How do you make a Citizens Action Network (CAN)? - The Alternative UK
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These slides are part of The Alternative UK's 2020 presentation on Citizens Action Networks - their definition, their tools, and the methods and stages of their assembly. For more, visit www.thealternative.org.uk
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How do you make a Citizens Action Network (CAN)? - The Alternative UK
- 1. What is a Citizens' Action Network? YES WE CAN!
- 3. Where any person can go in their local community to participate in the solutions to the multiple crises we face. And in so doing find belonging, meaning. And agency. Where local civil society organisations can collaborate with local, national and global organisations to provide real, creative and effective solutions. While prototyping a new democracy. Where we can begin the process of getting the UK to carbon neutral by 2025 without waiting for Westminster to agree. i we world A Citizens Action Network Is…
- 4. What problem does a CAN solve? THE WICKED PROBLEM OF SAVING THE PLANET, KNOWING WE HAVE THE TOOLS BUT CAN'T USE THEM I WE WORLD WE NEED HIGH LEVEL, HUMAN CENTRED, INTEGRATION OF ACTION-BASED SOLUTIONS WITH PLANETARY IMPACT
- 5. FROM: homo economicus enslaved to the growth economy
- 6. TO: a complex bio-psycho-social-spiritual-playful human
- 7. FROM: top down, tail-wagging, democracy
- 8. TO: engaged, connected, empowered people
- 9. FROM: a globalized growth economy killing the planet
- 10. TO: cosmo-local communities reconnected to planet
- 12. 1 HOW TO MAKE A CAN: IN 3 STAGES YES WE CAN!
- 13. STAGE 1: Deep hanging out USUAL SUSPECTS: US EXCLUDED PEOPLE WHO SHARE OUR VALUES PEOPLE WHO DON’T SHARE OUR VALUES
- 14. USUAL SUSPECTS: US Are we ready to collaborate better with each other? To face outwards and meet the needs of the people, working with them, in this moment of crisis and opportunity? Preparatory discussions and networking the networks
- 16. STAGE 3: Building a new source of power FRIENDLY seeing relating building trust INQUIRY what kind of future do we want? ACTION building the CAN together
- 18. FRIENDLY seeing relating building trust 1) Creative ways of inviting people to your Friendly space
- 19. South Devon Friendly in Plymouth
- 20. INQUIRY what kind of future do we want? Inquiry invites your dream of the future creatively
- 21. South Devon and Plymouth, Kings Cross Inquiries
- 22. Action creates access to the eco-system of solutions POSSIBLE FOUNDING SOUTH DEVON PARTNERS: THE ALTERNATIVE UK REAL IDEAS ORGANISATION RECONOMY CENTRE DEVON CONVERGENCE BIOREGIONAL LEARNING CENTRE NUDGE TRANSITION NETWORK PERMACULTURE ASSOCIATION FLATPACK DEMOCRACY/ INDEPENDENTS EXTINCTION REBELLION ENVIRONMENT PLYMOUTH NEIGHBOURHOOD FORUMS PLATFORM COOPS PLYMSOC EFFORD TAKE A PART ZOO POP PLUS CTRL SHIFT ENSPIRAL? COUNTERCOIN WELLBEING ALLIANCE PLYMOUTH COLLEGE OF ART PLYMOUTH UNI BARBICAN THEATRE SCHUMACHER COLLEGE DARTINGTON ARTS CENTRE THE RED SCHOOL ? LOCAL ENERGY HUB SOCIAL ENTERPRISE HUB COSMO-LOCAL LEARNING CLUB CHOIRS DANCE RITUALS LIVING ROOMS ASSEMBLIES FESTIVALS INVESTMENT CLUBS ReGenA LOCAL FOOD HUB DIGITAL NETWORK
- 23. The ongoing Friendly, Inquiry and Bringing to Action FRIENDLY INQUIRY ACTION
- 24. Offering the CAN to everyone, on their terms
- 25. Political strategy arising from the CANs
- 26. Not scaling but pattern matching. Prototyping fractals
- 27. While government sleeps, can we meet the climate window? GRETA AND XR Local elections
- 28. YES WE CAN!
Hinweis der Redaktion
- After three years of developing The Alternative UK, we came up with the concept of a CAN.
- Each of the six entry points to The Alternative UK can appear as physical projects on the ground in your local community. Here are a few ideas about how that might look.
