How can we work together to build community power?
What will 2020 bring for local communities? As 2019 draws to a close and the country digests the implications of the general election result, a vital debate is brewing over the future of community power and the role of local authorities.
It starts from a shared goal that New Citizenship Project wholeheartedly endorses: to create a radical shift away from centralised power hoarding and top-down bureaucratic delivery, and towards the building of genuine power for local communities and active citizens.
We passionately believe that, given the opportunity, people have the desire and capability to shape the society they live in for the better. But the thorny question is always how to create the conditions for that to happen.
In November, Adam Lent of the National Local Government Network (NLGN) set out the case for a new piece of legislation, a Community Power Act, to kick-start the revolution. This sparked an illuminating debate, with leading practitioners such as Radical Help author Hilary Cottam, Power to Change CEO Vidhya Alakeson and the London Borough of Redbridge’s Simon Parker arguing that we should focus on culture and mindset, rather than legislation. As Hilary puts it, surely the solution lies in looking sideways, not upwards?
To help move the debate forward, we want to suggest a way of thinking about this radical shift in a way that doesn’t pitch the “hardware” of legislation, hierarchical authority and money against the “software” of culture, mindset and local action.
In short, we back the NLGN’s call for a Community Power Act. We argue, however, that it can only be as good as the process that creates it, the principles and culture that underpin it, and the extent to which it appreciates and builds upon the excellent work already being done by existing change-makers in both local government, community organisations and grassroots groups.
Why we need both culture and legislation
Our position draws on our experiences working with dozens of organisations including local authorities, membership organisations, non-profits, co-operatives and private businesses to cultivate authentic citizen participation.
We’ve seen up close through our work that “Big Bang” solutions rarely shift cultures and mindsets on their own. It’s always vital to also establish and maintain everyday practices and “rituals” that embed changes in behaviour, culture and mindset. From this perspective, we wholly understand some of the skepticism that NLGN’s proposal may be met with.
But in our work, we have also come to understand the importance of what we call “totems”: landmark, attention-grabbing interventions that signal the scale and nature of intent, and embody the story of the future you are trying to build.
Done well, a Community Power Act would act as such a totem. It would demonstrate through action, rather than words, that communities can trust that the government’s commitment to change is serious. It would signal that the rules of the game have changed and that more possibilities are now available. Under the right conditions, a Community Power Act could galvanise a radical shift towards increased community power.
How to get the best of both worlds
So yes, we back the call for a Community Power Act — but how can we develop and implement one effectively, and in a way that helps to build a culture of community power?
Clearly, the act would only ultimately succeed if it catalyses a tangible shift in what citizens think, know, feel and do in terms of their ability to shape the places in which they live. But legislation cannot do this alone. Instead, it takes a movement of “intrapreneurs” and change-makers who are, right now, working in local governments, community organisations and grassroots groups, striving to bring about the cultural and systemic change needed for a more participatory future.
Therefore, we propose that the worth of any Community Power Act should be judged on whether it equips, and opens up space for, those intrapreneurs and leaders.
Thinking about the value and design of a Community Power Act through the lens of the intrapreneur will help us to reconcile the culture/structure debate. Practically speaking, it means keeping a laser focus on how the mechanisms and levers of legislation connect to the everyday know-how, actions and culture-building activity of those who are catalysing change at the coalface, despite significant resistance and inertia.
It invites us to ask how a Community Power Act could:
- Give intrapreneurs and community leaders the space and the resources they need to establish and embed new cultures that will transform local government and local places
- Remove barriers and resistance to cultural change
- Enable intrapreneurs and community leaders to support new practices of community power and community wealth building
Can we do it in a way that builds the culture of community power?
Our challenge to the sector is: what would it take for those on the “culture” side of the debate to not only see the possible value of a Community Power Act, but also actively embrace it as an extension of their own work and participate in its co-creation?
To do this, we propose an open, participatory and deliberative democratic process, initiated and delivered by the community sector itself, to underpin the co-creation of the Act. This process would go far deeper than the usual legislative consultation run by governments. We believe that this will help craft an act that cuts with the grain of what is already working, widens investment and buy-in, and equips existing change-makers while opening up space for new ones to enter the field.
Crucially, citizens must be involved directly in this process. If we are going to figure out how to create a radical reformation in how power is wielded, it’s absolutely essential that the voices of citizens are heard in that debate. This would mean NLGN members and community organisations working with citizens to explore what would be in any act and sharing the results across the country, thus creating a wellspring of unignorable demand for community power legislation that comes authentically from the governed, not the government.
Towards a #CitizenShift
Vidhya Alakeson’s response to the debate offered a bracing challenge to the sector: “do you fundamentally believe that people are experts in their own lives?”. Our answer is a full-throated “yes”. By involving the diverse voices of citizens in collective storytelling and deliberation, we can discover common purpose on which to build stories of a more participatory future.
Most exciting of all, citizens’ voices might lead us away from hackneyed stories of the powerful centre and the “left behind” periphery. New narratives might emerge: not so much about better services and the struggle over resources, but about what Simon Parker calls a “shift in the democratic consciousness”.
This is what we call the #CitizenShift, and our goal is to work with others to create the cultural interventions that make it happen. We look forward to continuing the debate about how to make a more participatory, community-powered society a reality.
