As a marketeer I’ve always been fascinated with behavioural science and how to change the values and beliefs that drive our behaviours.

So far, the only time I’ve seen a real change in beliefs is when someone experiences an issue for themselves. It’s about lived experience, or human to human connection that makes the issue tangible and personal.

Having come from a family that struggled financially, I have the benefit of that lived experience. The knowledge that poverty is not so much a practical challenge, but an emotional one. The shame, helplessness and stress it causes are far more dangerous symptoms than not having food on the table.

It’s that lived experience that drives me and my commitment to building a more equal economy where no one has to live in poverty.

The thing about something like poverty or inequality, is that it’s not contagious. So it’s easy to ignore. It’s something that happens to other people, in other places.

On the other hand, Coronavirus could impact any of us. Rich or poor. Young or old. Black, white or something in between.

World leaders and movie stars have caught the virus. People with steady jobs were stood down overnight. Flourishing industries have been brought to their knees. Some of the richest nations have the highest number of cases.

Coronavirus has equalised us.

Coronavirus has reminded us all that we are all human.

It’s that knowledge – the fear that this could impact me and the people I care about – that has driven us to completely change the way we live our lives. We have seen behaviour change on a worldwide scale, practically overnight.

Therein lies an opportunity. Our society and economy has been upended. We can choose to take this moment to rediscover our shared humanity and use it to shape what we create on the other side of the pandemic.

If we can hang on to our shared humanity as we emerge from the crisis, I hope our collective empathy will grow.

We have unfortunately seen some disgusting examples of people capitalising on this crisis to the detriment of others. Corporate CEOs standing down their staff without pay while they retire to their mansions. Airlines quadrupling the price of flights for people that just need to get home. Fraudsters offering fake testing for the virus as a way to enter people’s homes and steal.

But we have seen so many more examples of hope, support and kindness. From live streaming of concerts, to parents continuing to pay their fees when schools have closed, to Woolworths offering jobs to Qantas staff, to (dare I say it) the conservative government’s fiscal stimulus packages that prioritises the most vulnerable.

Humans have an amazing innate drive to go out of our way to look out for each other. But for some reason, when we put on suits and enter board rooms, we tend to forget our shared humanity. The ‘us and them’ separation blinds us to the view from outside the boardroom walls.

But through this crisis, we are all as vulnerable as each other. We all need to work together and do our bit to get to the other side.

I hope the result of working together and building our empathy will be a commitment across our economy to strengthen the structures that give everyone the opportunity and support to live a decent and dignified life.

Structures like a bigger and more respected social enterprise ecosystem, so that the majority of businesses in our economy are social enterprises that put the health of people and our planet above profit.

Structures like a more expansive safety net – one that provides benefits that any politician themselves feels they could reasonably live on.

Structures like new partnerships (of equals) between the corporate and third sectors, that allow for cross-pollination of skills, experience and resources to increase the ability of both sectors to deliver more social impact.

We can’t let this crisis go to waste.

Let’s use this experience to remind ourselves that when it comes down to it, we are all one global tribe. We all depend on each other. And that when everyone is taken care of, we all benefit.

We have a once in a generation opportunity to hit the reset button on our economy and our society. Let’s use it wisely. And with empathy.

The post Could this crisis create the empathy we need to build a fairer society? appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Thoughts can be like mosquitos. They can be small and noisy and buzz around endlessly in your head, sucking the lifeblood out of you. We all have mosquito thoughts. They are the thoughts that suppress and oppress us. I bet we also all know workplaces and organisations and social norms and political parties that, like mosquitos, generate thoughts that suck the life out of us. Thoughts and thinking that generate fear and annoyance, anxiety and stress.

Mosquitos endlessly buzz around looking to suck the life out of anything they can. At their worst, they poison systems, places, spaces and people, becoming a malaria that ends life and hope. At their most worst, systems and institutions can live with the malaria, slowly sapping the life out of all around them.

But thoughts can also be like dragonflies:

• Dragonflies transform – starting off as an ugly nymph living underwater, they become beautiful, dazzling flying creatures.
• Dragonflies do it differently – dragonflies can do things that no other insects can do with body structures no other insects have. They can fly backwards, loop the loop, hover and fly faster than any other insect.
• Dragonflies persevere – dragonflies pre-date the dinosaurs and can stay in the air all day without landing.
• Dragonflies can see multiple perspectives simultaneously – they have about 30,000 lenses in their eyes with 360 degree vision.
• Dragonflies embrace diversity – there are about 5,000 different species of dragonflies all over the world.

