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Archives for February 2011

Community Development Principles – Frequently Flaunted?

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Julian Dobson usefully reminded me this morning;

Cracking on with ideas is good. Rooting them in community development principles and practical action is even better.

But what are these principles?  A quick bit of web research found this list from CDX in Sheffield:

Values

Community development workers support individuals, groups and organisations in this process on the basis of certain values and practice principles.

The values at the core of community development are:

  • social justice
  • self-determination
  • working and learning together
  • sustainable communities
  • participation
  • reflective practice

The practice principles that underpin these values are:

Social justice

  • respecting and valuing diversity and difference
  • challenging oppressive and discriminatory actions and attitudes
  • addressing power imbalances between individuals, within groups and society
  • committing to pursue civil and human rights for all
  • seeking and promoting policy and practices that are just and enhance equality whilst challenging those that are not

Self-determination

  • valuing the concerns or issues that communities identify as their starting points
  • raising people’s awareness of the range of choices open to them, providing opportunities for discussion of implications of options
  • promoting the view that communities do not have the right to oppress other communities
  • working with conflict within communities

Working and learning together

  • demonstrating that collective working is effective
  • supporting and developing individuals to contribute effectively to communities
  • developing a culture of informed and accountable decision making
  • ensuring all perspectives within the community are considered
  • sharing good practice in order to learn from each other

Sustainable communities

  • promoting the empowerment of individuals and communities
  • supporting communities to develop their skills to take action
  • promoting the development of autonomous and accountable structures
  • learning from experiences as a basis for change
  • promoting effective collective and collaborative working
  • using resources with respect for the environment

Participation

  • promoting the participation of individuals and communities, particularly those traditionally marginalised / excluded
  • recognising and challenging barriers to full and effective participation
  • supporting communities to gain skills to engage in participation
  • developing structures that enable communities to participate effectively
  • sharing good practice in order to learn from each other

Reflective practice

  • promoting and supporting individual and collective learning through reflection on practice
  • changing practice in response to outcomes of reflection
  • recognising the constraints and contexts within which community development takes place
  • recognising the importance of keeping others informed and updated about the wider context

This looks like a pretty good list of design criteria.

  • Anything missing?
  • Anything better?

Reading through this list and reviewing some of the current enterprise and entrepreneurship programmes being delivered in the name of community development and regeneration I am finding it hard to find (m)any that don’t significantly fail several of these tests of principles and values.

And I can’t help but think this matters…

NB: Since this piece was written a new way of codifying the values that underpin community development has been agreed:

Equality and Anti-discrimination

Community development practice challenges structural inequalities and discriminatory practices. Community development recognises that people are not the same, but they are all of equal worth and importance and therefore entitled to the same degree of respect and acknowledgement.

Social Justice

The aim of increasing social justice is an essential element of community development practice. It involves identifying and seeking to alleviate structural disadvantage and advocating strategies for overcoming exclusion, discrimination and inequality.

Collective Action

Community development practice is essentially about working with and supporting groups of people, to increase their knowledge, skills and confidence so they can analyse their situations and identify issues which can be addressed through collective action.

Community Empowerment

Community development practice seeks the empowerment of individuals and communities, through using the strengths of the community to bring about desired changes.

Working and Learning Together

Community development practice promotes a collective process which enables participants to learn from reflecting on their experiences.

A Great Big Fundamental Mistake?

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Many community groups feel the need to do something.  Preferably quickly.

To develop some kind of ‘project that the community can rally around’.  That will ‘inspire people and show them we are doing something’.

But I think this is a mistake.  A great big fundamental mistake.  For several reasons:

  • it lets many people in the community off the hook – they can, and will, wait for YOU to sort things out.  This does nothing except to create a new more local group of the anointed – they may lend a hand – but they will expect you to lead.
  • it further disempowers members of the community who see the power lying with you and your group, or as the latest in a long line of well meaning but powerless do-gooders.
  • it is disrespectful of the community – it implies that you know what is needed to sort things out.
  • it ties up resources – before you know it your are running a couple of projects and everyone is too busy to take on any more.  You start to burn out while achieving little and skeptics in the community start to say ‘I told you so’…
  • you alienate people – whatever project you choose you will make friends and enemies, while others will remain indifferent.  You choose to work on ‘the environment’ and some will think it about ‘jobs’.  You work on ‘jobs’ and others will think it is about ‘childcare’. As soon as you nail your colours to a mast, some will think they are the wrong colours on the wrong mast and just back away.

