Many have been quick to dismiss Big Society as a vague and imprecise concept, without much substance. However, having been involved in the research into it, we are finding that at its heart there are some extremely powerful ideas whose time, it would seem, increasingly has come. Here are three of the most potent we think you will hear a lot of in the coming weeks, months, and years:
1. The neighbourhood group: it has been said a number of times that there is significant research into social capital that indicates that being part of a group, whether it meets physically, online, or ideally both, is really beneficial for your health, safety, aspirations, employment, and wellbeing. The goal of Big Society is to make it easier for everyone to be an active part of an active group, especially those that comprise people from very different backgrounds, and to remove the barriers that prevent that from happening. Such groups can either be established and formal such as resident’s associations and the scouts, or informal and just for fun, like a sport’s group, and it does not matter whether they have a legal form or not. The key is that they have a certain number of members (five is good, because there is less chance of unequal factions forming), are roughly geographical, and ideally contain a mix of people. One of the benefits of the National Citizen Service programme is that teams within it are each embryonic neighbourhood groups comprised of young people from very different backgrounds. The Big Lunch has the potential each year to help create new groups following the simple act of eating together as a street, in the street. The challenge for law-makers, will be to help enact greater powers that such groups can use, so they can be more involved if they wish in being consulted, in commissioning budgets, and in taking over and/or running assets such as underutilised buildings from the state for community benefit.
2. Citizen-centred services: whether you are a local government organisation, a bank, or even a voluntary organisation, the challenge of the day is to involve citizens in the design of services (technically known as “co-creation” in business or “co-production” in policy circles) so that their communities are stronger, their families are stronger, and their wellbeing is enhanced. It is relatively easy to understand why this makes sense for local government, but not always for voluntary or business organisations. In business, the focus has been on what the consumer wants, but the “citizen” may not always at their best want what the consumer wants, for example a “consumer” might want to have lots of credit cards, which can be highly profitable for the lender but can lead to problems if the consumer has difficulties controlling their spending. The “citizen” on the other hand, might value more products that help them control their spending more, whilst building mutually supportive relationships, such as through peer-to-peer lending, credit mutuals etc. Voluntary organisations similarly may find the challenge is to make it easier for members to interact with their service beyond the stereotypical image of volunteering – having long meetings in damp halls – using technology, being more flexible and creating bite-sized interactions, and allowing volunteers to manage and convene other volunteers so they feel more ownership; at the same time the challenge again will be to avoid making members into consumers, and ensuring that long-term deep commitment and interaction is still possible, in groups as much as possible.
3. Community benefit and the “Reef”: just as we have started to adopt a mindset in much of our decision-making about ensuring that what we do does not overly harm the environment, the challenge moving forwards will be to ensure that our legislation, initiatives, and actions do not inadvertently harm communities and the ability of local groups to operative and thrive. To understand this, the analogy of a “reef” can be quite useful. The basic services that government provides to protect the most vulnerable and provide affordable provision of those things in life that would be out of the reach of most people (e.g. heart surgery), is like the sea-bed. On top of this, a mix of social enterprise, private, and public services can form the coral, filling out the gaps in society in a multiplicity of colourful ways that are sufficiently flexible to reach up above the sea-bed, but solid enough to depend upon, and which are crucially measurable. The fish are like the neighbourhood groups and citizens, who co-exist with, and some times even use the assets which the coral represent, and without which there would be no visible sense of “life”, even though it can be hard to track and measure what they do. To have Big Society, you need all three to be in place. Coral and fish without the sea-bed will just sink. A sea-bed with fish has no staying power and the latter will disperse quickly without trace. A coral with a sea-bed with no fish is dead. The challenge moving forwards, particularly in this new age of austerity, is to ensure all elements are in place, and to foster both coral and fish where they are lacking, and to bear this fragile ecology in mind in all the major decisions that leaders of society make.
Post by: Nat Wei
Tags: citizen centred services, coral, key concepts, neighbourhood groups
I think the points you make are valid but where are the details of how? Neighbourhood groups won’t just happen, they will need support to work. Some groups will just emerge but not in the numbers you expect without proper support and structure.
