Powering a new future

I caught two happy-looking people at the end of the conference and got some short reactions from them about the event. They had been presenting the results of years of working together in an EQUAL funded project called Anim@Te.

I asked Graça what she thought of the conference. She was very enthusiastic about the reaction of people to their project. People had applauded their work and there was a great connection of ideas.

Graça then asked Paulo what he was taking away with him.

“It was an important meeting of ideas, sharing of information and a sense of hope that some of these ideas will continue, and an idea that people will incorporate some of these ideas in their work.”

Maria Emília Arroz faz parte do Gabinete da Equal Portugal. Perguntei-lhe o que achou do evento. Ao que ela respondeu: foi um evento para celebrar os nossos sucessos dos últimos 8 anos. O evento também era para abrir espaços para conversa. Os próximos passos? Um desafio grande vai ser como segurar “a inovação social” nas futuras actividades.

David Marshall spoke to Richard Tyrie, both of whom are co-founders of Jobsgopublic. Richard, a social entrepreneur himself, was talking in the session about mainstreaming and scaling up social innovation.

David started by asking what he thought of the event…

“It was good to see people with so much passion, people who are genuinely motivated to see the labour market working more effectively.”

What struck you most by what you’ve seen and heard ?

“There were a lot of parallels between the different projects. One of key themes to emerge is the need for innovative solutions, to be creative from the bottom up rather than top-down. It’s an iterative design process. There is no plan, it’s something that has to be co-created. There’s been a fair bit around risk and how to change the attitude to risk and see that failure is a helathy thing…

“What’s been notably absent is the matter of knowledge around talent and the need to understand what talent is required to identify the need for innovation, to create innovation, to deliver innovation and to sustain it over a long term. There seems to be a bit of a blind spot for working in collaborations with various other organisations. Unless someone is responsibile for making sure that that partnership has the right talents, then they are at a disadvantage before they start. There might be several organisations contributing complementary  skills.”

Washington told me about Afroreggae in Brasil. I asked him what he was doing here…

“I’m here in the name of the cultural gorup Afroreggae. Afroreggae is a group of social inclusion of art for culture. It started fifteen years ago after one of the biggest police killings. The police were taking revenge on the comunity of a narcotics groups, killing innocent people in the process. We’ve got 14 cultural groups, doing workshops of dance, percussion, circus, working in 4 favelas in Rio de Janeiro. They are areas completely run-down through violence and from being abandoned.”

What do you do in Afroreggae?

“I’m mediator of conflicts in Afroregae. Afroreggae specialises in mediating conflicts, operating in areas of drug traffiking. We live in a daily war between narcotics dealers and between them and the police. We work in this area so that the social spaces and work can continue.”

How did you enter the group of Afroreggae?

“I was in the narcotics trade. I started at the age of thirteen and at nineteen became the head of one of the factions that dominates in Rio de Janeiro. I was put in prison and when I left had no future, almost returning to trafikkking in narcotics. I was introduced to someone in Afroreggae by a vicar who we both knew.  He invited me to work with them. At the begining I didn’t think I could. As far as I knew they were about percussion music. But he spent the whole afternoon explaining the concept of Afroreggae, this thing of mediation of taking young people away from narcotics, of giving them opportunities through culture. And me, with my life experience could be a strong weapon for taking young people away from trafikking or stopping them from entering that world.  My management of narcotics was, unfortunately, part of my youth. He said that using this experience for good would be a strong weapon for Afroreggae to take children away from trafiiking. Having understood that I actually have a higher education in something I wanted to enter and work, where I’ve been for two years. Just this month we’ve been involved in a project of employability and got 30 young people working in private companies, sensitising them to the work of Afroreggae and who are partners in this project.”

Afroreggae transformed your life?

“Yes, they projected my life and the lives of other people like me who didn’t have any opportunity.”

Paula Vicente talks about people’s dissatisfaction with the lack of information in prison services. They started “Espaço I” (iSpace) where anyone could go for information about what is happening in their prison. going online has been crucial for sharing information between prisons. They started fifteen communities of practice with people working in prisons meeting up face-to-face every fortnight.

Ben Metz, the UK director of Ashoka, talked about the emerging ecology of support for social change and innovation in the UK, providing finance ranging from a few thousands pounds for individuals with a simple innovative idea, through to more substantial investments for more mature, larger organisations.

Ben described the work of Unltd, the Princes Trust, the School for Social Entrepreneurs, Social Innovation Camp, and his own organisation Ashoka. In each case, Ben said:

Success is realised through these organisations by placing the individual, the innovator, the entrpeneur, at the centre of the system and designing things around them.

Ben said the people working in the organisations, had strong personal links, and this was leading to development of a UK community of social innovation.

Earlier: Ben on More passion, less paper for social innovation

Tom Wolff talked about partnerships and collaborative solutions as sparks and catalysts for social change and innovation. He said he understood collaboration to be “doing together that which you cannot do apart”. A more formal definition is:

A collaboration is a group of individuals and organisations with a common interest who agree to work together to a common goal.

