Pier Campaign – story version Last week a couple of trustees of the Hastings Pier & White Rock Trust were filmed for a BBC piece to be shown in the autumn which may turn into a longer documentary. It felt like we were auditioning to see if the story, and our telling of it, was up to scratch. There’s no doubt it’s a great story but is it a fable, a thriller or a soap opera? If you live inside it then it feels more like a soap – an endless series of multi-perspective tales. When you’re presenting to the… Read more…

In general the Community Organisers team was happy with last night’s TV coverage. This was no thanks to Newsnight, but all credit to the community organisers themselves, to Stephen Kearney and the Re:generate team, to my excellent team at Locality who deal with the practicalities and relationships in a complex programme, to the exceptional officials at OCS and to Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society and certainly the most civil and sensible Conservative I’ve ever met. The questions to the minister were much more serious and respectful than the rest of the treatment. In return he was refreshingly clear about… Read more…

We’re at a very exciting point in the Community Organisers programme. In a few days time I’ll be joining the first 47 organisers at Trafford Hall for their intensive introductory training. They have been recruited by the 11 Kickstarter hosts around the country. This is a ‘rolling’ programme (at a ‘Rawhide’ rather than steam-roller pace) so we’re already heading into the next tranches of hosts and that’s what I wanted to write about. We opened up to future host recruitment on 19th July. A month later we took the first of our 3-monthly ‘snapshots’ of the applications received – an astounding 220 in all…. Read more…

I JUST ADDED THIS COMMENT TO THE NATCAN FORUM at http://nationalcan.ning.com/ Reply by dave berry 5 minutes ago Hi Am new to the forum so please bear with me, the last time that “government” funded real community activists was the Com. Dev projects in the seventies that eventually were shut down by the funders as the councillors who I think part funded it wondered why they were funding people who campaigned against them! Hi Dave The Government is not funding community activists, it is funding the training of 500 community organisers. The funding is focused on the trainee Community Organisers bursary year, although… Read more…

Below is the comment I have just added to the NatCAN forum at http://nationalcan.ning.com/. You have to ask to join. There was a thread of 70 comments on the subject ‘How do we relate to Community Organisers’, many of them very hostile to the programme and to Locality. =================================================================== Oh the joy of #socmed and the twitchforks mob…! I could never respond to this bile and bitterness in a way that would bring you on-side. In fact, people who complain “I am unable to get into the game” may not deserve a response. And yet I’m drawn here [to NatCAN ning], partly under… Read more…

Locality’s approach to the national Community Organisers programme is that community organisers should be hosted by local organisations. To get us started quickly we selected a set of ‘Kickstarters’ for the bid itself and are currently looking for some further specialist Kickstarter hosts who have ‘reach’ into specific communities and groups where individuals might otherwise ‘count themselves out’ as organisers. The Kickstarters (in Cornwall, Cumbria, the eastern counties, London, Birmingham, Manchester, Hull, Bristol, and Luton) are helping us to shape the programme and rising to the multiple challenges of being pioneers in such an experimental programme. There has been a delay… Read more…

I want to clarify some points in my previous blog post which have led to misunderstandings about some aspects of the Community Organisers programme.   1. I didn’t mean it to sound as if Government dictated Regenerate’s involvement – they didn’t. We had written Re:generate in from the start as lead training partner because of our experience of and admiration for their work, and their ‘Root Solutions Listening Matters’ is the core of our approach to what Community Organisers will do. I simply wanted to make clear that they were the only partner for whom specific confirmation was sought (which… Read more…

Writing this immediately after an animated meeting with Tessy Britton, whose recent blogs at Thriving Too have inspired deep and ongoing discussion about the Community Organisers programme. She is right to raise the question of transparency and responsibility. In the initial weeks after Locality was successfully awarded the contract to deliver the programme, we made the full bid available online and I began the programme manager’s blog. I was commended by many people for an openness that was seen as unusual. But I haven’t written for more than a month – partly through being busy with work and with a… Read more…

#communityorganisers #corganisers #corgs Here’s what the National Coalition for Independent Action thinks about Locality. Community revolution entrusted to Locality March 21, 2011 · Filed Under News, Newsletter The issue that has, by far and away, put the national gossips in a tizzy has been the award of the £15M community organisers contract to Locality, the pseudo-business quango formed by the merger of Bassac and the Development Trust Association. Expected by all (including Locality) to go to the Citizens Organising Foundation (which at least does community organising), the decision has caused the sector’s blogs to glow red hot. Discussion is full of the… Read more…

I made a comment early on in the Community Organisers programme that I assumed that a programme of this sort should be open and engaging. My colleague, Neil Berry, a longstanding stalwart of the DTA and soon to be Head of Enterprise for Locality gave a talk about the Community Organisers programme at the YCAN conference on 8th March in Leeds. I’d also like to thank other colleagues and partners who are going to meetings and events all over the country to stand up for and help explain this exciting, complex and challenging programme. It’s not straightforward because we’re in… Read more…

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… Read more…

Thank you all for being so nice about the blog and for retweeting. It seems obvious to me that programmes should be open and engaging. I’m just grateful that there’s a ‘modern’ way to reach (potentially) lots of people that doesn’t involve trains (having spent a fair few hours on them this week). The ‘problem’ with openness is that at times, perhaps often, we will disagree and I will have to listen and think and respond… An example – several people have said that we shouldn’t use the phrase ‘indigenous English’ because it has been claimed so damnably by the… Read more…