David Barrie

Who are the recruiting sergeants of The Big Society?

The Big Society is fast emerging as the Cool Britannia vibe of the new Coalition Government in the U.K.

We know the objectives of the Big Society. Five policies were set down in a Government statement in May to give citizens, communities and local government the power and information they need to come together, solve the problems they face and build the Britain they want.

We also have a pretty good idea of what can go wrong. Earlier this month, they were outlined by Nat Wei, the founder of the Big Society Network in a long and inviting blog post. 

So how is it going to happen? And who's going to make it happen? 

At the moment, all eyes are set on boosting the social enterprise sector - and there is little doubt that entities that merge the profit motive and moral imperative are important not just to establishing 'people power' but also making a social economy, where commercial markets have failed to deliver consumers the value that they want. 

There's also a big push on Digital Engagement - finding ways and means by which people can access technology, benefit from it and win ownership of the greatest global commodity of them all - information.

What's great about the push on these fronts is that they emphasize building networks of people through ad hoc structures rather than new formal government structures.

What needs to happen next though is to expand the idea dramatically and practically - daring to assume that people won't just gather behind civic causes because they see democracy as a way of life and that the idea behind the Big Society is to enlist people other than the known cadre of 'militant optimists'.

There are plenty of examples of initiatives both here and in the United States that exemplify social and economic change based upon promoting the principal of shared information and self-organization.

Here are a few, devoted to democratizing public planning, focus upon place-making and all picture problem-solving alliances of people:

• the constellation of Development Trusts, community land trusts and community interest companies that have been set up in the U.K.
• multi-stakeholder partnerships that have come together around specific themes, such as the Community Capital Investment Initiative in San Francisco, with its link between economic development, environmental quality and social equity
• the community, environmental, faith-based and labor organizations in the United States who have formed coalitions with real estate developers in a direct legal contract known as a Community Benefits Agreement
• area-based land development projects in the U.K.that have gathered diverse communities together, formed consensual objectives and triggered local stewardship of an on-going process of renewal and public participation - see projects of mine in Castleford and Middlesbrough in Northern England

How might we adapt and apply some of the thinking behind these to the Big Society and trigger a new wave of ad-hoc structures in support of change? 

How might we tap up for societal gain the ethos captured in this brilliant piece of graffiti:

Some suggestions:   

• focus the new Government's commitment to training community organizers on public sector workers about to be made unemployed by public expenditure cuts
• set aside a proportion of investment granted to Local Economic Partnerships and the remaining Regional Development Agencies and announced in the 2010 Budget to enable the building of coalitions of local community groups and allow those coalitions to enter in to direct contractual agreements with real estate developers on Section 106 agreements and planning gain
  
• if this is too great a treasure-chest of capital receipts and power for government to give up, incentivise the public and private sectors to put Section 106 monies in to start-up, mutual enterprises devoted to delivering community management, not community centres or multi-surface play areas
• extend the idea of Business Improvement Districts beyond the standard corporate players and embrace all leaseholders and ratepayers, be it cultural organizations, governmental agencies or residents
• include in all 'strategic property vehicles' provision for community/social enterprise re-use of property assets currently held by local government and develop these sites as "mini-utilities" that enable the formation of new community enterprise or co-operatively owned and managed local services, such as healthcare

What's more: build confidence and embrace the private sector. Why?

Because these are the organizations that build wealth and customer engagement and empowerment is now recognized as intrinsic to corporate survival and sustainability. 

As the British Property Federation, lawyers Taylor Wessing and PR consultants Spada pointed out in a report on sustainability and the UK development industry published last week:

Investment in these strategies now may be a leap of faith but failure to future-proof a business so as to meet the sustainability challenge will in time become a significant commercial risk.

All images courtesy of photographer Yvan Rodic.

Shops as entertainment spaces

Last May, Turner Prize Award-winning artist Jeremy Dellar created an allotment garden for luxury retailer Louis Vuitton outside their new store in the Westfield London Shopping Centre.

The commission was strange - and not just for its combination of high fashion and soil, organic matter not known to be manicure-friendly. 

What was strange was the willingness of Westfield Group, one of the world's largest retail property companies, to choose to amuse passers-by with black plastic sacks jammed to bursting with flowers and vegetables and a Scarecrow - not exactly usual mannequin svelte (and not even dressed in Vuitton!)

Dig around though and you start to find clues to something interesting that's going on.

In a report published in September 2008, real estate advisers Jones Lang La Salle identified a trend for shopping malls to become a 'Third Place' - a concept first promoted in the late 1980s by urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg but that LaSalle applies to malls and describes as

a place where people no longer go purely to shop but rather to shop when they are out...accessible social surroundings that are separate from home and the workplace. 

And what better way is there to signal the social than to create a garden. [LaSalle's report is for download here]

In their latest forecast on the U.K. retail market - Retail 2020 - Jones Lang LaSalle go one step further and point to a continuing shift from hard retailing to something that they describe as more experiential:

Much of this has been community orientated, for instance Jamie Oliver's Recipease (the food & kitchen shop where people can learn to cook) or the de-branded Starbucks '15th Avenue' concept. 

In other words, want to learn knife skills, boning and how to cook risotto and Thai Green curry?

Answer: get out of the house, go shopping and book a class at Recipease.

And according to the head of retail at LaSalle, quoted in real estate magazine Estates Gazette, this is a part-retail, part-cultural space concept that is forecast to grow:

Retailers will have to become entertainers, compères and butlers - and throw off the purely transactional image. 

