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Putting Power in the Hands of Individuals and Communities…

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We agreed that…our government’s purpose is to make two major shifts in our political and national life:

The first is a radical redistribution of power from government to communities and people, to reverse decades of over-centralisation. Almost all our plans involve giving individuals, families and communities more control over their lives – whether that’s through opening new schools, giving locally elected councillors a say over local NHS services or holding local police to account.

Clegg and Cameron’s Letter to MPs of the Coalition Government

At first glance this is a gift for those of us who have advocated the potential of individuals and communities to shape their own destiny.  But I think it shows a lack of understanding about how such processes can work.

Communities and individuals are being offered power to do the work that some aspect of the state had previously done.  They are being pointed at opportunities identified by the powerful where they maybe allowed to play a part.   In the examples cited above to manage schools, health and policing.  Perhaps also to buy the local pub and turn it into a social enterprise or cooperative.  Or to take over an old school or library and turn it into a community asset.

All very laudable at first glance.

But there is no real shift  of power going on here.  Individuals and communities are being invited to play a larger part in delivering the strategies of the powerful.  There seems to be little or no sign of individuals and communities being allowed to set their own development agendas, to build their power to tackle the issues that really impact on their lives.   There is little evidence of real self-determination being encouraged, just more gentle manipulation to ‘good folk’ to do their bit in times of austerity.

And much of this will play well to middle Britain and its obsessions with schooling, policing and the delivery of healthcare.

But how will it play out in some of our poorest communities?  What will the impact of this ‘radical redistribution of power’ be on them?

My best guess is that for many the impact will be detrimental, unless we find a way to really engage them as individuals and communities in working on their agenda rather than on the agenda of the state.  Doing things that will make a real difference in their lives and the lives of their loved ones.

When we tell people how we wish them to participate in transforming their own worlds we can be sure that either:

  • we are not really sincere in our wishes for any such transformation, or
  • while we do wish for a radical transformation we do not understand the processes through which it might be achieved.

Perhaps it is time for Cameron and Clegg to read a little more Paulo Friere to go with their Philip Blond?

There is the world of difference between ‘putting power in the hands of individuals and communities’ and helping people to develop their power to shape their lives.

Apartheid in Leeds?

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Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning “separateness”.  And I see a surfeit of ‘apartheid’ in development processes in our city.

Let’s look at the ‘Vision for Leeds’.  In its official version I believe this is a statutory requirement for the council to produce.  It has a website and a series of workshops each aimed at a different sector.  Cultural types are kept apart from third sector types.  Business people have their own workshop provision.   But there is also an ‘unofficial’ vision being developed by the very wonderful ‘Together for Peace’ crew.  Again I was invited to a workshop for ‘business people’.

We have myriads of other networks in Leeds. We have them for start-up entrepreneurs; for artists and cultural types; we have them for financiers and digital creatives.  We have them for hi-tech businesses and university spin-offs.  We have them for community development workers and just about every niche you can imagine.

But they nearly all require you to adopt a label, and nearly all separate you from others who don’t.  Trying to find a truly diverse network is not easy.

Now in many ways this is not a problem.  If I want to join a network to explore the latest development in double glazing then a network for double glazing specialists hits the nail on the head.

However if I want to search for ways to make progress on the problems and  opportunities facing a complex system like the City of Leeds then I had better make sure the groups I work with contain enough diversity.  That, as the systems thinkers say, we have the ‘whole system in the room’.    The beauty of large group methodologies is not that they give us powerful ways to work with large groups – but that they give us powerful ways to work with the diversity that is necessary if we are to find whole system approaches to complex challenges.  When we practice apartheid we chop the large group methodologies off at the knees.  They become nice processes with weak outcomes.

We also fragment what should be whole.  So we have a group of ‘business people’ looking at ‘the economy’.  We have a group of ‘artists’ looking at ‘culture’.  And we have the third sector looking at ‘Big Society’.  These are all facets of the same problem and we are unlikely to come up with useful interventions by consulting in isolation and hoping that we can stitch things back together later in the process.

So next time how about doing the work to get a really diverse group in the room and who knows what new ideas we might be able to spark and what new relationships we might be able to develop.

What do you think?  Have I exaggerated the problem?

Or might it be that an unconscious level of apartheid could be a major barrier to real progress in the City?

Why we shouldn’t worry about LEPS

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As someone who remembers the Small Firms Service, Manpower Services Commission, The Training Agency, TECS, Business Links and the establishment of RDAs, I refuse to be overly exercised by the development of Local Economic Partnerships.

We know that they will have significantly reduced budgets.  We know that they will be led by some concoction of ‘private’ and ‘public’ sector with a seasoning of social enterprise for good measure.