Thought leadership is more about the possibilities of the dragonfly than the endless monotonous buzzing of the mosquito.

There is always a battle for ‘thoughts’. An endless ongoing battle between mosquito thoughts and dragonfly thoughts.

And there is the related battle between mosquito actions, based on mosquito thoughts, and dragonfly actions, based on dragonfly thoughts.

This reflects the relationship between theory (thoughts) and practice (actions).

There are many destructive theories (buzzing around like mosquitos) that get embedded in destructive practice. Too often they lack critical reflection and provide a breeding ground for systemic malaria within people and institutions, countries and political parties, workplace cultures and home lives.

There is an urgent need for dragonfly theories that can be embedded in life-affirming practice that offers a renewed alternative to the poison of systemic malaria.

Our busyness over the past 12 months (no excuse) has slowed down our thinking, advocacy and actions for dragonfly-like practice.

We’re now back in the public domain to ‘challenge, imagine, transform’ thinking and practice wherever we can as part of the grander mosaic of people committed to replacing malaria systems with hope, justice and a safe future for people and planet.

Watch this space!

The post The return of the Dragonfly and thought leadership appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Given the political, economic and cultural earthquakes of 2016, the year ahead could look pretty terrifying and uncertain. We may feel anxious. We may have visions of moving to a remote island where we could block out the worry and anger about the increasingly unattractive western world.

But there is another option. Resilience. With a big dollop of hope.

Raymond Williams said that “to be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing”. Resilience is our best antidote to fear, anxiety and withdrawal.

There are four types of resilience (psychological, political, economic and spiritual), and we’ll need to draw on them all in the year to come.

Psychological resilience

Resilience is one element of psychological capital – practices that we can use and hone to keep us strong in the face of the biggest blows:

• Self-efficacy – how confident and self-assured we are when faced with a difficult task;
• Optimism – how positive we are about doing well now and in the future;
• Hope – how determined we are to strategise and work hard towards a goal; and
• Resilience – the extent to which we can bounce back from something tough (like losing a job or a contract).

While hope and optimism might feel tough right now, these are tools that we should draw on every day to keep us focussed and unafraid. We’ve got them on the wall in our ‘thought centre’ (our office) for good measure.

Political resilience

There are lots of people working on political resilience. For example, the Compass report, Secure and Free, highlights affordable, feasible, gradualist and sustainable proposals from a range of people and groups to build resilience through policy and politics:

1. Make above inflation increases in the national minimum wage the norm in periods of economic growth (Centre for Social Justice), and make improving productivity and improving the quality of employment mutually reinforcing policy objectives (Smith Institute).
2. Develop a state-supported house building programme designed to the highest environmental standards (The Good Right), improve security for home-owners through a ‘right to sell’ and a ‘right to stay’, so that those who can no longer meet mortgage repayments can sell their properties but remain as tenants paying fair rents (Friends of the Earth), and curb future rent growth to improve security for tenants (Civitas).
3. Unleash the power of the social sector (Centre for Social Justice) and implement non- financial help for families and relationship support (various).
4. Make early childhood education and care a specific and distinct element of the universal care and education system, free at the point of delivery (various) and create significant real increases to child benefit (Fabian Society and Sir Tony Atkinson).
5. Build agreement around a shift from welfare for some, to social security for all, right through to older age (Compass).

While advocating for these political changes we can also achieve political resilience through the time-honoured practice of resistance and the emerging practice of collective impact. Both start with collaboration and deny that we’re powerless in the face of the political and cultural forces we face. We are all one part of the mosaic working for change, and collectively we are a force for political resilience in the face of fear, xenophobia and hate.

Economic resilience

The key components of economic resilience have been around for a while – think locally act globally – but are still important. Rethinking the way we live at a local level will ultimately impact the wider world.

We become citizens of the world by becoming citizens of healthy communities. Understanding the principles reflected in local planning can give insights into the principles reflected in the world community. Local solutions can provide an effective alternative to globalisation structured by highly centralised organisations pursuing interests in ways that are destructive to healthy communities.

