I’m currently blogging over here about the London Networked City exploration, and also about the RSA’s own Networked Cities initiative.
In addition, I’m helping start a Fellows’ Forum for the RSA, and have put together some history of past RSA online initiatives on a wiki about OpenRSA.
Update at the end of this post confirming the online community is likely to be launched within a few weeks, and that it will be public and open to anyone interested. I’ll be promoting the idea of additional networking to the Age Action Alliance via their Digital Inclusion Group.
Following my Storify of tweets yesterday about the Big Lottery Fund’s Ageing Better online community, Paul Webster helpfully responded “a conv to watch”. But how to keep the conversation going?
RT @davidwilcox: @kenclemens @shirleyayres @watfordgap Quoted in “Sharing #AgeingBetter innovation” http://t.co/kS3wMdeENg <a conv to watch
— Paul Webster (@watfordgap) October 22, 2014
Some really important issues were raised by Paul, Shirley Ayres and Alastair Somerville, following Ken Clemens picture of the announcement sheet at an Ageing Better event. Backstory in these posts.
And all that in a few messages of under 140 characters. Far more cogent than I see in many forum-based online communities.
The issues are particularly important – as I’ve argued in more detail in this paper – because the knowledge-sharing and innovation challenges faced by the Ageing Better programme typify those of competitive, centralised, big-spend approaches. It seems crazy to focus so much money on 15 areas (among many more who expressed interest) and then spend so little effort on helping those beyond the privileged few learn from the activity. There’s also the question of how much learning from well-funded projects will be relevant in the leaner years ahead?
The difficulty in holding a conversation about these issues is, I suspect, compounded by BIG’s role as a funder and inevitably rule-bound organisation. On the one hand anyone in receipt of BIG funding, or hoping to get some, will be wary of wading in.
On the other hand, BIG has to be seen to be scrupulously even-handed and cautious … particularly after the little difficulties about funding for projects related to Big Society. (However, I do recall that there were attempts to question, at the time, whether those investments were such a good idea … more open conversation might have helped avoid later embarrassment:-)
I should declare some further interest here, since I led a small team carrying out an exploration for BIG into directions their People Powered Change programme might take, back in 2011-12. That involved a lot open blogging, tweeting and a creative event. So I know that BIG is open to conversation within an appropriate format.
I don’t think anything so substantial is needed to get things started. Nor do I think online exchanges should be in the lead. Maybe something like a David Gurteen Knowledge Cafe? If the Treasury can host a discussion on How can we more actively share knowledge, BIG could host its own. David has even produced a tip sheet on how to run a Cafe yourself – though I know it will be best if he facilitates.
So the answer to the challenge of how to keep the conversation going could be as easy as “pop in for a chat and a cup of coffee”. And tweet it as well.
As a small contribution to the online chat I’ll also be posting shorter pieces over on this Known blog that I hope will more easily integrate posts and social media comments.
Update: just after I pressed the button to publish this post I got a tweet from BIG’s Older People team following up my earlier requests for a chat saying one of their Ageing Better managers would be in touch soon. That’s really encouraging.
Further update: the chat was very helpful in confirming that the online community will be launched within a few weeks, and that it will be open and public. I felt, from our discussion, that there was acceptance of the value of strengthening digital innovation in the programme through links with a range of interests in the field. I’m sure BIG will be make their own connections – and I said that additionally I would report to the Digital Inclusion Group of Age Action Alliance with a proposals to complement the new platform with some bottom up network building – as outlined here.
Update at the end of this post confirming the online community is likely to be launched within a few weeks, and that it will be public and open to anyone interested. I’ll be promoting the idea of additional networking to the Age Action Alliance via their Digital Inclusion Group.
Following my Storify of tweets yesterday about the Big Lottery Fund’s Ageing Better online community, Paul Webster helpfully responded “a conv to watch”. But how to keep the conversation going?
RT @davidwilcox: @kenclemens @shirleyayres @watfordgap Quoted in “Sharing #AgeingBetter innovation” http://t.co/kS3wMdeENg <a conv to watch
— Paul Webster (@watfordgap) October 22, 2014
Some really important issues were raised by Paul, Shirley Ayres and Alastair Somerville, following Ken Clemens picture of the announcement sheet at an Ageing Better event. Backstory in these posts.
