Service Jam - Nat Wei has left the building

I joined in the service jam which brought global voices together to chat electronically about empowerment and related topics. There were a number of guest speakers, George Bush (I kid you not), Kevin Curley, Nat Wei, some functionary from NCVquo etc

I thought I'd check the Nat Wei debate only to find the following message (it is a classic):

Lord Wei has had to leave the Jam 0106 PM Oct 12, 2010

Hello All

Lord Wei had to depart the Jam to catch a train. I (disobdied non specific person) work in tehOffice for Civil Society within the Cabinet Office (part of the UK Government that works with Lord Wei) and will be repsonding to some of your points until 1:30 pm. Lord Wei may be able to drop in later today


Ho hum

Missed my deep and meaningful comment then, which I didn't get off before he'd left; for what it is worth I've included it below in response to Nat Wei's question about how we can make people feel big about having a big society (I paraphrase)


Title: We need collective community action 01:04 PM Oct 12, 2010 [0]

Hi Nat

We need a both / and approach; my hope for the big society is that it does not repeat previous government mistakes by becoming a state sanctioned ideology.

I can see you like the community organising model and social entreprise but I don't hear you talking about the 20,000 UK CD workers, nor about the value not just of exhorting individuals to do more, but about the 'ecosystem' of actually existing community groups and their collective not individual action.

The coalition government has talked a lot about cuts to the public and voluntary sector but if you want to make people feel big you need to start with where they are at

In terms of the voluntary / community sector this means you need to acknowledge that most community groups never had any money in the first place, or indeed, much support from larger voluntary sector charities, councils or social enterprises.

I'd like the big society to make people feel big by talking about what actually exists on the ground - which is not organisers and social enterprise ready to deliver public services (govt ideologues)and which can easily make people feel very small

From reading your speeches, blogs etc I gather you focus a lot on the individual and less on the collective agency of community groups. I think this works agaisnt the big society because it skews the picture and lessens the chances of success. Remember Alinsky's rule #2 'never go beyond the experience of your own people' - the experience of active civil society is of working in groups, not merely as individuals feeling big but through collective agency, even collective struggle

The three legged stool of state, market and civil society needs fixing - you are right about that, so when it comes to the civil society side of the equation lets start start with community groups not ideology and build from there.

Recomend you read or re-read Paulo Freire's 'pedagogy of the oppressed' for new ideas and reach out into the community development field and wider informal sector. This approach would have worked in a way the town hall tours were not able to

Freire understood that people feel big or bigger when they have been listened to as equals and find their destiny in collective acts - anything else he termed 'false charity' destined to fail. Well worth exploring viz. the big society

All best

Waiting for the Spending Review

Crazy times for the sector - the rhetoric is cranked up really loud re 'giving power' to local people. And yet the localism bill shows every sign of mimicing the usual bodged local government acts of yesteryear - legislation by formula. Ditto the refreshed compact

No civil servant can say anything before 20th October (annoucement of spending review) about anything - the waiting has a soporific and dangerous feel. Daily announcements of support for the big society ring out from the upper echelons of the sector with a reminder to please to talk to us (about a small matter of delivery and how to be contractor) , and yet most of the wider sector according to recent polls believes big society is a smokescreen for cuts, bs in shorthand.

There is a lot of capturing and reflecting back of ideas going on. Govt presents big society as being about:

social action (individual)
community empowerment (together)
public service reform (state)

and about decentralisation, transparency and sorting out funding for the VCS

(As a semi competent policy person myself I took note earlier this week - my thnaks to DCLG...)

But note the semi mystical caveat as Francis Maude recently said, there isn't actually a plan

http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/News/DailyBulletin/1033203/Minister-admits-big-society-will-chaotic/2368133AE5887580BFA110ACC20A8A81/

Something is very odd about all of this. Unlike many in the sector my analysis of the previous rounds of state led community empowerment and third sector modernisation is very critical - I believe it divided the sector between winners (sub contractors) and losers (community associations) so for me a big society that talks about an independent civil realm made up of little batallions of commmunity groups has something going for it, that can and should be explored. Note that for New Labour community empowerment = local government (end of story) see Sir Simon Milton's comment in DCLG's 2007 Action Plan for Community Empowerment

But all of this does need some connection with reality, some urgent action otherwise it won't happen. I'm not seeing or feeling the big society move onto practical engagement with grassroots people - the cancelation of the town hall tours is a bad sign, we need raw open encounters, if people are angry that is better than being passive or cynical. How could they not be angry under the circumestances and how could anyone think that would not happen

I get the feeling that big society must be about deflecting the public gaze from cuts, because that is what any politican would do under the circumstances and a whole lot of others in our sector too

That is an issue that needs some truth telling, but we will judge people on what they do not what they say.

Are they going to actually listen to community groups, share their pain, take the time to attend their events, work with their agenda rather than impose the virtues of self help?

Will they retreat into disembodied (clever) media stunts, philanthropy with strings attached, and guilt tripping people into volunteering as part time organisers struggle to make quotas for signing up x number of new recruits?

And if all this means is that everything is on hold until the spending review that isn't good enough