On Monday, someone asked on Twitter for a definition of Big Society. Some of the positive answers:
- A good idea claiming to empower ‘little platoons‘ and improve ‘social fabric’ (Burke) without explaining how
- The empowerment of citizens to take responsibility for themselves and their communities
- Big Society? Individuals spotting needs and gaps in society and filling them. I think!
- To create a climate that empowers local people and communities, building a big society that will give power back to people
- The Big Society – Contributing your time to your community
- ‘The Big Society is whatever you want it to be’
Some of the less positive ones:
- How about ‘privatisation with a smile on it’s face’ :-S
- One word – bollocks
- A new way of getting people to volunteer and lessen unemployment figures. Rather than create new jobs
- Big society is the concept that ordinary people should provide functions of state for free. It’s nonsense
- A blue sky policy with no substance
- The Big Scam? A mandate to scrap all govt investment in charity, society and the arts?
- How might one define something which doesn’t exist?
- Getting others to do things without the state paying for them
- It’s proof the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing
I offer you my own definition: Empowering people, with information, tools and infrastructure, to make choices that make their lives better.
This week, we’ve tried to set out the intellectual framework behind the Big Society, and we’ve offered some thoughts on what it can achieve. But as well, we’re showing what the Big Society does in practice.
The Big Society is – by definition – a long-term project. It is a huge change in approach. And the third things we’re finding this week is that people are finding it difficult to understand.
But I think there’s a bigger problem. People are overwhelmingly skeptical about anything that any government does. They don’t believe politicians. They don’t trust them. They don’t like them.
That should be the biggest argument for the Big Society – it means that politicians don’t control things any more: because people do. They can choose the right school for their child. They can choose their GP, their consultant, their hospital. They can choose whether they want to volunteer in their own community, or take advantage of others’ work (which is fine – otherwise why bother encouraging volunteers in the first place! If a service is not used it will not survive). They can choose how far they want to get involved in all sorts of things – from getting together to show that the demand is there for superfast broadband, to what priorities their police focus on, to what kind of bin service they want, to planting some flowers in their street, to how they run their businesses, to using social enterprises for their day to day needs… There are so many ways to do this that I can’t even begin to offer a definitive list of options.
The whole Big Society project rests – and will live or die – by how much people engage with it. That doesn’t mean that they all have to volunteer their time or money. But it does mean that they have to want to have more control over their lives.
I was recently at a party at which David Cameron made a brief speech; one of the things he said (as we’ve said before) was that his government is the first that wanted to win power in order to give power away. But he added – as he hasn’t done before – that that depends on people taking up that power.
So the big question is this: How do supporters of the Big Society encourage engagement? How do they explain that it is a positive initiative, not a ‘cover for ideological cuts’ or a ‘gimmick’? I have long argued that the fact of doing something often enough makes it second nature – the more you do something, the more used to it you become. So to start off with, there will need to be active encouragement and exhortation and incentives to engage, but with time, those prompts will no longer be needed. The first thing that needs to happen, though, is for more people to make a positive – not defensive – case for the Big Society, which we hope to have contributed to this week.
There is a hunger out there for more control. People want to live their lives in a way that suits them. The argument can and should be made that the Big Society helps people to do what they want.
A quick administrative note – there seem to be some extra hyperlinks in the piece which I can’t remove (there was a WordPress update which I think has some bugs).
The only link that takes you anywhere relevant is the one in the para about winning power to give it away.
Related posts:
Fiona – thanks for such an excellent piece, which I think could help build some bridges between Big Society advocates in the Party, and critical friends who rather despair at the way that opportunities are being lost.
As you say, you can’t give away power, people have to take it. You can however create the conditions within which that is more easily done.
I wonder whether part of the problem is that Big Society advisers and advocates may not have had much experience on the ground of what that entails, and how to facilitate it. It’s not the same a being an elected representative … although councillors, for example, will increasingly need facilitation skills.
I can understand the desire to move from the heavily state-funded third sector strategies of the past … but not the failure to look at community engagement and participation experience of the past 40 years. It’s not the same thing at all.
The Pathways Through Participation has excellent resources on this, and also people’s attitudes to volunteering.
http://pathwaysthroughparticipation.org.uk/resources/
There is still wisdom in the ladder of participation model of Sherry Arnstein, developed in 1969, since tweaked by me and others
http://www.partnerships.org.uk/part/arn.htm
If you wish to engage people within the community (or indeed the workforce, or anywhere else) it is no good doing tell and sell. The power holders have to be open and honest about their stance, and choose their methods accordingly. They have to go and meet people where they are, and build relationships. Even then, they will be in difficulty if their other agendas are deeply disempowering.
I’m personally doubtful whether it is now possible to engage the majority of people under the banner of Big Society – which is entirely different from saying that some of the core ideas can get widespread support.
You need different language, an understanding of engagement processes, trusted neutral spaces, and facilitation (which is not necessarily the same as community organising).