- Some of us have been talking about building a new system for decades. We've been working in siloes developing ace tools for solving one bit of the puzzle each. We rarely collaborate. When we meet, we recognize each other as the usual suspects, complain about our lack of diversity, then we promote our bit of the puzzle, then go home. Those outside our bubble don't know we exist Mainstream politics is stuck in a growth economy model. Public resources go that way. Mainstream media serves that The planet is burning. People are either acutely or dimly aware. They do or don't protest. But either way they don't know what they themselves can do to make a difference to the outcome. They feel powerless and within this system, they are powerless. Human beings are living stressed lives with little or no time to bring their attention to what is urgently needed. Those that cannot process the chaos of modern life, suffer mental health problems. If they are not helped, they cause knock-on problems for their community. Even those that manage, are permanently vulnerable to the trappings of the hamster wheel.
- CANs start with a new concept of the human being at the heart of politics. 20th Century politics conceived of man as homo economicus – requiring a roof over his head and a job, After which, as Maslow suggested, everything else would follow naturally. Unfortunately, if we don’t design for the whole hierarchy of development, too many get stuck simply in the race to get their physical needs met. <iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/5wJ8ZN7or1N1m" width="378" height="480" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/transparent-cute-5wJ8ZN7or1N1m">via GIPHY</a></p>
- In fact we are complex, bio-psycho-spiritual-playful human beings that are constantly unconsciously searching to get our essential needs met – see above. The more we can achieve this, the more we become capable of more creative, responsive lives. However we live stressed, depleted lives, without time and space to get our needs met in a balanced way. Instead, through advertising, business has contrived to get our needs met superficially by consuming. We reach for a new handbag to achieve status, we drink Cola to get belonging, we join Facebook or Tinder looking for intimacy. Because we experience momentary satisfaction, we keep coming back for more.
- We all live in thrall to power systems that deny us any collective agency. There are no easy ways to decide, across towns or cities, how we want to live together. There are too many atomized, alienated citizens unable to find expression for their skills or capacities. Instead, their energy is harnessed by mechanistic jobs, their minds by media that triggers fear and anxiety.
- CANs begin to answer the problem of power and agency by opening spaces of meaningful connection between citizens. At once helping them to engage in conversation about their shared lives and connect with the many solutions to the crises already available. Through a series of collaboratories, cohorts of 100 citizens at a time, ask themselves what kind of future they could look forward to. Working with the social-entepreneurs, cooperatives and commoning hubs in their locality, they begin to work out a plan to help the community to flourish while becoming healthier, happier and more sustainable. These networks of connected citizens become the source of new democratic processes, from Community Assemblies to participatory budgeting.
- Most citizens encounter globalization as an overwhelming force that drives wages down, homogenises culture and disempowers national governments to work on behalf of their citizens.
- CANS connect people directly to the planet. Firstly by providing access to the best solutions that are being prototyped all over the world.. Secondly by reconnecting people to the land they live on – the source of their resilience and flourishing, Thirdly though connecting CANs to CANs globally, The fractal growth of people waking up to their conditions, connecting to themselves and to each other, building new local economies – is unprecedented. Cosmo-localization describes the process of bringing together our globally distributed knowledge and design commons with the high-to-low tech capacity for localized production. It is based on the ethical premise, drawing from cosmopolitanism, that people and communities should be universally empowered with the heritage of human ingenuity that allow them to more effectively create livelihoods and solve problems in their local environments, and that, reciprocally, local production and innovation should support the wellbeing of our planetary commons.
- Here are the common elements of a CAN. It is designed to connect complex human beings to each other and in turn to the resources available to enable social innovation and well being.
- HOW TO MAKE A CAN IN THREE STEPS STAGE 1: DEEP HANGING OUT THE USUAL SUSPECTS (US) PEOPLE NOT HERE WHO COULD BE HERE (share your values, but are excluded PEOPLE WHO DON’T WANT TO BE HERE (don’t necessarily share your values)
- All of these people are important in different ways. All are the focus of the CANs The usual suspects are all the civil society organisations, activists and existing social entrepreneurs who are already engaged in working for good in their community. They largely know each other but are often siloed and competing for funding. On the edges of the networks of the usual suspects are many thoughtful, creative citizens who – for reasons of unconscious bias – are not included in the conversation about how change happens. They probably share values with the usual suspects but rarely get to meet them. Beyond that is often the largest group, which are the disengaged citizens. Some of them are simply alienated through poor circumstances. But many more are just distracted, preferring to leave the bigger challenges to others.
