We’re in the Development Phase for this programme so things are moving fast (I keep saying), though of course not fast enough for all the enquirers. But log your interest at www.dta.org.uk/communityorganisers or comment on this blog and you’ll be ‘in the loop’.
After a 24-hour session at the weekend with Stephen & Julia from Re:generate, the training aspect is beginning to shape up:
Foundations of Organising – a 5-month learning programme kicking off with a 3-day residential, followed by a parallel process of guided actions in local communities punctuated by live online sessions where COs will come together with the facilitators to reflect on how it’s going and share what they’ve learned from it. The climax of Foundations will be an Action Camp bringing together all the senior organisers with their mid-level crew from very different places around the country.
Go Deeper – as senior COs complete the camp they will make some choices about how to take it further. There are lots of opportunities and it will depend what’s going on in their community and what has caught their interest in the Foundation time. Some will work with Re:generate, perhaps sponsored by local authorities; some will approach Citizens UK for some pure Alinsky organising; some will want to pick the brains of the Locality membership on community assets and enterprise. And, by then, we know there will be other options.
Action Years – the end of the Bursary Year will be a big challenge and, of course, we need to be ready for it from the start. Sustaining the work of community organising was always going to be the biggest challenge. I’m rather taken with the cheesy “if anyone can Locality can” – our members, and many other groups who we hope will join us in the years ahead, are focused on making the community sector more enterprising and resilient. If the organising has been valuable then they will strive to subsidise its future. So the Action Years are the two or more years after the bursary when organisers get to really prove themselves…
I gave another presentation yesterday to the London Civic Forum. It’s here.