Locality is one organisation that models and supports community-led self-sustaining initiatives that tackle the forces of centralisation and globalisation that have alienated and disappointed so many. As George Monbiot writes, “it’s time to champion new approaches to politics, economics and social change. There is no going back, no comfort in old certainties. We must rethink the world from first principles … The market alone cannot meet our needs; nor can the state … There is one element conspicuously absent from the dominant ideologies: the commons”. Communities owning and running their own places and spaces will help make then stronger and feel more in control.

New forms of community and social enterprise that are locally focussed (not the hyped up social enterprise blah-blah that has become so prominent in recent years, and is really just private enterprise by another name) can produce economic resilience and change at the local level, and also have global outcomes. One example is the city of Marinaleda in the province of Seville in Spain. It’s a self-identified social-democratic and cooperative municipality of 2,700 people, where poverty has been eradicated and where there is no police, no crime, little unemployment and the freedom to build your own home on communal land.

Sound unrealistic? Combining psychological, political and economic resilience is at the heart of the story of Marinaleda.

Spiritual resilience

And finally – or perhaps foremost – is spiritual resilience. In the face of religious beliefs that promote oppression and fear we suggest spiritual resilience begins with a fundamental commitment – the rejection of religious fundamentalism in all its forms and the recognition of otherness and the freedom to be at peace with yourself. Other than that we have no prescription – just an invitation to reject the fear and oppression of fundamentalism and embrace freedom.

So as we move out of 16 into 17 we invite everyone to embrace resilience in a way that challenges, informs and transforms fearlessly.

Do not ever give up – or in!

The post 2017: the year for resilience appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

We watched the debate over Brexit with complete dismay. It has been utterly breathtaking to watch people eat up the propaganda then ask for a second helping, and respond to empty slogans and lies with cheers and standing ovations.

People are disaffected. They feel resentment and alienation and have very real and legitimate anxieties about access to public services, affordable housing and secure jobs.

The Leave campaign tapped directly into that fear and anxiety, and it did it beautifully. It used clear and simple messages that had little (if anything) to do with facts and everything to do with the loss of control that the majority of British people feel over their own lives. The vote to ‘take back control’ was not about Europe (evident in the spike in Google searches for ‘what is the EU’ after the vote), but about people feeling completely disempowered.

So then we must ask, what bigger agenda is at play here.  This is what George Monbiot calls this ‘the zombie doctrine’.

While the original definition of a zombie was ‘a corpse said to be revived by witchcraft’, today it’s used to describe a creature capable of movement, but not of rational thought. In popular fiction, a zombie is a person who is or appears lifeless, apathetic, or completely unresponsive to their surroundings and who devours human flesh.

There is indeed something zombie like about the way many of us are far too quick to allow bite size, emotionally-charged propaganda to cloud the facts.

Take the views of Dover residents as one small example. A poll showed they believe their town is overrun with migrants, who appear to be responsible for every conceivable local woe – taking local jobs, cluttering up the NHS, and of course living on benefits while they work at the jobs they have stolen from the locals. But the fact is that 93% of Dover’s population were born in the UK. Immigration becomes a useful scapegoat for local people’s frustrations, and in the face of clear facts a completely different story is created (a story that resonates powerfully because it cleverly speaks directly to people’s experience of disempowerment).

We live in a time characterised by enormous challenges – the devastation of the natural world, a crisis of inequality, an obsession with growth and profit, financial meltdowns and an increasing decline in the quantity and quality of the political debate about how to respond.

And yet we don’t (or can’t) name the philosophy on which this situation is built – the underlying drivers remain unnamed in popular culture. We name communism and socialism as the evils of past history and assume we are safe in the hands of capitalism.

The real ideology remains nameless and faceless. This is the ideology that has produced the middle class aspiration for wealth, but ultimately rewards only those who are already wealthy with more and rips the welfare state from under everyone else’s feet. The ideology that promises abundance, but leaves the majority living with the shambles of crushed expectations, broken dreams or still in an original place of poverty. The ideology that turns those broken dreams into fear and resentment, resulting in standing ovations to destructive messages about ‘taking back control’ or a ‘British Independence Day’  by those holding their crumbled expectations in their hands.

The ideology we are naming here is of course neoliberalism, a doctrine that has become pervasive but is seldom recognised. This ideology shapes the very fabric of our society so that we unconsciously accept what was once unacceptable, even if we are the losers. As George Monboit notes:

“Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don’t have a job it’s because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you’re feckless and improvident. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.”

