSN Open Night

Posted in Big Society in the North, SocialAppStore | 8 Comments »

Looking North for Big Society realities

July 27th, 2010

Today will be the occasion when the realities of Big Society in local areas really come through, with the launch meeting of Big Society in the North. I’m off to Sheffied with Steve Moore and others from our team with high hopes for collaboration on the Big Society Store and other ideas – but mostly to listen and learn.
Too much discussion so far has been around centrally-developed policies … which is why Julian Dobson, John Popham and others set up the northern network. This stuff is too important to be left to London – take up the do-it-yourself invitation and get started.
John has provided an excellent taster with a report yesterday from the district of Eden in Cumbria, one of four chosen as “vanguard” areas. John is a tech guy, so apart from wanting to anticipate issues that might come up today, he aimed to:

… explore the potential for using technology and social media to connect community initiatives up in the area, to amplify their work, to engage new people in their activities, and to connect them with best practice and avoid re-inventing wheels.

He wasn’t disappointed, reporting:

Some of the other initiatives which were explored in discussion that might be under-pinned by technology to make the Big Society work in the area included:

Car Sharing Scheme – the sparse nature of public transport forces people to rely on the car, but some people just don’t own a vehicle. A central point for requesting and offering lifts might help many people who are struggling to get around;

Village “Welcome Packs” online guides to the local area for people moving in, perhaps complemented by printed packs pushed through the door. (This might be a “Welcome to Your Square Mile” for the Big Society);

Using Social Networking to connect Second Home Owners into local communities. Many don’t have the time to build up local connections, but they might have skills they are prepared to use to help the local community while they are in its midst;

Putting Planning Applications online;

Using the Schools’ IT network and connectivity to connect local residents to broadband

I’m also really interested in this sort of tech-enabled project, and these look like the sort of “Social Apps” that might be featured in the Big Society Store (early thoughts here). Of course, it’s up to the people of Eden how much they want to share … and where they do it … but from past experience of the way things work in the north I’m sure we’ll see a strong willingness to work together.
A team from Amplified will be at the event to do some live blogging – link to follow – and I’ll be reporting back with some video too.

David Wilcox

Posted in Big Society in the North, The Big Society in Action | 8 Comments »

Our House

July 21st, 2010

I found this awesome project from Kent County Council. I’m not sure if it’s strictly Big Society, but it’s about designing different types of public services, it’s about putting people at the heart of the system and it’s about saving the State money, all of which seems a pretty good definition of what the Big Society should be about. Plus, it’s something concrete that people have done and measured, which I felt was better than more pontificating.

Anyway, the premise is simple. Young people don’t get excited by public health messages or services. They just don’t. If your job is to get young people to eat less, drink less, get high less and copulate less, my advice would be to avoid payment by results. Young people are as adept at screening out health messages, as they are at texting really really quick. And I don’t remember many of my friends when I was a wee lad, attending smoking cessation workshops.

House turns service delivery on its head. It put people and what they want first. Over a number of weeks, the Council and its partners took over abandoned high street shops, kitted them out to look like er, houses, and then let the young people wander in, play on the dance machine, sit on the sofa, hang out with their friends, take part in music workshops, and if they want, and only if they want, strike up conversations with various folk from the PCT, listen in on talks about alcohol or drugs, and sign up for sexual health tests. Even as I write that, it sounds like there were creepy adults hanging around, but judging by the results, the project was a huge success. 1200 young people used sexual health services. 1700 listened to a talk on drugs and alcohol. And the vast majority said the space had affected a positive change in their lifestyle. All for a lot less investment than a traditional radio advertising campaign.

Bringing this back to the Big Society, there seem to be a few lessons here:

1) House worked because it was ‘their’ space. The young people felt ownership of it. There were no uniforms. No local NHS or Kent County Council signage. no rubbish posters. It was a neutral space. This sense of ownership feels really important if we are going to devolve responsibility to communities. Whether it be a school, a care home, a leisure space, if we want people to embrace services in different ways, it needs to feel like it’s theirs.

2) House was designed with young people. Not for young people. Or by young people. An ad agency was involved. Various service professionals were involved. And so were the user groups. The insight came from young people, but the idea came from outside traditional sources. But then it was developed further with young people again. This principle of co-design seems fairly important, whether we’re designing public health services, or young offending services.

3) House avoided the temptation of being a one-stop-shop or a hub for health services. In fact, the services were incidental to the thing that people wanted – which was a space for them and their friends. I think this is crucial. Most people don’t spend their times thinking about public services, nevermind wanting to re-design them, co-create them, co-produce them or co-whatever this month’s buzzword is. They want to do simple things. Like be with their friends. When it comes to designing the Big Society, I think it’s worth remembering this common sense principle. Or, you could call it a selfish gene. Services should fit around our lives, rather than we have to fit them around ours.