And all that in a few messages of under 140 characters. Far more cogent than I see in many forum-based online communities.
The issues are particularly important – as I’ve argued in more detail in this paper – because the knowledge-sharing and innovation challenges faced by the Ageing Better programme typify those of competitive, centralised, big-spend approaches. It seems crazy to focus so much money on 15 areas (among many more who expressed interest) and then spend so little effort on helping those beyond the privileged few learn from the activity. There’s also the question of how much learning from well-funded projects will be relevant in the leaner years ahead?
The difficulty in holding a conversation about these issues is, I suspect, compounded by BIG’s role as a funder and inevitably rule-bound organisation. On the one hand anyone in receipt of BIG funding, or hoping to get some, will be wary of wading in.
On the other hand, BIG has to be seen to be scrupulously even-handed and cautious … particularly after the little difficulties about funding for projects related to Big Society. (However, I do recall that there were attempts to question, at the time, whether those investments were such a good idea … more open conversation might have helped avoid later embarrassment:-)
I should declare some further interest here, since I led a small team carrying out an exploration for BIG into directions their People Powered Change programme might take, back in 2011-12. That involved a lot open blogging, tweeting and a creative event. So I know that BIG is open to conversation within an appropriate format.
I don’t think anything so substantial is needed to get things started. Nor do I think online exchanges should be in the lead. Maybe something like a David Gurteen Knowledge Cafe? If the Treasury can host a discussion on How can we more actively share knowledge, BIG could host its own. David has even produced a tip sheet on how to run a Cafe yourself – though I know it will be best if he facilitates.
So the answer to the challenge of how to keep the conversation going could be as easy as “pop in for a chat and a cup of coffee”. And tweet it as well.
As a small contribution to the online chat I’ll also be posting shorter pieces over on this Known blog that I hope will more easily integrate posts and social media comments.
Update: just after I pressed the button to publish this post I got a tweet from BIG’s Older People team following up my earlier requests for a chat saying one of their Ageing Better managers would be in touch soon. That’s really encouraging.
Further update: the chat was very helpful in confirming that the online community will be launched within a few weeks, and that it will be open and public. I felt, from our discussion, that there was acceptance of the value of strengthening digital innovation in the programme through links with a range of interests in the field. I’m sure BIG will be make their own connections – and I said that additionally I would report to the Digital Inclusion Group of Age Action Alliance with a proposals to complement the new platform with some bottom up network building – as outlined here.
Access Dorset TV (ADTV) is developing a virtual high street where a team of citizen journalists will help disabled people, older people and carers share opinions share opinions and experiences, provide each other with support, and also review products and services.
I’m mentoring the first group of projects at Our Digital Community, a new programme helping social and community enterprises to use digital technologies. My role is to help with stakeholder engagement, about which more later.
All the projects are really interesting – as you can see here – in either developing a new digital product or service, or adding digital to their existing activities.
The challenge that the ADTV project is addressing, explained here by Jonathan Waddington-Jones, is that the day-to-day lives of one in five people in Dorset are limited by disability. That’s some 70,000 people – with a similar proportion in the population elsewhere.
While there are a wide range of support services – some already provided by Access Dorset and partners – more could be achieved if people had better ways to explain the challenges they face, help each other, and promote useful products and service. Much of that can be done online.
ADTV is moving the concept of an online support community further forward by recruiting volunteers from within their membership to act as citizen journalists, with training from Bournemouth University. They will create short films for the ADTV site, and also help with blogs, polls and reviews.
Whether it is called citizen journalism or social reporting, I think that this intermediary multi-media role is potentially important in any online community or network. The ADTV project should help us understand the range of skills and tools needed to serve a diverse community with different levels of online access and literacy, and connect with agencies and suppliers.
At present the Our Digital Community projects are developing pitches to potential sponsors and funders, supported by programme leader Marc De’ath and mentors Simon Bottrell, Christian Alhert and Peter Brownell.