I believe there’s a lot of people who would like to help.
Over on the Our Society ideas platform today we are showing in a very small way what you can do if you take the label off and invite people to make some positive contributions on the big/good/whatever society we want.
Can we join up on this?
https://oursociety.uservoice.com/forums/100797-general
Hi David, good to hear from you!
I think you’re right about the need for experience-led implementation – and we’re hoping that this week on P10, we’ll be able to show some of the things that are already happening (two posts this afternoon in particular).
I come back to what I said earlier though: there has to be a top-down enabling body, but that body needs to bring together all the grassroots stuff which is already happening AND THEN help people draw lessons, inspiration etc from them.
You’re right that there are lots of people who want to help. I have a few concerns – for example, that for so long, everything has been so centralised that not enough people feel able to make a difference (YouGov has some interesting polling on whether people feel they have influence over their lives). Also that for so long, people have been enabled/encouraged to disengage by the state increasing its control, that they now think it’s not their job. To an extent, yes I pay my taxes and I want the state to provide what it’s supposed to – but I think there’s a discussion over what that is.
And finally, I think there has been, frankly, a bit of a No 10/CCHQ fail on communicating why they want this, and what they expect to be able to do, and what they want us to do. (I know that’s another centralising measure – but I think it’s essential).
I’m thinking I might come back to those concerns in another post at some point – we have stuff on all day today and tomorrow but maybe on the weekend/early next week.
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Fiona, A top down enabling body is certainly needed rather than top down government and economic development. It is something we’ve
advocated ourselves for many years based on experience of leveraging social change overseas by pioneering the concept that capitalism can be modified to address a wide range of social problems. A concept that ‘trickles up’ to David Cameron after more than a decade when describing ‘capitalism with a conscience’.
We call our enabling approach people-centered economics. It places the people-centered counselling advocacy of Car R Rogers into the context of business and economics. It was first deployed in Russia to leverage a local development initiative in the wake of Russia’s 1998 economic crisis and US attempts to introduce ‘Chicago School’ free market capitalism.
I can assure you that Big Society isn’t enabling us. It is getting in our way by obstruction and exclusion. In some cases stealing our work to serve up as government achievement.
Does it have to be said that whatever Big Society aims to achieve it can’t be done through dishonesty? Obstructing those using their initiative and their own funds to tackle social problems is for Big Society to shoot itself in the foot by instantly contradicting its ideals and we pay tax to fund the salaries of those doing it.
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I want to relate my experience of a Big Society “project” that seems to meet all the criteria but is struggling against Council cuts. This has the potential to be a real embarassment for David Cameron.
Barnet Museum is a small local museum, a registered charity, totally volunteer staffed, which has been in existence for over 80 years. (I am a volunteer at the Museum). The Museum receives a small grant (£3.5K) from the Council and has been housed for all its 80 years in a building owned by the Council. The building is Georgian and an exhibit in itself; it is in the centre of the area it covers (Chipping Barnet – a discrete part of the massive London Borough of Barnet).
The Council has said that the total funding for the Museum is £28K which comprises the £3.5K and other charges (utilities and some unclear) that the Council pays in respect of the building. The Council announced in December that all funding for the Museum will cease from April 2011 but held a six week “consultation”.
We, the Museum, have put forward an alternative operating model: we have requested that the Council transfers the building to the Museum under the Asset Transfer provisions of development trust legislation; we would then take on responsibility for the running costs which, even if the Council continues its direct grant (£3.5K), will save the Council taxpayers over £20K pa. We have quoted the Big Society initiative and pointed out that the Museum would cease to exist if the Council moved it to another location (all the – donated – exhibits belong to the Museum not the Council) or if a market rent (some £40K pa) was charged. If the Council sells the building it would mean the end of the Museum but it would not be easy or cheap, there is 80 years worth of custom and practice to unravel.
Councillor Robert Rams of Barnet Council (yes, the same council that lost £28million in Iceland), faced with our workable alternative, simply stated that the Council will not transfer the building to Barnet Museum unless for a commercial rent or a sale of the building.
It appears that Asset Stripping trumps Big Society. Does anyone of any standing know or care? Does David Cameron realise how his vision is being mocked? Does PM, his advisers or his office have any influence?
In summary, Barnet Council is faced with the choice of: a potential political success, a Big Society volunteer group providing a popular service at minimal cost to the Council taxpayer; OR a difficult, expensive, unpopular, and destructive piece of cultural vandalism.
The decision making Cabinet takes place on Monday 14th February; it is incredible that a Conservative Prime Minister’s initiative is being undermined by a Conservative Council.
If a well established and popular volunteer-based community organisation such as Barnet Museum cannot succeed, I am afraid the Prime Minister’s vision is dead in the water.
For more background see the preamble to our petition and please read some of the petitioners’ comments to gauge the depth of feeling:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41281.html
Thank you
Mike Noronha
for Barnet Museum
Mike Noronha
For Barnet Museum
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