So what should we do instead?

Listen, wait, educate and facilitate.

  • Listen to what community members want to do, and then help THEM to do it.
  • Wait and wait and wait, until you find someone who REALLY wants to do something and invites you and your group to help. You might want to think about what you would need to be like to deserve such an invitation.
  • Educate.  Help local people to understand about what is happening to them and their community and why. Help them to explore the opportunities created as political, economic, social and technological change sweeps their community.
  • Facilitate. Help people to do their work.  Help them to associate and organise.  Help them to build their power and to work on what matters most to them.  Build extensive networks of people who know how to help.  The Zen of facilitation means that you can maintain many projects without burning out.

Fairness and equality cannot drive development…

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Community development cannot be driven by values such as ‘fairness’ or ‘equality’.  However much we might want it to be.

If it were, then when we a community reached ‘the average’ all development would have to stop.  Otherwise continued progress would only serve to introduce new inequalities.  Thankfully this is not how society works.

Sustained development is driven by people in the community who just care about making things better. About progress.  And usually not progress for something nebulous called ‘the community’ (unless they are professional community developers), and certainly not progress for Government agendas such as ‘the economy’, ‘Big Society’, or ‘making democracy work’ but for themselves and their loved ones.

Community and development emerge as these caring people learn to associate, cooperate and organise in pursuit of what matters to them.

Discuss.

Developing Enterprising Artists Using Open Space

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Yesterday I was invited to help Axis and the ever wonderful Culture Vulture to run a ‘Cultural Conversation’ to help a group of around 60 artists, project managers, collectors and gallery managers to explore the role of social media in supporting their work.  The group included some social media users and ‘experts’ (I use that word cautiously) and one or two technical types.  Peopl trsavelled from all over the north of England to take part and the venue at Project Space Leeds was rammed!

Instead of using the default setting of finding some experts to explain it all to the numpties we went with an open space meeting.  In this format groups of people meet to explore as peers the issues and topics they wish to explore.  They set the agenda, in real time on the day, and learn by exchanging experiences, insights and challenges.  They talk to each other, like human beings, in conversations.

In under four hours the group of 60 were each able to attend 4 conversations chosen from a schedule of 18 or so.  The topics included:

  • ‘What is Twitter and How Do I Use It’
  • Social Media Dialogue as Artwork’
  • I am Completely Overwhelmed! Where Do I Start?
  • Using Social Media for Critique

and many more.

Despite the fact that there are no experts holding forth, no lectures and no exhibitions the feedback from those who attended was excellent.  They enjoyed the process, they learned a lot, and most (perhaps all?) went away enthused about increasing or changing the way they use social media either to produce or attract and audience to their work.

This kind of open space conversation that builds relationships amongst participants and fosters enquiry and peer learning, rather than sitting passively while an expert holds forth, seem to me to be consistently effective ways to both build the social capital that forms the bedrock of an enterprising community and enable them to access the insights that they need to know, right now.  Indeed as the afternoon wore on a few new conversations were added as people though ‘Right, know I need to find out about….’

60 people smiling, laughing, talking, challenging, enquiring and advocating.  In short being human and exploring the implications of social media for something that they love.

A low cost, high value and extremely productive contribution to the enterprising ecosystem.  At a time when we need to be creating more value for less cash I can’t help that the world of enterprise development needs to embrace this type of peer to peer learning event.  We not be able to do much to improve the transport infrastructure in the city without a great big dollop of cash from government, but we can surely improve the enterprising infrastructure for next to nothing!

Some more thoughts were captured on the day in this audioboo – Why Open Space Works for Artists