The last post, maybe

This blog should have been put to rest some time ago, I guess.  But late last rites are, I hope, better than none.

Empowerment Works has been far from the only effort to energise people to create an alternative narrative to the Big Society that has decided to jack it in. The admirable Our Society website and its crew have done the same, and I can't do better than Julian Dobson in describing why things are as they are in what has turned into an empty space, so far as lively collaboration is concerned. 

Where do you go from here?  Well, there’s life in some (saving their presence) fairly old dogs yet, and if you want to keep fire in your belly, have a look at the National Community Activists Network, and the National Coalition for IndependentAction.

I have run a few workshops on big society and localism over the summer, and the conclusion from these tends to be that there is a huge body of expertise, most of it still out there and available, on what really works when it comes to empowerment and engagement in the real world.  Let’s not lose it in all the BS and Localism excitement.

If you want to follow a few trails to some of the expertise I value, take a look at the Empowerment archive at Creating Excellence, the earlier posts in this blog, and the list of links associated with the Big Society and Localism workshop at this conference. 

And if you think this stuff is old hat, try the Big Society Network’s Fuse Local project, which ‘exists to ignite the social energy within our local communities’.  At the time of writing, nothing had happened there since March.

Not that nothing is happening.  The direction of travel has been clear since the Conservative Party published its policy paper Big Society Not Big Government before the election.  Its analysis of society in terms of economic theory seems a category error to me, even if you agree with the ideology: ‘The problem today: Labour’s top-down bureaucracy has crowded out social action and eroded social responsibility.  This has weakened society and undermined communities’ (BSNBG p.3).  Read more about ‘crowding out’ in the post below this one.

That project is, of course, just one element of the political project to change the face of the state.  This collaboration between the LGA and HM Treasury which I came across recently demonstrates how the new world is being created.  It was interesting to me that the only person at my last workshop who made a strongly political remark: “I don’t know why people aren’t going to the barricades”, was a white-haired Conservative Councillor from a rural part of Devon.

Where will things go from here?  Perhaps the Bristol Old Vic’s upcoming show Does My Society Look Big in This? will do some consciousness-raising.

Finally, my thanks to South West Forum, which has supported and helped create this blog site, and whose lottery funded  Stronger Voice Project still has a few months to run.