ADTV has a prototype system, with early funding from the Office for Disability Issues, and is now looking for a partner to help develop user stories, test the value of the approach, and document outcomes. This will lead to a functional tech specification and more detailed development programme.
My focus with the ODC programme has been on how projects can best inform, consult or co-design with a range of different interests. To help with that Drew Mackie and I have developed a simple game with a deck of cards containing ideas for engagement methods. I’ll post the cards and instructions when we have made a few revisions.
I’ve been enormously impressed with the vision of Marc and ODC co-founder Annemarie Naylor since I first met them a few months ago, and more recently with the input from other mentors. The biggest buzz is from engaging with such a diverse range of inspiring projects.
The main lesson from me is that designing stakeholder engagement for an enterprise – rather than, say, a public agency – sharpens the nature of the offer. You have to think not just about your vision of doing some good, but what real benefit you are offering to someone in inviting them to respond with feedback, ideas or creative input. It’s the old principle of what’s-in-it-for-them not just for-me.
With that in mind, ADTV research suggest that they can offer business sponsors some potentially good returns if they position themselves in one of the zones in the virtual high street.
Currently disabled people have a spending power of £80 billion nationally, (£6300 per head). Applied to the County of Dorset, it would indicate that the spending power in Dorset is £945M.
If ADTV can demonstrate that their virtual high street offers benefits to users and suppliers – and also potential savings to support services – it could scale and replicate nationally.
Often the simplest methods can yield the best results in complex situations – particularly if they help release people’s enthusiasm for sharing experience socially.
David Gurteen has been demonstrating that over the past decade in the field of knowledge management, which is rich in examples of costly failed technology solutions.
Where, historically, do people shared ideas and stories? In cafes.
So David has developed a knowledge cafe format that enables people in organisations to meet and chat with colleagues who might otherwise be hidden in some far branch of the hierarchy or underused corner of the intranet.
After some speed networking, and a brief address, people discuss a simple question on small tables in three rounds of conversation, changing places to get a wide range of connections.
The final session is a circle – so everyone can see each other and contribute easily if they wish.
It’s been so successfully that last week the Cabinet Office invited Civil Servants from a range of departments to The Treasury for a couple of hours to address the question: “How can we more actively share knowledge within the workplace?”
Paul Corney reports some of the rich conversation that resulted:
I found myself in conversation about the diametrically opposed tasks of promoting voluntary transparency across government while protecting the exemptions of the Freedom of Information Act.
We discussed the difficulties of establishing Twitter dialogue and of being tied to SharePoint. Everyone had a tale to tell about lack of handover time when being faced with a new assignment. Few seemed to have heard of Collaborate the internal government social media/chatline. To a man (and woman) there was disquiet over the abandonment of the Local Government Agencies Community Network.
I was there, at David’s invitation, to do a little social reporting, and achieved that by the obvious step of asking David to explain in simple terms how and why cafes work.
It’s mostly about enabling people to talk about what interests them, without being too controlling. It helps a lot to offer the warmth and enthusiasm that David manages to convey – even after so many cafes. Everyone feels special, and knowledgeable.
David offers a tip sheet on running Knowledge Cafes – where you can also join for free 18,000 other people, from 160 countries, in his knowledge community. Sign up for his newsletter, and you’ll hear about future cafes.
These days the principle of helping residents create the neighbourhoods they want is official policy – supported by Government-funded programmes like Communities First, the Lottery-funded Big Local and of course through the idea of Big Society, relaunched yet again yesterday by David Cameron.
Radical inspiration might be traced back to the Diggers and Levellers of the 17th century, and the plotlanders of the last century, but there’s a case to be made for saying that this type of initiative became mainstream through the promotion of the idea of community architecture in the 1980s.
Yesterday evening provide a great opportunity catch up with the pioneers, when Routledge relaunched the 1987 book Community Architecture by Nick Wates and Charles Knevitt.
Not only were Nick and Charles there, but also Dr Rod Hackney, who can claim parenthood of the movement through his work dating back to the early 1970s. By 1987 Rod had become President of the RIBA, and so was well-placed to provide official support, along with Lord Scarman, whose report after the early 1980s riots concluded it was essential that “people are encouraged to secure a stake in, feel a pride in, and have a sense of responsibility for their own area”. He wrote a foreword, and according to biographer Anthony Holden, the book also became a Bible for Prince Charles in developing his views on architecture.
