A journey towards Socially Enterprising and beyond
Getting to know the potential, a place for notes and reference points.
When we look around what do we see?
The United Kingdom faces a number of difficulties which it needs to overcome.
We have deep-rooted problems of inequality, discrimination and social mobility which need to be addressed. Our society cannot meet people’s basic human needs for equality, dignity and respect without tackling these social issues.
Within our communities we have become isolated and lonely, disconnected from our neighbours and our families. Our social bonds stretched and broken we suffer from a reduction in mutual support and declining mental and physical health.
The world has entered a great connected age, yet our national institutions and government departments continue to operate as before, treating our problems in isolation and not as part of a more complex and interconnected whole.
Citizens no longer participate in democracy and we make little effort to encourage them to do so as it is simply easier and more expedient if they don’t. When we do make efforts to engage the ‘people we serve’ our consultation exercises are little more than a process used to justify decisions which have already been agreed upon.
Local media is broken. Its pursuit of profit has reduced staff to a barely functional level in almost every town and intrusive online advertising is used to fill the coffers. Positive and worthy community stories go untold and in their place salacious headlines fill the news encouraging clicks and advertising revenue instead of civic connection and pride.
Our industry has stagnated through low investment and short-termism. Grey businessmen and accountants deprive our natural ingenuity and creativity of the fuel of forward thinking and financial backing. Opportunities have slipped through our fingers and we risk slipping ever further behind.
Our workers are increasingly insecure in careers which won’t last their lifetimes and we do not know what the future of work means for any of us or what we will do next in our careers or our lives.
Disabled people are scapegoated for failed economic conditions. Equality means nothing if employment is unfair, unlikely, or inaccessible.
Political parties, national institutions, and almost every type of organisation or business are operated through hierarchical structures and managed through outdated and alienating models of thought and practice. Citizens are treated like cogs in the machine by the very institutions that we fund as well as the organisations that we work for, support, or volunteer our time towards.
For us to become a nation fit for 21st century we have much to address.
So how do we go about solving these issues?
It sounds dire doesn’t it? Yet within all these problems we can see that things have been better in the past and can be better in the future.
It is against this backdrop of modernity that social action has the potential to reconnect people and communities. Reforming the social bonds which united us and empowering us to work together in a shared society.
So are there solutions?
There are solutions galore!
Housing Associations and Community Groups are producing local newsletters. Town Councils are funding community events. District Councils are funding diversity projects. County Councils are working on place-based approaches and social prescribing. Employers are allocating staff time and resources to local volunteer opportunities. Charities are doing everything they possibly can and philanthropy and funders are supporting them in delivering their work.
Everyone knows that the way in which we approach problems is changing — but do we know why?
Taking a step back
Sometimes it can help to take a step back and take stock of what we see in front of us. Is there a way in which we can more simply understand what is happening and why?
What is the context of all of these activities? What is the political situation? Does technology have a part to play? Are there environmental and economic factors to consider? What is the social picture?
The SOCIAL PICTURE GOES HERE (PESTLE)
What is the future of business?
What is the future of the economy?
What is the future of local economies?
What is the future of education?
What is the future of health and wellbeing?
What is the future of community development?
What is the future of local democracy?
What is the future of citizenship?
A Transition to 21st Century Economies & Nations
At Socially Enterprising we believe that we are entering the very early stages of a transition into a new type of economy and a new type of society and the key factor in this transition, the enabler and the driver, is the Internet.
We are entering into the Networked Age and it will dramatically change the way we work, organise, and think.
This is a civilisation level of change. It will be exponential, and it won’t stop.
This will lead us to approach problems differently
One of the first effects we will see will be network based approaches to problem solving which will; connect organisations who are working in around a problem; break organisational silos, pull down walls, and negate distances; lead to pooling and sharing of information and knowledge; generate shared value and efficient use of resources; encourage partnerships, transparency and openness.
