Panchromatica

Reclaim the State

If you have read much of this blog, you will see that from time to time I exhibit a slightly morbid fascination for libertarianism. I’ve posted already about the origins of this, but I have still to reconcile that fascination with the other main driver of my political beliefs, namely the necessity of political action. The more swivel eyed of the libertarian world (I love that phrase!) do a lot of hand waving in what passes in that world for analysis of what is wrong – all we need to do is ‘X’ and everything else goes away. This is of course a characteristic shared by all revolutionary tendencies – on which I have also commented in the past and it isn’t much help in deciding what to do in the real, non-revolutionary world.

One thing on which I still have much in common with libertarians of all flavours, is the need to restrain the excesses of state power, whether nationally or locally. Avoiding I hope, too many cliched references to the nanny state or to political correctness, I intend to look at real alternatives. It is easy to pick out the often ludicrous behaviour of local and national bureaucrats and politicians, but the more insidious activities that to many appear to be essential – or perhaps just inevitable – components of our daily life are probably more dangerous – not least of these being the growing limitations being placed on our privacy by CCTV, proposals for ID cards etc. While we accept, even connive with much of this – supermarket store cards being one example – the long term trends are not propitious.

To begin with, I have in preparation a fairly long post on urban planning, based on a review of the essay “Laissez Faire Urban Planning” by Stephen Davies, in The Voluntary City. I also have in mind a few other posts on the same broad topic, on health matters and probably on education. Beyond that I’m not sure,although I hope also to get back to writing – as I started out to do – on “People, Places and what makes them interesting.”

In passing, this post is prepared using BlogJet (found via Fred First). I hope that this will make it easier to integrate photos and other visual material, although my experience with that aspect has so far not been promising.

The Public Will and the Public Won't

An excellent post from White Courtesy Telephone on the reality - as opposed to the fantasy - of public versus charitable funding.

Keep in mind that total annual foundation giving in the United States is about $30 billion.  By my estimate, this entire amount would be swallowed up just by the operating expenses of the 50 largest nonprofit hospitals (and there would be another 2,800 such hospitals waiting in line).*  Despite the sector’s sometimes inflated sense of self, foundation giving represents only 3.5 percent of all nonprofit revenues.  Re-purposing these funds—moving them, for example, from advocacy support to direct services—would have a large negative impact on the advocacy community but very little overall positive impact on nonprofit bottom lines.

I'm very much in favour of cutting public expenditure, but only when matched by a corresponding increase in the ability people to make and fund their own choices. That takes time and pretending otherwise is millenarian nonsense. Indeed it is worse - it is as dishonest as the Marxist pretence of the 'withering away of the State'.

Social Enterprise

Young, gifted and not for profit.

In the 19th century, it was charities that changed society, charities responding to the new urban problems of industrialisation.

In the 21st century it may be time for something new: social entrepreneurship, for example.

It means taking a business eye to the problems of society, and then applying a business imperative to get things done, but without the profit motive.

Even the Beeb seems to be waking up to the idea!

Not just me then...

Some nice dissections of the nonsense on stilts emanating from the ASI blog and its cohorts. I was led to them by this post at Kevin Carson's Mutualist Blog which is worth reading in its own right.

A comment I made on this post, referring to the theft of the TSB from its depositors, lead me to this brief article which deals with the whole dispreputable episode.

Circuit Riding

A Circuit Rider is a mobile IT development worker who supports a caseload of small voluntary organisations, and who works collaboratively with other Circuit Riders. It’s worth expanding on a few aspects of this:
• Mobile
Circuit Riders aren’t based in the organisations they work with: they travel from one to the other,
sometimes carrying with them the hardware and software they need for their work.
• Caseload
Circuit Riders have an ongoing involvement with organisations: they don’t just visit an organisation when there’s a problem.
• Small Organisations
Circuit Riders generally work with small organisations, which can’t always afford to employ an IT specialist or to pay for professional technical support. But Circuit Riding makes sense even if an organisation has the money to do these things: most small organisations don’t need full-time IT staff.
• Working Collaboratively
Circuit Riders support each other and share information as part of the Circuit Rider movement.
This makes the best use of resources by ensuring that work isn’t duplicated in different organisations. And it allows Circuit Riders to make their voices heard among such stakeholders as funders, government, suppliers and voluntary sector networks.

While most Circuit Riders would share this approach, Circuit Riding is more of an ethos than a job description: different Riders work in different ways, depending on factors like their own skills and the needs of the organisations they work with.

Circuit Riding is a new term, but some people – as selfemployed consultants, staff in small for-profit companies or in voluntary organisations – have been working on voluntary sector IT for many years, some of them in ways similar to Circuit Riding. Circuit Riding doesn’t seek to be the only solution to voluntary organisation’s IT needs: rather, it’s a new way of describing one area of work which
seems to make it easier for funders and policy makers to understand organisations’ needs.