We gathered for drinks in the RIBA bookshop, and some brief speeches, including one from Rob Cowan, who has been writing, designing and training in the field since the 1970s. He gave a year by year account of how Governments have been appropriating community architecture and planning ideas, with more or less deference to the original ethos. It was also a pleasure to chat with Professor Michael Hebbert about the work he is doing on London governance, 50 years on from the Act to create the Greater London Council. I had a few anecdotes to share from my time reporting for the London Evening Standard in the 1970s.
Michael and Rob worked together on Vision for London, after the abolition of the GLC by Margaret Thatcher in 1986.
Rather than try for some formal interviews I just added a microphone, with permission, to the conversations. Rod Hackney is still busy, and his colleague Tia Kansara in Kansara Hackney provided an update on their international work on sustainable community architecture.
Charles Knevitt and Nick Wates
Professor Michael Hebbert and Rob Cowan
Rod Hackney and Tia Kansara
I think it is splendid that Routledge have republished Community Architecture. At £70 this edition is mainly aimed at libraries, but there will be an eBook at £24.95, and you can buy a PDF from Nick’s site. Do also take a look at Nick’s compendium of advice at Community Planning.
Back in the 1980s I was working on Groundwork Trusts – recalled in this publication – and on Development Trusts. A book for the Department of the Environment, Creating Development Trust, written with my then colleague Diane Warburton and others, sits on my shelf. I don’t know whether HMSO could agree to any re-publication, but the essence of it was expanded into a 1998 Guide to development trusts and partnerships.
There are now hundreds of trusts around the country, supported by Locality, which is the successor to the Development Trusts Association.
I mention development trusts because Nick also started the Hastings Trust, where he lives. Just as I was leaving last night Nick said he’s now involved, as a trustee, in winding it up. There was a lot of creativity in urban planning and regeneration in the 1980s … but while the ideas may persist and grow, organisations are not forever.
Increasingly the “social bumping places”** where we might come across other local residents in our communities are stores and supermarkets … and the RSA believes that this could be turned to greater advantage for both shops and shoppers.
In a recent report called Community Footprint: Shared Value for Business and Communities, the RSA suggests that businesses “should act as ‘community hubs’, helping promote social interaction amongst their customers and developing local action plans to create happier, more resilient communities”.
When I was in the RSA recently, talking to Ben Dellot about social network analysis and local Changemakers, I also spoke to Emma Norris, who is associate director of the Connected Communities project.
Emma explained how they had worked with B&Q to research the relationship between their store in Sutton and local customers. They found 42 percent of customers had some interaction with other customers in the store and that 23 percent of customers asked other customers for DIY advice.
The report found that 70 percent of customers say they will remain loyal to a brand that demonstrates social value even in a recession, and suggests businesses should:
Emma said:
Businesses who are willing to be pioneering and give something back to customers and the community in concrete, tangible ways will feel the benefits. People will spend more in their stores and customers will stay loyal in hard times. What more can businesses hope for than that?
The term Community Footprint refers to ways in which the project was able to measure the impact of a store in its community – both positive and negative. That means it should be possible to demonstrate quantifiable benefits … not just urge community engagement as a good thing. Social responsibility and ethical business can have a street-level focus.
Emma said that the approach could be extended to clusters of shops, encouraging networking and collective benefits for shops in High Streets and other areas. The RSA has a large membership of Fellows, who are increasing active in RSA projects. Emma said RSA staff would be particularly interested in talking to Fellows who might want to take up the Community Footprint approach in their area.
** For more about social bumping places, see this report of a workshop in Manchester on Asset Based Community Development.
Over the past few years the RSA’s Connected Communities project has developed methods for mapping who knows who in neighbourhoods, and how they can form a social network. It is fascinating to see the maps that emerge … but how can this approach be turned to the advantage of the community?