It will create a different world
A world which is everything and everyone is connected and networked is a world which behaves differently and will need different skills, abilities, and knowledge to navigate and operate within.
Businesses will need to embed innovation and staff development as continuous core functions.
Individuals will need to embrace Lifelong Learning and develop 21st Century Skills.
Civil Society, The State, and Business will need to find new ways of communicating and collaborating with each other.
Government will need to understand how the state, society, and business will be shaped and changed by the network at the same time it is being shaped and changed. It will be a responsibility to look through the curve of progress and possibility to plot where we as a nation wish to navigate towards and identify the issues and obstructions we will face along the way. We will need a Future’s Strategy that fully connects with our institutions and our accelerating technologies.
How does this fit in with Socially Enterprising?
When we step back and look at the big picture we see a number of patterns which we believe to be important and helpful in understanding today’s problems and can guide is towards future behaviours and ways of doing things.
We are transitioning into a future of permanent and accelerating change
Collaboration and diverse groups will be the norm
The most efficient solving of national problems is through a shared responsibility between The State, Civil Society, and Business
All people and organisations can develop and improve
All problems create opportunities
We are moving from transactional models of thinking and doing to relational models. From mechanistic to natural (permaculture). Industrial to sustainable. Detached to connected. Global to local.
Lifelong Learning will be the norm
We are all held back in life through poor personal and social education
We must all be aware of our rights and the rights of others
Empathy creates better people, places, products & services
Full inclusivity and accessibility will become the norm
Working in diverse groups creates understanding, empathy, and solidarity
That everything is our responsibility
We will have multiple overlapping roles; as individuals, as organisations, and as networks. As equal peers it will be our responsibility to possess a level of awareness concerning rights, wellbeing, and democratic decision making.
We also believe that there is one common denominator which connects everything together in the Problem Tree, The Solution Tree and the Future Tree.
That common denominator is PLACE.
Here’s the Socially Enterprising Formula
Connecting it all together through place-based social action
A future organisation
We believe that an organisation that is dedicated to the transition to a new economy ‘must’ represent that new future. It has to live by its future values.
Cooperative, collaborative, inclusive, accessible, caring, creative, and innovative.
Our Mind, Body & Soul structure is part of this design.
But in order for us to live by our values it is vital for us to create a set of shared values which the organisation will use as a basis for all decisions. They form our character and will lead us towards our mission, goals and aims.
Our purpose, beliefs and the way we go about doing things defines our spirit and personality.
It is through these that we become not just a brand or identity. Instead we become purposeful, intelligent and guided throughout the entire organisation from function through to culture.
Intelligent Social Action
There was a point after I developed the first Socially Enterprising prototype that I nearly decided to quit it completely. My idea just didn’t feel fully formed enough and I’d put months of work in throughout 2014.
It did prove the concept though and the technology platform was sound.
This is the talk which set my resolve to carry on. I was definitely onto something.
The talk is from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Dr Billy Osteen is a professor in community engagement and service learning and here he talks about the student response to the earthquake and how he coupled their Student Volunteer Army with their university education to produce some quite profound results.
He defines Service Learning as combining 1. Service 2. Academic Content 3. Critical Reflection
Which produces outcomes in 1. Professional Education 2. Citizenship Education 3. Personal Growth
Social Action by itself is good.
Social Action combined with education and reflection is life changing!
It’s possible to see this in the Million Hands initiative of The Scouts in the UK which creates local partnerships between the community, The Scouts, and a relevant charity.
The past 4 years I’ve been working in the local community and in local government as a District Councillor and I know that my idea is now ready for the world and that it can make a big impact.
Community Partnerships
There is an upswell of social responses to social problems that is leading to new ways of working through networks and together in new partnerships.
Positive People connects job seekers to their local community so that they can develop their confidence, make new friends, learn new skills and try new activities. They reconnect the person to the real world and provide the personal one-to-one support to help people move forward in their lives.
