Powering a new future

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.

The group SDM BQG has been entertaining us with rap singing. Their lyrics are in Portuguese and talk about the cruel world and cold hearts. But it all turns more positive towards the end. The chorus is an advise to all of us: I can’t change the world but …. I can change one person…

Estes jovens do grupo SDM BQG têm estado a animar os visitantes do evento com as suas canções rap. Os textos falam de uma mudança na maneira de pensar.

Escrevo com sentimento, e abro o coração, e faço ver a todos que tudo tem uma solução.
Vive cada dia e cada dia a aprender.
O mundo é cruel não te deixes perder. Caminhos sem brilho, consciências pesadas julgam tudo e todos. E o mundo de pernas viradas.
Caso não saibas, só tu podes mudar e teu coração frio e a maneira de pensar. … de pensar… de uma forma diferente. De pensar… e agir como gente. Se alguém do bem dá o teu primeiro passo. Ser igual ser diferente, bro -não é esse o caso. Nada muda e um só não faz diferença. Eu falo ao mundo inteiro e mudei a minha cabeça.

O fim é uma lembrança a todos nós: Posso não mudar o mundo… mas mudo uma pessoa…

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.

“I couldn’t have imagined that this event would be this huge. The Portuguese have done a very good job…” says Kimon Pappas of the Transnationality Unit in the DG Employment of the European Commission. Listen also to what he hopes to take home as a concrete result of this event.

While everybody here at “Powering a New Future” is happily visiting booths, engaging in consultancy clinics or listening in at one of the three auditioria, a story unfolds in the margin.

While yesterday these people were holding notes saying EX, CLU and SION, today to my surprise they held different signs. They also looked much happier. I wonder what will happen to them tomorrow…

Allen Mercer, the Commission’s thematic expert for employability, talks about the conclusions of a session with Ana Martins of GPS in Portugal, the UWV Social Security Agency of the Netherlands and Washington Rimas of Afroreggae in Brasil. He reinforced the slogan of many EQUAL beneficiaries:

“Nothing for us without us” or, or in other words, “Don’t do it for us, do it with us.”

He also stressed the importance of involving experts through experience so that people are then seen as part of the solution rather than being regarded as part of the problem.

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.

Na apresentação do grupo teatro fórum do Vale da Amoreira falaram de “bairros problemáticos”. Uma senhora do público perguntou: “acham que são problemáticos os vossos bairros?” A resposta dos jovens foi unanime: “Não.” Falei com a senhora, Rôsangela Rabel.