I came on this idea via David Wilcox's 'Designing for Civil Society' blog, but he reminded me of it again after I commented on this post. I think it is a great idea. The funding bid I mentioned in my comment has now been heavily amended to take account of the experiences from the LASA project.

Are you a Pro-Am?

From astronomy to activism, from surfing to saving lives, Pro-Ams - people pursuing amateur activities to professional standards - are an increasingly important part of our society and economy.

For Pro-Ams, leisure is not passive consumerism but active and participatory, it involves the deployment of publicly accredited knowledge and skills, often built up over a long career, which has involved sacrifices and frustrations.

The 20th century witnessed the rise of professionals in medicine, science, education, and politics. In one field after another, amateurs and their ramshackle organisations were driven out by people who knew what they were doing and had certificates to prove it.

The Pro-Am Revolution argues this historic shift is reversing. We're witnessing the flowering of Pro-Am, bottom-up self-organisation and the crude, all or nothing, categories of professional or amateur will need to be rethought.

A new report from the Demos think tank looks at the impact of this phenomenon, known of course in the IT world through open source software, but millions of hours are committed by people over a huge range of activities.

Among important volunteer Pro-Am organisations are the Samaritans with 18,000 Pro-Am volunteer counsellors who devote 2.7 million hours a year; the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service, which has 95,000 volunteers who deliver more than nine million Meals on Wheels a year; Neighbourhood Watch, which covers 27 per cent of households; and Victim Support, which has almost 15,000 volunteer Pro-Am counsellors. About 95 per cent of criminal cases are dealt with by the country’s 26,000 Pro-Am magistrates.

The St John Ambulance is run by about 43,000 Pro-Ams and trains more than half a million people a year in first aid. The Surf Life Saving Association has 4,000 Pro-Am members who serve on British beaches.

To that can be added the RNLI and the many volunteer drivers in Link schemes across the country.

Beyond these 'social' volunteers are the millions who get involved in activities like DIY, gardening, sport or the arts - and in the administration of these activities on one club committee or another.

All this seems to suggest that the conventional picture of a society sitting at home in front of the TV is simply wrong.

The skills required develop only over time, and their acquisition usually needs to be systematic: it involves learning from coaches and peers. The knowledge involved is invariably substantial, in the sense that it involves several layers of technique. It cannot be picked up quickly or casually, and requires social organisation through which skills can be shared, passed on and accredited, through clubs, networks, events, competitions and performances. Pro-Ams put their time and money in many different things – equipment, props, technology, travelling to and from events, club memberships.What all this amounts to is a substantial investment in ‘cultural capital’.

I'm sure there are lessons here for community based regeneration. The people who acquire these skills in this way do so in a context which predisposes them to share them, to get involved and to work with others to pass them on. They represent a huge and untapped resource of skills which could be harnessed for community benefit.

A good example would be the arts, with painting and photography groups across the country. It seems that about 30 per cent of the population claim Pro-Am arts skills of one kind or another. The Voluntary Arts Network provides a good route into those skills for a wider community benefit, but there are probably thousands of web sites maintained on specialist topics by enthusiasts for no financial gain. Many of these people would be delighted to share their obsession with others. Of course not all of them have the presentational skills to do so effectively - but then there are probably others who could help them to develop those skills.

Many areas of the country have volunteer bureaus. The National Association in England is here. (If you know of equivalent links for Scotland, Wales and Ireland let me know). The Demos study suggests that perhaps they should be building links to the myriad clubs and societies in their areas.

Local regeneration, local identity

In 1986 the Slow Food movement began in Italy, with the aim of promoting local Italian food producers and outlets in a stand against the prevailing global supermarkets and fast food chains. The idea spread across Europe and has been taken up by many small communities throughout Europe.

The idea has now grown into the much broader Cittaslow project with the slogan ‘a network of cities where living is easy’. The first official ‘slow town’ in the UK (and possobly in the English speaking world) is the market town of Ludlow in Shropshire.

Cittaslow has a broad remit including familiar issues like noise pollution, recycling, and protection of historic character. Other priorities include boosting a sense of community identity and celebrating local produce in the form of traditional farmer’s markets and family businesses. The Cittaslow web site is here: http://www.cittaslow.stratos.it/ (in Italian) or in English here: www.cittaslow.net/world.

Similarities with the various Market Towns projects in the UK are obvious, (see here for example) but the roots are a lot deeper. In 1978, the Wirksworth project was set up by the Civic Trust to regenerate the small town of Wirksworth in Derbyshire. (A brief history here.) This was hugely successful, turning a decaying mining town into a tourist destination. Similar projects were set up across the UK, with varying degrees of success, but the idea was also picked up in other countries, including the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The Main Street USA project was probably the most successful and their website has lots of inspirational examples and useful material.

From the USA the idea seems to have travelled back across the Atlantic, turning into projects like this one or on a smaller scale this.