The advantage of collaboration is that agencies can provide a rounded solution to problems - but in order to achieve that we need to bring to the table everyone who has a part to play, including those who would benefit. Tom offered six principles of collaboration

1. Engage a broad spectrum of the community
2. Practice true collaboration. This involved going beyond networking (talking to each other); coordination (modified activities); and cooperation (sharing resources). Collaboration occurred when you aimed to enhance the capacity of others involved.
3. Practice democracy, so that decisions are made by the group as a whole
4. Employ an ecological approach, looking at the strengths and weaknesses in the community
5. Take action - you can’t achieve change just by sitting talking
6. Align your goals and the process. For example, if you wish to develop a respectful community, you can’t achieve that by disrespectful leaderships.

Overall, research shows that successful collaborations require a clear vision; actions to get to your goals; broad leadership within the group, not just one leader; technical assistance; resources and also being prepared to work with conflict, not avoid it.

Etienne Wenger was at the event to talk about community knowledge, learning and identity. These are notes of what he said about EQUAL, the need to supporting social artists and learning citizenship.

“When I look at EQUAL and the hope for EQUAL I’m pushed to ask - what is the real potential legacy of EQUAL? Where is the sources of real innovativeness and how do you get those 320 solutions you say you have from a website into the lives of people?

“The real legacy of EQUAL is that of trying to build the social infrastructure of innovation. This is hard work. It takes a complex system of communities and networks to do this. We need to talk to each other beyond our countries and cultures in order to see how we can give a voice of EQUAL to see how to create this social structure.

“The key success factor we’ve found is learning citizenship where learning citizenship is a personal commitment to seeing how we are as citizens in this world. Let me give you and example: I know an oncological surgeon in Ontario, Canada who asks himself how to provide the social infrastructure for patients to learn about cancer. An act of learning citizenship is to be able to use who you are to open this space for learning. I’ve come to call these people social artists, people who can create a space where people can find their own sense of learning citizenship.

I love social artists. In fact I worship them. First because social artists know how to do what I only know how to talk about; and second because I care about the learning of this planet. I think we are in a race between learning and survival. We live in a knowledge economy where any expertise is too complex for any one person. One person can’t be an expert so anyone who can give voice to that need to to work together is a social artist.

I do a lot of consultancy work for training community leaders, but in my heart of hearts I know the real secret of those social artists is not something I can teach. The real secret of those people is knowing how to use who you are as a vehicle for opening spaces for learning.  I don’t really have the words - but I just know when I see it. It is a way of tapping into who you are and of making that a gift to the world … it’s about being able to use who I am to take my community to a new level of learning and performance.

I want to leave you with three questions…

1. How can you act as a learning citizen in this world?
2. How can we as a group help , sustain, celebrate that capability among ourselves? If EQUAL has done a bit of that - how do we capture it, nurture it cherish it?
3. For those of you who are movers and shakers - how can you build an institutional structure that enables people to find their voice in the interests of the people they want to serve? Social artists need to fight … How can we enable a structure that enables those people to do the work that they do?

These are urgent questions. Social innovation a matter of the heart, not just projects. We need you to do that for the world, not just Europe.

Twenty five years ago I looked around and said that I wanted to be part of powering a new future.I saw it wasn’t going to happen in Switzerland and went to the US. Now I see that ESF is creating a social learning system across countries and cultures … it’s trying to do something we don’t know how to do. Across Europe you are offering concrete examples of how, as a planet, we could be building the social infrastructure. And I’ll be back to see how you are doing it.

Closing comment at the end of the panel: one thing that comes to me is the notion of spaces of trust - trust comes out of a focus on practice.  Trust when you focus on practice and what you care about. Knowledge is easy, practice isn’t. Social artists are good at recognising the practioner in each of us.

The sibling conflict, with new small sister

-”Go change into something decent. Why are you wearing this mini-skirt, my sister should dress properly and not walk around in this stupid short skirt!” The young guy towers over his sister and acts threatening.

-”But all the girls wear the same… I think I can dress the way I like” the sister shouts back. Their conflict escalates and the brother hits the sister.

This is a small scene a group of youngsters from Vale da Amoreira showed. At this point Gisella steps forward in the group of young actors and asks -to actors, audience and everybody in general: “Now how could this have been solved differently?” After a few general suggestions an especially responsive person from the audience is invited to come forward. A huge lad now takes the necklace of the girl and takes over the role of Michaela. The scene starts with the girls dancing, the brother comes up to them and starts again: Go change into something decent!… Only this time he is talking to a man his own size. The new actor tries to stand up for his right to wear what s/he chooses, but to prevent conflict.

The Grupo de Teatro Fórum do Vale de Amoreira is demonstrating the way Forum Theatre works.. by doing it. Forum theatre is a way to both work with groups of actors, engage them in something which will give them self-esteem AND reach out to others by doing it, in the schools, in the neighbourhoods.

Afterwards I meet some of the actors. They are between 15 and 34 years old, and meet twice a week to practise. They think of their themes themselves, and do not use any written scripts. In the videos they talk about themselves. The videos are in Portuguese.

Ben Metz, UK director of Ashoka, which support social entreprenuers, dropped by the social reporting newsdesk before his session. We invited him to give us a preview - and he explained how he and others aim to promote the idea of social innovation and entrepreneurship during the next few years of European funding programmes.

Ben wants to more of the grassroots people-centred approaches prevalant in the UK, and light-touch funding support with less paperwork. More passion, less paper, Ben hopes.