realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

Archives for August 2011

Time to declare our interdependence?

August 31, 2011 by admin

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQmoRIVJnzQ]

This looks interesting!

Filed Under: Community, Leadership Tagged With: Aspirations, community, community development, engagement, Leadership, neighbourliness, Regeneration, regeneration, self interest, Values

Lost Contact with the Land?

August 30, 2011 by admin

[We] have ‘forgotten’ that the economy and all its works is a subset and dependent upon the wider ecosystem. . . Modern citizens have not only lost contact with the land, and their sense of embeddedness in the land, but at the same time they have lost those elemental social forms of more or less intimate and relatively transparent social relations. Thus a basic aim of bioregionalism is to get people back in touch with the land, and constitutive of that process is the recreation of community in a strong sense.

Barry, J. (1999), Environment and Social Theory (London: Routledge)

Filed Under: Community

Poverty in Leeds

August 30, 2011 by admin

How does poverty play out in the economic powerhouse of Yorkshire, the retail and tourist success story, the regenerated and rebuilt city, that is Leeds?

Well, here are some figures, collated by the Leeds Initiative and published on their website.

  • In Leeds there are 29,695 children aged under 16 who are living in poverty – 22.9% of all children in this age range
  • There are 33,295 dependent children aged under 20 who are living in poverty (22.1% of the children / young people in this age range)

33000 children, 1 in 5 of our children, living in poverty.

Poverty is not distributed evenly across the City, and these averages hide pockets of child poverty that are as high as anywhere in the UK.

On October 14th we are holding an Innovation Lab where the people of Leeds are invited to come and think about how poverty works in the city and what we can do to disrupt it, personally and collectively.  We would love for you to join us….http://povertyinleeds.eventbrite.com/

Filed Under: Community, Leadership Tagged With: community, community development, economics, Leadership, Leeds, poorkids, Poverty, poverty, Regeneration, regeneration

Are We A Crisis Management Society?

August 17, 2011 by admin

We are a crisis management society, a society that congratulates itself for solving problems that, in its ineptitude, it has created –

“Over the last two decades, our educational philosophy at every level has been more and more dominated by an instrumentalist model; less and less concerned with a building of virtue, character and citizenship – ‘civic excellence’ as we might say. And a good educational system in a healthy society is one that builds character, that builds virtue.

“Character involves … a deepened sense of empathy with others, a deepened sense of our involvement together in a social project in which we all have to participate.”

So says the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

I agree, we are a crisis management society.  Essentially laissez-faire in our approach.  We prefer to leave well alone until there is a clear deviation from the norm.  A banking crisis, a riot, a rotten press, an even more rotten copper or three or a disappointing world cup. Then like an angry manager we seek out someone or something to blame and unleash our fury in an attempt to get things ‘back to normal’.

Except, back to normal is back to being a crisis management society…

The Archbishop’s analysis, that blames the education system for a failure to instill a particular form of morality and character, strikes me as an attempt to further promote compliance and acceptance. To reset the threshold at which a crisis might be sparked just that little bit higher.   It strikes me as yet another attempt by a laissez faire manager to postpone the next crisis.  It also implies that the moral crisis in our society lies exclusively with those that take to the streets in order to threaten our communities rather than those that take to the boardrooms and the cabinet tables.

My analysis is a little different.  People need to feel a degree of respect, dignity and power in their lives.  They will do whatever it takes.  They will organise if that helps, gangs, co-ops, social enterprises, lottery syndicates.

We need to stop being so laissez faire and make some major changes to ensure that access to respect, dignity and power is made much more accessible to many more people.  We have to help people to find the keys to their preferred kingdoms.  I suspect that our broken society will then pretty soon find ways to mend itself.

Because it is not so much broken as abused.

Filed Under: Community

A thought provoking little video from the BBC

August 10, 2011 by admin

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/26019369]

Filed Under: Community Tagged With: community, Culture, inequality, Power, self interest

  • 1
  • 2
  • Next Page »

Recent Posts

  • Hello world!
  • The Challenges of ‘Engaging Community Leaders’
  • Are rich people less honest?
  • 121s – The single most effective tool for improving performance at work?
  • Wendell Berry’s Plan to Save the World

Recent Comments

  • A WordPress Commenter on Hello world!
  • charles hapazari on Top Down: Bottom Up
  • Marvina Babs-Apata on The Challenges of ‘Engaging Community Leaders’
  • Steve Hoey on The Challenges of ‘Engaging Community Leaders’
  • Philippa on An imaginary open letter: To those who would ‘engage’ us…

Archives

  • November 2018
  • March 2014
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • August 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007

Categories

  • Community
  • Development
  • enterprise
  • entrepreneurship
  • Leadership
  • management
  • Progress School
  • Results Factory
  • Training
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org

Copyright © 2023 · Enterprise Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in