- Stage 1 of a co-lab is to bring the usual suspects into conversations that promote collaboration. First, actors that are a good fit with each other – with advantages to trade. But increasingly with a whole community vision. How can we work better together for the sake of meeting the multiple crises we face and bring on flourishing? At this point, the conversations may not yet be fully diverse – but begin with the energy you can find to generate a core of capabilities ready to be in service to the process of collaboratories.
- The broad purpose of the co-labs is to bring the usual suspects into relationship with the wider community who are often excluded. This might be for reasons of privilege, ethnicity, gender – all the distinctions that make networks bubbles of immediate self-interest and identity.
- Collaboratories are made up of three stages. The Friendly: where 100 of the widest possible mix of citizens - including the usual suspects - have a great evening together. Free food and drink, music / theatre, games or carefully facilitated provocative questions to be answered in twos and threes. The Inquiry – the same 100 are now invited to dream together. With careful and creative facilitation participants are invited to imagine a future they can look forward to. This includes addressing the arrival of artificial intelligence, automation and data driven social control. The inquiry is likely to be a series of gatherings that move from imaginariums to community mapping exercises where participants can use their local knowledge to suggest how improvement can be made. Action: this stage is where participants begin to identify the resources and stepping stones needed to get to the future. Social enterprises and links to funders are crucial. More important again would be access to free stuff – the cosmo-local ideas and blueprints available to download; ways to access free energy, grow food; the circular economy for fixing and exchanging. Counter coins give volunteers access to excess generated by businesses and services> For example free cinema tickets, transport during slow times, sell by date food etc As the CAN shapes up, it can be ‘sold’ as a package, or a membership club to the third group. Could be door to door invitation to join the club or via compelling events.
- STEP 1: Having built some trust and friendship with the ‘usual suspects’ commit to a co-lab process 2. Design the many ways you might attract new people into the process. 3. The above diagram offers a whole range of first stage tools of relationship BEFORE the Friendly. 4, Invite members of previously excluded communities to write the invitation themselves to create the best possible likelihood of their friends and neighbours coming along
- Offering free food and drink makes the evening transactional in a good way – creating transparency for people who might distrust your motives. “I’m just here for the food” gives them a non-committal entry. The arts and games create warm emotional fields in which people can let down their trust barriers. They will remember they had a good evening - that’s the goal.
- The inquiry does not attempt to fix all the current problems which keep us in thrall to our powerlessness. We are not the council. Instead it starts as a dream space, facilitated by creatives and relational coaching. Always keep in mind the three aspects of personal, social and planetary needs and desires. After getting a ‘feel’ for the future, there could be more mapping solutions onto the community You may need several gatherings to feel the vision is materializing as actionable projects Range of ideas can stretch from doable without money, to high investment projects Remember the mix of people in the room. We don’t start from scratch
- An early CAN formation in Plymouth: ripe for digitisation. When there is enough trust, the CAN could offer on-line voting and participatory budgeting etc
- Collaboratories can be constantly initiated within a community. As soon as one cohort has finished, another can start. A CAN is a steadily building collection of resources, projects and events.
- The key to extending the network beyond those with similar values is to make it attractive on its own terms. More like a club that you might join for the benefits on offer. This brings people into relationship with the CAN, giving them access to a different culture that they can take or leave to start with. If events are thoughtfully targeted, distributed across diverse markets, it will eventually draw the community together. The digital membership will give everyone a chance to participate.
- The CAN becomes a good seedbed for people who might want to reclaim politics for the community. In Frome, Somerset, 17 people stood for local council elections, promising to change the rules to allow maximum participation of the people in decision making. 12 of the 17 won the first time they stood. They fulfilled all their promises, tore up the rule book, introduced participatory budgeting and were the first town to declare Climate Emergency. The second election they won all 17 seats.The first Mayor, Peter Macfadyen wrote a book called Flatpack Democracy and now there are 21 FD councils and many more in the making, Frome now has its own plan to go carbon neutral by 2030.
- Similar projects are appearing in different parts of the country and in the world, albeit in different stages of formation. For example Cooperation Jackson or the Park Slope projects in Brooklyn arising out of food coops and solar energy grids. Their similar patterns of relationship and behaviour suggests a fractal development.
- The spirit is autonomous: in the face of government failure to meet the crises – particularly the climate emergency –the people are adopt the hashtag #doingitanwyay.