4) House if nothing else, was positive. So much of service delivery is so serious (and maybe i’m being a bit flippant here), but House just feels like a good thing to do. I bet it was seen as enormously risky at the time. And I’ve read the evaluation and there were things that could have worked better. But the fact remains, it reached a hard to reach audience, it got real impacts in terms of public health awareness, and it did it at a fraction of the cost of traditional outreach. And that’s because it is clever. It is simple. And it’s good. In the wholesome sense. And I reckon if you do things that are well, good, then people respond in good ways.

5) A dance machine. Everyone loves dance machines. The Big Society needs more dance machines.

If you want to find out more about this amazing project, contact the public health team at Kent County Council.

Post by Adil Abrar

Tags: house, kent, young people
Posted in The Big Society in Action | 8 Comments »

The dangers of grass(roots)

July 20th, 2010

Update 26/07/10: Lots of interesting comments have come in on the back of this. Ben Lee and John Houghton from the National Association of Neighbourhood Management have drafted a waiver form that could potentially be a way of mitigating the health & safety factor. If there are any legal eagles reading this do take a look and let them know what you think.

Also worth checking out in the comments is a link to the book Guerilla Gardening which may provide some inspiration for people who are keen to do something about the greenery in their local area.

There’s a classic story in The Telegraph today about a council inhibiting local people from taking responsibility for their own area.

Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council decided to stop cutting grass on sloping banks. Whether this was because of cost or risk is not clear, but either way local residents were more than happy to take it upon themselves to make sure the verges were cut.

350 people living near one street petitioned for the services to resume. Failing that, they offered to either do it themselves, or even to chip in for a contractor to do it. But the Borough Council scared them off from taking the initiative in this way because of perceived dangers involved in cutting the grass.

To some extent it’s a story about our over-zealous health & safety culture, but it’s also about public sector culture. What strikes me most about this story is the tone of the Council spokesman quoted in the story:

“Some of these banks can be quite steep and we don’t want 90-year-old men getting their lawnmowers out to cut the grass in case they seriously hurt themselves.

…It’s not like we can have just any old member of the public doing it with a Flymo. If somebody injured themselves, who would be liable then? We don’t want people mowing these banks and that’s the end of the matter.”

I wouldn’t really have a problem with the Council welcoming the civic-mindedness of the residents but regrettably continuing to recommend against cutting the grass, however spurious the health & safety grounds. What I do have a problem with is the sniffy “can’t do” attitude towards “non-professional” civic action that this particular spokesman evidently struggled to conceal.

Post by – Samuel Coates

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments »

Big Society in the North

July 16th, 2010

The Big Society Network has a simple bio for its Twitter account: ”We must be the change we want to see in the world”. This famous Gandhi quote sums up the idea of the Big Society as well as any – and it should be applied to the way the Big Society Network itself operates.

The BSN’s first Open Night recently was a case in point. Instead of just turning up and being talked to, attendees spent almost the entire evening in self-organised groups discussing the aspects of Big Society that they were most interested in, and feeding their conclusions back to the rest of the room.

Another example is the sprouting of a Big Society offshoot in the North. Julian Dobson explains the thinking behind it on his blog:

“The Big Society isn’t anyone’s copyright or trademark. It is what we make of it. And we want to make something of it that isn’t dependent on or answerable to London government or London networks, but can engage in a dialogue of equals.

And it’s a bit like the Big Issue in the North: it’s about sharing real people’s stories, and it will rely entirely on generosity and goodwill. [..] It will be a forum and opportunity for people to share what’s happening, and to network the networks – voluntary, citizen-led, private or public.”

The group isn’t formally linked to the BSN, but as a Liverpudlian I can certainly see the value in making sure that the Big Society conversation isn’t too London-centric. You can follow the conversation around Big Society in the North on their discussion forum, and Twitter feed.

If it sounds like something you’ll be interested in, there’s an informal planning event in Sheffield on July 27th. Places are going very rapidly - but if you click here you can still register.

Post by – Samuel Coates

Posted in Uncategorized | 23 Comments »

BSN Update!

July 15th, 2010

Lots of conversations are underway, and I wanted to put up a quick update on what is happening with the Network. As a new organisation that only recently kicked off – didn’t really get started until a few weeks ago – we’re still putting together some of the basics, and starting to reach out to people more widely.

We had an Open Space event in London a couple weeks ago (http://socialreporter.com/?p=951), which was a great way to start a dozen conversations, and another intro event yesterday (see http://www.thebigsociety.co.uk/share.html). And we’ll be doing a town hall tour in the Autumn – details are still being worked out, but will be posted here – over the course of which we will be developing and fleshing out our projects.

It’s going to be a long-term project, and the Network will evolve its role over time. For summer we’ll continue to informally gather ideas, host conversations here and on by aggregating others on BSN Open (http://bsnopen.wikispaces.com/), and put together our broader tour for the Autumn. So, please stick with us, send comments, criticisms and suggestions, and we’ll listen.

Thanks!

-Piotr Brzezinski on behalf of the Big Society Network.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »