Your Square Mile? Why?

There’s been lots of fluttering lately about the Your Square Mile initiative, which has attracted bags of funding to do, er, well, to behave like a branded top-down idea, as far as anyone can tell. Cathy Aitchison, David Wilcox and other good folk who make up the Our Society network have been trying to prise out information about it. The latest is that:

The Big Lottery Fund is enabling Your Square Mile to build a digital platform – on PC’s, mobiles and public access screens – that will enable the interchange of ideas, advice, support and benefits to citizens throughout the UK.

Explanation to follow, presumably? It sounds as if there is a basic assumption that one single platform will be appropriate for the communication needs of every definable neighbourhood in the country.

There is a study to be done of the damage caused by highly persuasive people who seem to feel compelled to impose template social 'solutions' on others.

I enjoyed Julian Dobson’s thorough posing of questions the other day. It got me wondering if the Your Square Mile idea - closely associated with another national policy-favoured empty catch-phrase idea the name of which escapes me for the moment - really deserves such painstaking attention.

People are struggling to hold on to any goodwill towards the initiative, but are watching closely, probably for three related reasons – secrecy; the top-down approach and lack of values; and the fact that the project’s founder Paul Twivy has apparently attracted a great deal of money in scarce times, that might otherwise have gone into the community sector.

I liked Alan MacDonald’s reaction:

‘My first set of questions is - why does an idea depending on voluntary effort require so much paid work and, I believe, generous expenses to initiate it?  Why does an idea of the digital age communicate so badly? (My latest example is a tweet saying 'Join the debate' which led me to a web page where I couldn't leave a comment)  Why does the web and social network presence of this idea require a big grant from the Lottery when all you need for a major website, Twitter and facebook feed is fifty quid, open source, skills and will power?’

The explanation came a few minutes later from Jeff Mowatt: 

I'll tell you Alan, as it was related to Indira Gandhi when her grandfather advised here that:

"There are two kinds of people in the world. Those that do the work and those that take the credit. Try to stay in the first group, you'll find less competition."

And finally, since comments on blogs are so easily missed, I want to reproduce these observations from Aidan Kelly on Julian Dobson’s post:

‘people can't be bought. Money can enable quick reactions but it rarely attracts the right people. Those people who are passionate about their community, don't want to be told what to do, or even paid by an external organisation to collect ideas. There is something that is almost insulting in the concept that an external, outsider should come into a community and assume ownership of the problems and issues that the community faces. These are [not] unemotive subjects they are real people.’

 

 

Comments

[Mark Parker]

I believe Alinsky once said words to the effect "You always work for the people who pay you." If ordinary citizens expect to get their voice truly heard when the agents with whom they are working are paid for by the State or by business, they are being deceived. Authentic articulation comes when citizens themselves are directly funding the work. Then they care a lot more about what is said for and about them!