All of this is interesting not just for market traders who want a second career in showbusiness but also land-owners sitting on void retail premises and service providers trying to make sense and savings from an offline presence in a world that's increasingly online.

 

A group of us have recently opened The People's Supermarket at 72-78 Lambs Conduit Street, London, supported by an army of pro-bono advisers from the retail, property, non-profit and sustainability sectors. 

The People's Supermarket is a co-operative that plans to help families and low income groups in the community by rewarding members with a discount on their shopping for an annual membership fee of £25.00 (US$36/€30) and a commitment of four hours of their time to work in the shop every month.

Owned and managed by its members, The People's Supermarket aims to cut waste out of every part of the retail equation - using produce, property and people's time in a more efficient way than ever.

Upstairs looks like a conventional grocery store - and you'll find all the brands that you are used to seeing on the shelves of a conventional supermarket there, but often there will also be an alternative choice - healthy, locally-sourced and cheaper than usual, discounted by membership fees, lower staff overheads and expert sourcing of products from independent suppliers.

One of the exciting things is that once the building works are complete, downstairs The People's Supermarket you'll find a members' area and space for training, a children's nursery, cookery demonstrations and other activities that support the well-being of the community.

It's a diversity of activity inspired by the successful Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, New York and our aim to be a venture that generates a social and local economic profit from a premises that's been vacant for years.

 

It is not a huge leap of the imagination to turn a dead shop in a city in to a multi-functional space to service healthy living and mainstream it through a hybrid business model of social enterprise.

And now, after reading LaSalle's reports, Louis Vuitton and Westfield's sponsorship of Dellar's Scarecrow is starting to seem far from strange.

Why? 

Because we live in an age of conscientious consumption. People increasingly like to buy brands that carry a belief system. And it seems to make sense these days to offer shoppers - just like movie-goers, sports fans and volunteers - more of an experience than just a product.

Images: 1. Wonderland Magazine, 2. Morgan O'Donovan for Dazed Digital, 3. Design Week, 4. New York Times, 5/6/7/8. David Barrie

How to encourage genuine people power

Following the election of a Conservative - Liberal Democrat Government in the U.K., there's a raft of initiative and discussion just now on the role, value and opportunity of putting ordinary people and civil society at the centre of Government. 

In a paper called Building the Big Society, the Government says that

Only when people and communities are given more power and take more responsibility can we achieve fairness and opportunity for all.

And in an article on The Big Society blog, social entrepreneur Nat Wei outlines five key challenges that are going to have to be overcome in order to encourage genuine people power that has a real impact on society.

Six years ago, in support of an area-based urban renewal programme in Yorkshire, England, graphic artist Peter Anderson printed the opinions of local people on the quality of life of their town on yellow ribbon and, with the approval of local authorities we posted them in the town square.

The idea was cute - but just one of many many different things that a cast of hundreds cooked in the town to build community power and enable local groups to assume the role of client/director of the process of revitalization. (See case study: Regeneration as Social Innovation, not a War Game)

One of the inspirational elements of the Big Society policy initiative is that several key pennies seem to be dropping, evidenced by the process in Castleford (evaluated by The Young Foundation) but also, more importantly, countless area-based community regeneration programmes across the U.K.

An understanding that

• 'People power' is not about 'community consultation' - i.e. sampling opinion or asking people what they think - but initiating economic and social initiative that supports their needs and so draws their involvement

• It is proactive engagement by people in the future of their communities that enables a robust planning system, a system which as Gary Porter of the Local Government Association points out is capable of dealing with the significant challenges we face

• And cutting-edge innovation - as cited in Asheem Singh's The Venture Society - is about creating platforms that are places where a culture, not just a strategy is created (to paraphrase Google CEO Eric Schmidt)

All of this implies, in the words of an anonymous graffiti artist captured by fashion photographer Viktor Vauthier:
 

But how to encourage 'people power'?

How to stimulate it in a way that supports economic growth without - and let's make an assumption here - triggering a new Angry Brigade, Weather Underground or Symbionese Liberation Army - nihilists who run counter to the consensus that neo-liberal markets and politicians require?

Over the last few years, we've designed, advised and helped organize many public projects with real estate developers, local government and communities in towns and cities like Middlesbrough, Cardiff, Moscow and now London - always committed to project delivery, not architecting blah, i.e. "social infrastructure master planning" or the like. 

In the spirit of a sharing economy - but withholding critical choreography - here's an eight-step plan to cure addiction to command-and-control 'consultation' and transfer power to a more self-sustaining Big Society:

• Network local networks
• Find a medium that invites 'militant optimism', such as public space, food, consumer lifestyle
• Co-design a process with local people that they will join because it enables them to be who they want to be and supports, rather than co-opts their personal struggle
• Read up on what the military calls an inkspot strategy - you may need it
• Design a strategy based on 88p bath plug projects, not executive bathroom suites, inspired in part by the fact that there's now a rising value to products with lower life-cycle emissions
• Become a hermit and read ALL relevant national, regional and local government strategies and sync what you're planning up with them
• Commit entirely to self-sufficiency - the ability to fund the future through earned revenue alone - though you might end up combining it with philanthropy and government subsidy
• Create a business plan. Write it. Rewrite it. Write it again. Then just when you're the right side of suicidal, hesitate, try to make a start, hesitate again, and then
• Jump

Sound expensive? Well, it's not.

It just demands that leaders of corporations and institutions banish from their heads the idea that they don't get the citizens they deserve.

And they commit to action, not words - something entrepreneurs are up to every waking moment of the day.

Images: all mine, other than Viktor Vauthier graffiti (lost web reference but just RSS the site - he's amazing)