Local Authorities are both the key and the problem to this. They need to encourage and help these groups to grow but legislation (such as insurance/checks etc) do not help groups to do what they want to do. I could list lots of groups with great ideas who have been stopped from doing work because of this.
Thanks Nat – this provides a helpful overall perspective on Big Society: a metaphor we can reshape … supporting a rich local ecosystem for social action; a strong focus, in local groups; and where BS could help us do more for less though co-design and co-creation. What’s still unclear from this big picture is the respective roles of government policy and Big Society Network. Maybe they both work within the same metaphor/framework, with government policy promoting and supporting co-creation, and the network focussing on local groups? But then who is the guardian/steward of the local ecosystem? Professor Tom Bouvaird made a good point here http://socialreporter.com/?p=917 – that local authorities have an organising capacity no-one else has. Certainly a lot more could be done to build local alliances of all public/private/volorg/socent parties … but then, who does that? Probably beyond the scope of the new local organisers.
To change the metaphor a bit … we may not want local state landscaping, but who is the gardener?
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by David Wilcox, Paul Nash. Paul Nash said: RT @davidwilcox: .@carriebish agree on #bigsociety rebranding/co-option probs. Opps for neighbourhood co-design though? http://bit.ly/a4j4ma [...]
Thanks Nat – this provides a helpful overall perspective on Big Society: a metaphor we can reshape … supporting a rich local ecosystem for social action; a strong focus, in local groups; and where BS could help us do more for less though co-design and co-creation. What’s still unclear from this big picture is the respective roles of government policy and Big Society Network. Maybe they both work within the same metaphor/framework, with government policy promoting and supporting co-creation, and the network focussing on local groups? But then who is the guardian/steward of the local ecosystem? Professor Tom Bouvaird made a good point here http://socialreporter.com/?p=917 – that local authorities have an organising capacity no-one else has. Certainly a lot more could be done to build local alliances of all public/private/volorg/socent parties … but then, who does that? Probably beyond the scope of the new local organisers.
To change the metaphor a bit … we may not want local state landscaping, but who is the gardener?
Great to see neighbourhood groups at the heart of things, Nat. I’m currently undertaking a study for London Councils, alongside, Cisco, Cap Gemini & Experian, to get some real data on how citizen-led online spaces contribute to neighbourhoods. There should be some very useful data for the Big Society project that comes out of that. There’s more about the project at http://www.londoncouncils.gov.uk/capitalambition/projects/digitalneighbourhoods.htm
Hugh – sounds intriguing. Looking forward to hearing more when the data comes out. Nat
Amy it is a good question – who is the gardener. On one level, you could argue the garden is like a commons, which has no one gardener, but which we must all collectively tend because it is in our long term interest. On another level, the organisers do have a role in helping to encourage us all to tend it. On still another level there is a role for third parties including the state and anchor organisations such as social enterprises, clinics, schools etc) to agitate for and help stimulate gardens (or fish, or local groups) coming into being if they do not already but in a way that helps them meet their goals as well.
The key to making this work will be the interfaces between the three ‘layers’ and relationships amongst groups themselves. Shouldn’t we start by looking at the existing profile of neighbourhood groups, both locally and nationally? There’s a mass of information on this buried within the national survey of third sector organisations carried out by OCS (then OTS)last year (see http://www.nstso.com). It was done and analysed as background to national indicator 7 (‘environment for a thriving third sector’)but the profile of neighbourhood groups (as opposed to professionally-led charities) hasn’t been properly extracted – it could be. The main finding about them is how little collaborative, supportive contact there is between the groups and local public agencies. Money wasn’t the main thing – it was contact, dialogue and collaboration the groups wanted most. So a much wider, more flexible interface is needed. There’s far more potential for improving localities and saving money through collaboration than through gruops ‘taking over’ services – only a few could do that but thousands could ‘help run’, and that shouldn’t be limited to services that are neglected or threatened. All front line staff need to be able to support groups and work out creative ways of collaborating – the feasibility of this was established in the HCA ‘Empowerment Skills for All’ report last year. The key skills can be found in the community development occupation and elsewhere, but CD needs to widen its own horizons to guide this culture change. There’s more detail on this on http://www.pacesempowerment.co.uk
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