Reinforcing the idea of 'local identity' is the idea of Local Distinctiveness developed by Common Ground, from whom came I think the idea of Apple Day. A specific project of theirs is 'England in Particular'. From the local gazetteer here, you can see the diverse entries for your locality by clicking on the on-screen map. For another example of projects around local food, this time in Devon, go here (free registration needed first on this site from here).

Finally, another project, which builds on the idea that supporting local business generates more money for the local economy than is the case with large multiples, is 'Plugging the Leaks' from the New Economics Foundation.

This post is drawn from a e-mail newsletter I do for a Market Towns project, aimed at members of Community Planning Partnerships and others working in community based regeneration. I'm looking to widen the distribution making it more widely available on subscription. If you or your organisation would be interested in receiving a free sample copy and answer a few questions about pricing, frequency of distribution etc, please e-mail me on newsletter[at]ibanda[dot]biz.

Whose life is it anyway?

This is from an earlier version of this blog which never really got off the ground although one or two posts still seem apposite. I'm reposting them here (without updating)

I saw a council van the other day with the slogan 'looking after your environment' emblazoned across the side. It made me think about the way in which local government in the UK has changed and has detached itself from the community it supposedly serves. Many local authorities no longer operate on a public service ethos. The management speak of big business has taken over. That is why they can talk about 'your environment'. It isn't just just government at fault. Over the years local communities have been just as likely to see the council as 'them', demanding services and facilties for 'us'.

It doesn't have to be that way. I repeat - it doesn't have to be that way. It never had to be that way. An excellent book called Urban Renaissance by Dr Dick Atkinson looks at the failures of welfare reform. He estimates that about 30% of the population live in neighbourhoods experiencing problems - poor educational achievment, physical decay, unemployment - usually all at once. Something like £100,000,000 are spent in every neoghbourhood of about 15,000 people every year. By any standards that is a huge sum. Despite that some of these communities are still in dire need and have been since the 1960s.

Atkinson offers a real alternative. It depends on politicians giving up the power they have accumulated over the years and trusting local people to decide on what they need. Projects like New Deal for the Community and Neighbourhood Management are supposed to do that of course, but with some honourable exceptions they don't seem to be working. Atkinson proposes not a Welfare State, but a Welfare Society where communities in neighbourhoods organise themselves and take control of their own surroundings.

Shaw said, I think in the preface to Androcles and the Lion, that Barabbas has had 2000 years - its time to give Christianity a chance. Well, centralised welfare has had a chance - its time for the people.

Economic Gardening

I have worked in some areas where developers or investors were so rare that if one came throught the door, the first thing you did was lock it behind him!

In circumstances like that it always seemed to me to be pointless to put your major efforts into making cheap land available, or build new units. These approaches had their place, but since all you were going to attract was branch outlets you were highly vulnerable to changes in the global economy or to the fallout from mergers and takeovers.

I always believed the main effort should go into 'growing our own' economy, by supporting new locally generated businesses. After all when you go back to its origins that is how Siicon Valley began, with support for graduates from Stanford University to stay in the area. Having been talking in these terms for 20 years, I was intrigued to come across this item from the USA about 'economic gardening'.

Pioneered by Chris Gibbons at the City of Littleton, Colorado (pop. 45,000), this programme has apparently added 12,000 jobs to the local economy since it started in 1987 – without grants or any form of financial incentives. The links in the item above don't work but you can find more here:

There are UK equivalents. BizFizz

"provides free, confidential and professional advice to local entrepreneurs. It works by employing a coach who provides tailored one-to-one support to individuals who want to start or grow their business and establishing a Local Panel of people whose background, expertise and local know-how bring a second tier of support to BizFizz clients. The panel can include community activists, head teachers, faith group leaders, councillors, and local business people."

It has funding for specific locations, but the organisers are very willing to help spread the approach elsewhere.

Also in the same vein is Local Alchemy (also sponsored by the New Economics Foundation)

"The local alchemy approach is built on the belief that disadvantaged neighbourhoods are home to individuals who have the dreams, passion and potential to create and grow their own businesses. This approach encourages these individuals to realise their business dreams in a supported environment at the heart of their community. This in turn develops a sense of self-reliance and can-do in the community, building local confidence and self-esteem. "

I'm sure I've mentioned Plugging the Leaks from the NEF in a previous post but its worth another plug (sorry!)

Community Enterprise

A useful resource if you are involved with Social Enterprise is the Community Business Scotland Network. Despite the name, this is of much wider value than just Scotland with lots of links worth exploring.

The CBS Network aims to "promote and encourage all forms of community owned and controlled enterprises, enabling local communities to become more self reliant and sustainable."

I have been looking at the "Practical Paper on Writing Social Enterprise Plans". This offers a slightly different approach to preparing business plans more suitable for community and social organisations.