We can be relatively sure that they will have considerable bureaucratic overheads – necessary to ensure openness, accountability and probity and that they will tie themselves up in the same debates about economic development policy that have raged with sterility for decades; picking winners, encouraging start-ups, clusters, sectors, creative classes, beautification, yada, yada, yada.

We know that they will be very heavily influenced by professions allied to construction and engineering. Planners, place-makers, architects, developers who can throw big money at making sure they retain the lion’s share of public spending even as the spending pie shrinks.  One just needs to look at the key ‘Partners’of the currentRegeneration and Renewal National Summit to see the evidence.

We can also be sure that they will embrace a strategic, top down approach to economic development that pretends that economic development happens in a bubble that is disconnected from cultural and social development.  No doubt these too will get their own shrivelled strategic bodies.  The paradigm of economic growth as an unmitigated good will hold sway in the strange world of economic development.  Ideas of sustainability and steady state will not be seriously entertained (unless of course they paradoxically provide opportunities for growth).  Visions will be developed by the anointed, and most of us will see the world of economic development at best, ‘through a glass darkly’.

We must choose our engagements with the strategists, and the terms of our engagement very carefully.  We are currently paying the price for allowing our strategies to be far too dependent on continued and unsustainable state funding.  We must make sure that we don’t give the state such power and control over our futures again.  Over-reliance on the state has proven to be just ‘bad strategy’  We must not sell ourselves to the funders while we call ourselves community development workers – unless they fully embrace the principles of community led regeneration – whether they are convenient to the politicians and bureaucrats or not.

Facilitation is unlikely to get a look in.  Whole person approaches will be ignored (economic development will continue to speak to homo econimicus), co-creation is as close as we will get to responsiveness and bottom-up. And let’s be clear, co-creation as conceived by the state is nowhere near responsive and bottom up.  It still asks ‘how do we engage people in the agenda of the state’ and not ‘how do we engage the state in the agendas of the people’.  For me this is the ultimate deceit that lies at the heart of ‘Big Society’ and that needs to be carefully and thoroughly outed.

We can also be sure that those who actually live in the communities and give their time and skills to help make things better will be expected to do so for free as budgets for community development shrink and are increasingly targeted at problems (obesity, crime, drugs etc) that see humans as essentially degenerate instead of at the development of aspiration, hopes and dreams which see people as essentially good and progressive.

So I refuse to be exercised.  LEPs will evolve.  They will be largely ineffective in spite of the fact that they will be stuffed to the ginnels with good, committed, well meaning people.  And in a decade they will evolve again.  The sign-makers, website developers and letterhead printers will rub their hands with glee.

I will put my energies into supporting bottom up, responsive approaches that honour peoples humanity, that build social capital, that value the contributions of all, regardless of sector, ambition or potential.  And I will keep looking for genuinely innovative approaches to the thorny question of progress?

In practice this means helping others to develop initiatives like Bettkultcha, Cultural Conversations, TEDx Leeds etc (we are blessed with a resurgence of such civic endeavour in Leeds) that holds real promise to nurture something very exciting.

But I will also endeavour to provide some contributions of my own.  For me this means trying to develop Progress School and Innovation Lab as places to foster radical personal and organisational transformation.

And just perhaps we might be able to persuade those in authority to trust us, to support us, to help us.

Who knows?

The Great Reset – Lessons for Leeds?

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The most successful examples…result not from top-down policies imposed by local governments but from organic, bottom-up, community based efforts.  While…government and business leaders pressed for big government solutions – new stadiums and convention centres – the city’s real turnaround was driven by community groups and citizen-led initiatives.  Community groups, local foundations and non-profits – not city hall or business led economic development groups – drove…transformation, playing a key role in stabilising and strengthening neighbourhoods…Many of…(the) best neighbourhoods…are ones that were somehow spared from the wrath of urban renewal…

Richard Florida – The Great Reset

Talking about the transformation of Pittsburgh.

It is not about getting citizen led groups to do the work of the state – which seems to be the idea behind BIG Society – but about engaging the state in the work of the citizens.  Making a transition as far as possible from authority towards enabler.

This requires community development workers to not be ‘bought’ by the state to foist policy on neighbourhoods.  To recognise that their role is to facilitate enterprising communities and not to be an extension of the state with a smiling face.

Sounds reasonable?  The get involved with Progress School and/or Innovation Lab.

Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change

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I first became aware of Adam Kahane when I read ‘Solving Tough Problems. An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities‘, and Mike Love from T4P recently recommended me his new book Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change which he talks about in this film.

Would seem essential reading for community development professionals and anyone interested in developing potential.