Friday, 13 May 2011

The sound and the fury

This time last week I was wandering about a town in the south of France, prospecting for somewhere to run the next day. I crossed a likely-looking bit of scruffy, half-finished park and resilient wasteland outside a new estate.

Music grew louder. By a gap in a fence on a dusty track I came upon a lad standing astride his bike. The speakers were attached to the handlebar, impressively loud really. He wasn't peddling, then suddenly he was peddling and the music was replaced by a torrent of complaint from a woman with a leash and a dog.

My french is not adequate to have followed the detail of her argument, but I wasn't going to take issue. The boy had left an empty biscuit packet on the ground. I couldn't tell if this was a one-off or a routine scenario they went through, but I was fairly sure it was territorial. I took the litter to the bin (the stench when I lifted the lid nearly took me out) while she gave me to understand her determination to accost the young man should she track him down.

The woman's volume remained high as she set off in pursuit. I pottered on wondering unfairly about the likelihood that she cleans up after her dog.

 

 

13 May 2011 09:26:52 | Space and place, Vignettes

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Pétanque, seule I had a previous example of this apparent evidence of the relentless decline of social capital, poorly photographed in the south of England. I got this one using the wretchedly feeble camera on my Blackberry. Spotted several hundred miles further south, on the Mediterranean coast last weekend.
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It’s the civic economy OK you need to commit a few minutes to this, please, cos it really is a bit special. Yesterday saw the launch of the Compendium for the civic economy: I’m tempted to write, ‘and the rest is history’ and leave it at that. Speaking at the launch at NESTA, Tom Bolton, from the Centre for Cities, raised the question of how you describe an economy when its distinguishing feature is its ways of working (and, I would add, its values) rather than in terms of traditional business sectors. The compendium gets at the question, what are the economics of localism? I think it’s possibly the most important document I’ve had my hands on so far this century. It was prepared by the ever-dependable Indy Johar, Joost Beunderman and their colleagues at 00:/. It records and celebrates a number of examples of civic entrepreneurship, and reflects on their significance for our understanding of how people who are not part of formal public services, and not part of the traditional private sector, are making a difference to civic and social conditions, by coming up with transformational projects and involving others in carrying them through. Some of the examples are already well-documented, and justifiably so, like Incredible Edible Todmorden and Southwark Circle. There are 25 described in the book. Now I want to quote from the second of the authors’ six key messages, on page 169, which sums up why this matters. But I can’t copy and paste it, because for some reason someone has decided to disallow content copying on the pdf – which is obviously hugely ironic given that the text extols initiatives that promote sharing and collaboration. The heading for this second message is (and I type): ‘Civic entrepreneurship can actively contribute to increasing the resilience, prosperity and well-being of people, places and communities’. Next, I’d like to quote from the first message (also p169), to explain the drivers for the flourishing of civic entrepreneurship: (Don’t be put off: go read it). And next I want to quote from the fourth key message, on page 170, which clarifies the new relationships that are needed to help the civic economy evolve more widely: I tend to be a sceptic about NESTA events which often seem like empty-syllable contests, but yesterday’s launch was inspiring, full of lucid and concise insights from panel members and other participants. Here are a few points from my notes. Indy talked a lot about ‘respect’, for example that the new civic economy requires agencies ‘to respect groups’ human capital’ and to be ‘respectful of in-kind investment’. This is an important point, and I’d add that activists and residents sometimes need to be more respectful of the efforts made by some council officers. Sam Coniff from Livity showed how readily this movement can be reconciled with commercial entrepreneurship. He also clarified how it is partly a network society phenomenon, noting that because the technology allows people easily to start things up, they do things that are closer to...

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