Social network analysis now forms the basis for an innovative programme in Peterborough, where the RSA’s Citizen Power project has used SNA to identify Changemakers who could work together for the benefit of the city. Their recently published report says:
Among those we identified were members of the clergy, artists, head teachers, social entrepreneurs, housing officers, charity workers, police officers, businessmen and everyday council officers. The results of our surveying indicate that such individuals are adept at driving positive change in their local areas. They appear rooted in their communities, have an impressive repertoire of capabilities, and are instilled with an appetite to apply their skills and knowledge to address local issues.
As Ben Dellot explains here, it is particularly important to identify people who can drive change at a time when public services are being cut back. Some will know each other – but many won’t have connected across public, private and voluntary sectors.
Together they should be able to achieve more than they could without the benefit of wider network connections.
The network is already meeting, as you can see from this report on the Citizen Power online community site. In true networky style, they ran the event as open space session rather than a committee
The aim is for the network to be self-sustaining, as the RSA withdraws. The initiative has been supported by RSA Fellows (members), and this makes it easier to replicate the process in other areas and eventually build a network of networks through which Changemakers can find others with similar interests.
I think it is going to be fascinating to see how people from different organisational backgrounds work out how to organise within a networked context … and how any projects teams they form on a peer-to-peer basis can then work with more formal organisations in the city.
Will they operate on a purely voluntary basis? If they do need funds, how will that be handled? How are application to join the network made? Will they be criticised as an elitist group? How will decisions be taken?
All of these are issues that I think we’ll have to face more widely as we try and make the most of the human and social assets in our communities, and move beyond, or re-invent, the civic structures developed over the past century.
Of course, there have always been social networks in civil society. What’s perhaps different here is the attempt to develop ones that deliberately connect across sectors and disciplines. As the RSA chief executive Matthew Taylor blogged recently:
It is in spaces and processes which bring together people with different interests, expertise and resources that innovation is most likely to occur. It is also here that we can identify ‘the hidden wealth’ (a capacity for creativity, generosity, trust and solidarity) which often lies dormant trapped between specialisms and hierarchies and crushed by narrow incentives.
The Changemakers network in Peterborough looks as if it will be an excellent test of just what is possible through this approach.
Big Society is reaching it’s first birthday as a manifesto, a network, and set of ideas and principles that have shaped many Coalition government policies. On Thursday in London the far more modest, less contentious, non-partisan Our Society is holding a big society reality check. I hope you’ll join us online or in person.
A year ago this week David Cameron, then in opposition, led a seminar to launch Big Society as the Conservative manifesto, and then walked down the road to the Thames-side OXO building to launch the Big Society Network, developed by Paul Twivy and Nat Wei.
Paul was the chief executive of the network, which was to be a mass-membership organisation. One of the ideas was a project called Your Square mile, to support local social action.
I received invites courtesy of Steve Moore, who I had worked with in the past, and who was doing a lot of behind the scenes organising.
I don’t think any commentators at the time expected Big Society to be as politically significant as it has been – like it or not.
Today Steve is director of the network – which is focussing on events, social enterprise, participatory budgeting and innovative projects. It doesn’t recruit members. Paul Twivy is heading up Your Square Mile, with £830,000 of Big Lottery funding announced last week as part of People Powered Change, with an ambition to have 15 million members. Nat Wei is in the Lords, as Government adviser.
During that year Our Society was formed as network, growing out Big Society in the North, to provide people with a space to celebrate their achievements in local communities, share experience, and work out how to survive and make the best of the changes Big Society was bringing. I’m a founder member, with others you can see here. We are volunteers, and currently have over 460 members. I think it is fair to say it is currently the only substantial, open, independent forum dedicated to discussion of Our/Big/Good Society. read more
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, trails tomorrow’s Comprehensive Spending Review (aka What’s Going to be Cut) with a hint that local authorities will get less money but more freedom to spend it.
He argues that amidst the news of cuts there should be mention of the Big Society, because it offers far more than the easily-caricatured idea of volunteers stepping in to provide cut-back public services.
Big Society is relevant at a time of austerity because it can, potentially, help us think about releasing assets of three types: in the individual, the community, and the organisation. read more
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