Helston and the Lizard Works, is helping 200 people who are out of work to gain skills, work experience and enhance their CVs through projects that will benefit communities.
They combine a local partnership (Jobcentre Plus, local councils, Cornwall College, Volunteer Cornwall, Inclusion Cornwall, Helston Community College, Active Plus and Lizard Pathways and managed by Helston Town Council) with personal, social and community need.
These responses are flourishing around the UK and changing people’s lives for the better and they all appear to have a common foundation which builds upon the things which we as humans do best.
We socialise, we empathise, and we help each other through our ideas and actions.
Building on Experience
Socially Enterprising also builds upon my experience of working with long-term unemployed on a DWP funded project called Confidence Club.
We were looking to engage with people with mental health issues in a way that would give them back the confidence they’d lost over time.
We ran the sessions in the local arts centre. We brought in a dance teacher for one session. We brought in activities which were on around town for people to try. We practiced meditation. We listened to each other. We visited the library to encourage people to try their events. We went to the local river and fed the ducks. We did fun stuff together. We supported each other.
We used goal setting and coaching and we had support from Mind the mental health charity.
We believed that any approach from the job centre which forced people with mental health problems to do something would just cause more harm than good.
Our approach was much more about getting people back on their feet, used to trying new things, learning how to socialise again, and simply breaking the monotony of being stuck at home.
There were similarities in what we’d read and learned about Hillary Cottom’s work on The Life Programme. We were doing something different because what was being done before wasn’t working.
Positive People takes a similar approach. It’s about treating people like human beings.
There’s something quite natural about looking at people’s lives in this way. You don’t make a plant grow by forcing it. A plant will grow when it’s in a suitable environment and it’s nurtured and fed. This is life.
It’s this human touch which you’ll see a lot of in Socially Enterprising. It’s about us and about how amazing we can be when we work together. It’s about diversity overcoming challenges and it’s about people sharing ideas and changing people’s lives. It’s about our ingenuity and our understanding.
It’s a story as old as time and it’s something we forgot along the way.
A Transition Engine
So how do you define Socially Enterprising?
Socially Enterprising is more than one ‘thing’ which makes it difficult to define. Perhaps it would be better understood as an ecosystem but even that somehow resists application.
I’ve added a section below which discussed cMOOCs and is worth reading in connection with this problem of defining Socially Enterprising.
For now I’m going to give one very simple attempt:
Socially Enterprising is a social network for social change.
Which I feel doesn’t do justice to what it is, why it is, or how it does it.
Here’s another go:
Socially Enterprising is a Transition Engine. It facilitates transitions by creating bridges between latency and possibility. It then connects people to the support required to traverse them.
This feels much more like it and it can be applied to everything that our platform is able to support.
Social Mobility
Capacity Building
Aligning Funding
New Ways of Working
Equality, Discrimination & Rights
Inclusivity and Accessibility
Community Development
21st Century Skills
Design Thinking and Innovation
Lifelong Learning
Health and Wellbeing
Active Citizenship
Local Media
All of these and more are part of a larger transition to a New Economy and a Networked/Participatory Society. By creating these bridges for people, places and organisations we provide a route for gradual; personal, organisational, societal, economical and environmental improvement.
The Scouts have their Million Hands initiative (a simply excellent idea). Socially Enterprising is a ‘transition engine’ for a million people and a million organisations, to take a million steps, on a million journeys of improvement. With every step along the way connected to benefiting the lives of local people.
Understanding CMOOCs and Personalised Learning
In this video Stephen Dowes (co-inventor of the MOOC) talks about education in a connected age.
I mention Stephen’s work to demonstrate that something happens when we fully incorporate the network (the Internet) with something that was previously very easy to define, in this instance course-based education.
Stephen’s work moves us from a linear approach through to something which has complete freedom.
