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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?

Cameron as PM on Community…

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Some extracts from David Cameron’s first speech that seem relevant to the community development sector.  There is much here to hold him to.  Emphases are mine!

One of the tasks that we clearly have is to rebuild trust in our political system…it’s about making sure people are in control and that the politicians are always their servants and never their masters.

Real change is not what government can do on its own. Real change is when everyone pulls together, comes together, works together, when we all exercise our responsibilities to ourselves, to our families, to our communities and to others.

And I want to help build a more responsible society here in Britain, one where we don’t just ask ‘what are my entitlements?’ but ‘what are my responsibilities?’. One where we don’t just ask ‘what am I owed?’ but more ‘what can I give?’.   And a guide for that society, that those who can, should, and those who can’t, we will always help.

I want to make sure that my government always looks after the elderly, the frail, the poorest in our country.

Above all it will be a government that will be built on some clear values — values of freedom, values of fairness, and values of responsibility.

I want us to build an economy that rewards work, I want us to build a society with stronger families and stronger communities, and I want a political system that people can trust and look up to once again.

“About making sure the people are in control and that politicians are always their servants.”  Perhaps time for a serious consideration of person centred and responsive methodologies instead of policy centred and strategic.  Be interesting to see what happens to Communities and Local Government under the new coalition.

Cameron’s full speech is reported here.

Real Change, Grass Roots, Bottom Up….

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“I learned as a community organiser in Chicago, real change comes from the bottom up, the grass roots, starting with the dreams and passions of individuals serving their communities.” – Barack Obama – Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship 2010

We know this as community development practitioners.

Our funders know it too.

So why do we still so often corrupt the community development process in order to impose the strategic objectives of our planners and policy makers on the grass roots?  Just to pay the mortgage?

In the second city of the Empire
Mother Glasgow watches all her weans
Trying hard to feed her little starlings
Unconsciously she clips their little wings

Are we still clipping wings….?

Community Engagement – Getting to the Heart of the Matter

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This site from Australia shows how a council is using online forums to engage with at least some of their constituents on a range of matters including:

  • plans for varying local rates
  • council strategy for trees and
  • the development of community and cultural facilities

This particular council has a resident population of around 74 000 and participation on the forums is relatively low.  Unsurprisingly perhaps, rate variations has got by far the most traffic almost certainly because of its direct impact on the self interest of local people.

There is no doubt that the forums have surfaced a wide range of opinions that may not otherwise have been heard – and some clearly offer clues to the council on areas where its own performance may benefit from a review.  The forums provide an interesting case study in the potential and limitations of such online engagement tools for informing decision making and policy.

However the point I wish to make is not about the medium of engagement (in this case online) but on the content of engagement.  In this case we have rates, trees, community and cultural facilities, a planning application and integrated planning strategy as the topics for engagement.

My question is this.

Of the 74 000 residents of this council, how many have their own progress genuinely held in check by any of these issues?

How many people cannot make progress in their own lives until the council sorts out its strategy on trees? Or integrated planning?  Or even business rates?

The answer is very few.  In most cases perhaps none.  These are examples of what I call lowest common denominator issues.  Most people will agree that they matter and need thinking about.   They are also impersonal enough to be safe topics for discussion.  But for next to nobody will they be the really critical issues that hold back individual talent or community potential.

Many of those 74 000 people will have ideas about how they could make a better life for themselves, their families and the community.  And most of them will have a pretty good idea about what is stopping them.  Instead of engaging local people in the somewhat ‘removed’ priorities of the council, the council could design engagement processes that enable people to engage with each other, the council and other stakeholders, in their real priorities for making a better life.  To uncover the real issues that act as barriers to real people making progress in real lives.

If people are to be open and honest about what is stopping them from making progress we need to have a relationship with them that is trusted, confidential, competent and compassionate.  I suspect that such relationships cannot generally develop entirely online.  That they still demand an element of face to face conversation.  That they will need real people working in the community with good engagement and development skills.  They may also need additional reserves of social capital, community networks and ‘brains trusts’ that can be accessed to provide support and expertise as and when it is needed.

Until we start to engage large numbers of individuals and groups on the real issues that they feel are preventing them from pursuing their aspirations then we will not get to heart of the matter.

Perhaps we should stop seeking to engage the people in our strategies and plans, but instead seek to engage ourselves in theirs?