If you think of the difference between a train and car there are some similarities. The train accepts passengers (students) at stations (physical universities) at set times (semesters) according to their timetable (course programme). Passengers (students) travel through a series of stations (modules) with their validity to continue travel assessed by tests (ticket punching) eventually arriving at their final destination (a degree certificate).
For the purpose of accuracy it’s worth bearing in mind that they only arrive there after paying an extortionate fee for the privilege. It really is a lot like British Rail.
A cMOOC by comparison completely changes the conceptual model to one of freedom - the railtrack disappears to be replaced with a network. So to continue the analogy it is a move from rail to road. Students (drivers) are now empowered to freely travel between stations towards any destination they desire changing their minds along the way.
In a world of constant change necessitating Lifelong Learning it’s easy to see which is the most suitable approach for education!
Hopefully this helps to make visible a conceptual connection between one aspect of Socially Enterprising and Stephen’s work. They are not the same! I am just trying to guide you towards a way of seeing how things can operate differently when we embrace networked based approaches.
When we move community development, lifelong learning, democracy, social action etc into networked understanding we can begin to realise many new benefits and opportunities for everyone involved.
There are new ways of achieving mutual benefits and positive results.
Speaking of vehicles…
Vehicles are quite a good way of describing what a Transition Engine moves towards for each driver (the type of user/member).
A person looking for a job or a new career can get into Socially Enterprising and drive towards education and employment.
A company can get in and drive towards organisational transformation and staff development.
A civil society organisation can drive forward towards their aims and goals.
A charity can get in and support and promote involvement of their beneficiaries and generate awareness, understanding and empathy.
There is a direct benefit to each type of user.
Community level organisations such as Community Orgs or Town Councils see their aims achieved through the combined efforts of a community or a town towards wider economic and social goals.
At larger geographic scales it is the shared values which help to set the course and direction. Like a sail they capture energy from accumulated activity, providing sufficient energy to move societal or economic conditions towards those desired outcomes.
Taking a look at Communities of Practice
COPs are communities which form around a common interest and collaborate with each other.
Here’s a very simple introduction. Whilst watching I would ask you to consider what COPs could look like within a Community (Environment & Litter, Parenting, Peer-Support, Small Businesses) and also Community Development (the practice) with its own areas of associated knowledge and expertise.
From the simple introduction above we move onto a detailed talk from the originator of the theory that expands out into a 21st century model for learning.
It also looks at questions of how we develop our identity in such an environment and the importance of personalized guidance in this new landscape of personal and professional, education and development.
Platforms for Communities of Practice
Here’s an interesting TED Talk on how the Digital Library of the Caribbean came into being and the importance of Communities of Practice. It has a number of touch points on the proposed Socially Enterprising model (built by Communities of Practice, supported by Communities of Practice, and for Communities of Practice.).
Community Learning & Development
CLD is a field of professional practice that enables people to identify their own individual and collective goals, to engage in learning and take action to bring about change for themselves and their communities.
CLD uses a range of formal and informal methods of learning and social development with individuals and groups in their communities.
CLD programmes and activities are developed in dialogue with communities and participants, working particularly with those excluded from participation in the decisions and processes that shape their lives.
Through working in these ways, CLD extends the reach of democracy and widens its scope.
A CLD Worker for Aberdeenshire Council talks about the individuals, groups and online communities that enrich her practice.
Included here to make the connection between Community Learning and Development.
Which leads us on to Scotland’s bold vision for a future education system.
Scotland are already taking great strides towards this Curriculum for Excellence and the strategy is very heavily connected to Community Learning and Development.
Here we have a presentation outlining how CLD services in North Lanarkshire have worked in partnership to establish a learning culture locally and the positive impact this has had on the community.
It’s interesting to see how this connects throughout the local authority. The North Lancashire Partnership connects the Regeneration Working Group, Health & Wellbeing Working Group, Sustainable Environment Working Group, Community Safety Partnership, and Lifelong Learning Group. These connect to the North Lancashire Community Learning and Development Partnership, and these all connect through to service such as the NHS, Jobcentre Plus etc.
What happened? Bringing communities back together again
In this talk Margaret Wheatley presents to us the many problems we face in the modern world as individuals, communities and society.
This is all connected to the potential to reconnect through people, place and purpose and as Margaret notes — “to create health we need to create more connections”.
“There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” — Margaret Wheatley
What is Reality TV could be used to change reality?
Integrity Idol
Integrity Idol is a global campaign run by citizens in search of honest government officials. It aims to generate debate around the idea of integrity and demonstrate the importance of honesty and personal responsibility. We hope to inspire a new generation to be more effective public servants. Integrity Idol began in Nepal in 2014, spread to Liberia in 2015 and has now evolved into a global campaign.
Local teams of volunteers travel across their countries gathering nominations from citizens, hosting public forums and generating a national discourse on the need for public officials with integrity. The nominees are narrowed down to a final 5 in each country with the help of independent panels of experts.
These finalists are then filmed and these episodes are shown on national television and played on the radio for a week, creating a national discussion offline and online. Citizens can vote for their favourites through SMS short-codes and through the website. The winner in each country is crowned in a national ceremony in the capital.
We are now building a network between these finalists and supporting their reform efforts. Over time, we hope a network like this can shift behaviours and build the trust that is essential for functioning, accountable government.
Integrity Idol celebrates individuals, but those that serve the public good. It provides an outlet for a national conversation in positive terms about the change we’d like to see and the people we would like to be working in government on our behalf.
The Other Real World
Reality TV may be popular around the world, but it’s also roundly mocked as formulaic and contrived. So, can that kind of fragile fantasy world meaningfully influence reality?
Perhaps it’s only shallow because it doesn’t set out to be anything else!
We look at the goals and impact of a UN-backed reality show called “Inspire Somalia,” that attempted to model democracy and freedom in a country racked by decades of clan warfare and oppression by extremist groups like al-Shabab.
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The building of a new economy
Michel Bauwens of the P2P Foundation has been pioneering in his work and thinking.
Here Michel talks about Four Scenarios for the Collaborative Economy.
The importance of anticipating change
The world can change at a rapid pace and it’s possible to be completely taken by surprise by the ramifications of what on the surface may appear quite minor at the time.
Jeremy Rifkin speaks about the 3rd Industrial Revolution.
Tesla’s latest company is Neuralink a brain computer interface company. As he quite rightly says many of us are already cyborg, it’s just that the technology is in our pocket and not our minds.
It’s my belief that we are already existing within the network and we need to dedicate resources to understanding what that means.
There is a lot more to the idea of Socially Enterprising than a social network platform or place-based social action.
There are risks to the future we are entering but there are also incredible opportunities for the flourishing of humanity.
We need to understand what the effects of networks are and how they operate at a societal level. We need to understand their properties and their potential. We need to know how to recognise beneficial aspects as well as negatives.
We understand that education can now be detached from a physical institution and placed within the Internet (cMOOC) allowing us to directly steer and navigate our own personalized education but what other properties and functions can become part of that digital universe?
At Socially Enterprising we believe that social mobility is one of the properties which can be embedded within the network and join with us in the physical.
We believe that every positive action or step can have a beneficial result on your life and the lives of others.
There is so much more that networks are capable of.
Like instruments they have properties which can be tuned and amplified finding resonances and harmonies. Brought together to form entire orchestras. Played by individuals or conducted by groups. It is these potentials which we are not realising, but one day we will see entire symphonies of human endeavour in which we all play a part as audience, composer or musician.
When we consider these potentials I feel that it is obvious to discuss ownership and control.
We as a society are being shaped by something we don’t understand and most importantly by things which we are not in control and can be unethical, amoral and without values. As a society we should not be placed in this position.
Ownership has to be with the people, it has to be ethical, it has to be right. Let’s not recreate our own bloody mess of a world.
We have the power to create something better if we choose to do so.