Like communism, neoliberalism is the God that failed. It is a zombie doctrine that staggers on anonymously.

In a short essay written in 1946 (today it would have been a blog!) – Why I Write – George Orwell offered the following justification for his relentless commitment to writing: ‘political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind’.

George Orwell saw the need to counter lies with truth. He wanted to unmask the powers, to identify the systems that hid behind their anonymity. He wanted to shake off the zombie doctrine where people passively accept a political system that feeds on their own flesh.

The zombie doctrine of neoliberalism is real. And it flourishes as its proponents grow fat off the system they deliver. Neoliberalism feeds on the poor and the middle classes – people like you and me – even though few of us are aware we are being devoured, or apparently know how to apply an antidote.

The vote to leave the EU is a disastrous example of the power of the zombie doctrine. Now more than ever we need an alternative that unities rather than divides and creates empowerment instead of resentment.

While many people are outraged at the vote to leave the EU, feelings of anger towards those who voted to leave are misplaced (and will only reinforce the deep divisions that led us here in the first place). The real enemy is far bigger than any individual, and it will take all of us working together to counter it. We cannot allow the likes of Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson to continue to gain strength from the zombie doctrine and let it go unnamed and unaccounted for.

We must not give up now. We must use Brexit as a spark that reignites our passion to create a more just world.

It is out of these darkest moments that the energy for change can drive us. Jo Cox MP, who was assassinated last week, said ‘we are far more united and have far more in common than that which divides us’.

Let’s regroup and work together in the battles ahead, and show that nothing will stop us.

For inspiration and courage, read some of the messages of solidarity on the Avaaz ‘message of hope’ page.

The post Zombies and Brexit: how on earth did we end up here? appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Manor Farm is renamed Animal Farm.

Animalism – the ideological manifesto developed by the new pig order to ensure a ‘complete system of thought’ was in place – marked out how the new Animal Farm political economy would work. Above all else the goal was to eradicate all human systems of thought and replace them with new socially innovative approaches encapsulated in such dictates as:

• Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
• No animal shall wear clothes.
• No animal shall sleep in a bed.
• No animal shall drink alcohol.
• No animal shall kill any other animal.

New ways of doing business were developed on the farm, and over time without too many animals noticing (critical reflection was not encouraged on the farm – more a just do it approach really) these new ways of doing business, and indeed how farm society was shaped and developed, were more and more based on the original ideas of the humans that were eradicated from farm society in the first place.

The pigs became the established ruling class on the farm – the CEOs and senior executives – and quickly asserted themselves eventually competing with each other for power. The pig Napoleon gets rid of this rival pig Snowball, and promotes the pig Squealer to Deputy CEO, and they take their new innovative approach to farming, politics, the economy and society, well in hand.

Without giving it too much thought, and more often than not driven by their own egos and acting in their own interests than the interests of the farm, Napoleon and Squealer reshape their approach to the farm economy, its culture and how things were to be done to achieve their socially innovative goals.

Old Animalism began to become more and more like New Animalism and the original ideological manifesto shaped more and more by the persistent older ideological position of the humans. Eventually the manifesto was rewritten in the name of progress to encapsulate new dictates like:

• Four legs good, two legs better.
• No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.
• No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.
• No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.

Years pass, and the pigs start to resemble humans, as they walk upright, carry whips, and wear clothes. Systemic social innovation is achieved and the social economy of the farm consolidated by the abridgment of the original manifesto into a single phrase: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others“. Napoleon holds a dinner party for the pigs and local farmers, with whom he celebrates a new alliance. He abolishes the practice of the revolutionary traditions and restores the name “The Manor Farm”. As the animals look from pigs to humans, they realise they can no longer distinguish between the two.

Across the span of years that frames the movement of Manor Farm to Animal Farm and back to Manor Farm again is the compelling description of how the new and the different became more and more a mirror image of the old that it originally was designed to replace. The very inequalities Animalism was designed to change were eventually replicated by Animalism itself. The very ideological positions Animalism was designed to change were eventually adopted and replicated unthinkingly by Animalism itself.

Hang on a minute . . . what’s Animal Farm got to do with the social economy?

You’re not suggesting that what was originally a new way of achieving a more just and equitable society by combining selected approaches from the business sector with a social mission to take on major social challenges has been high-jacked by some form of Animalism are you?

You’re not suggesting that the social economy has been reshaped from its original intentions – just like original Animalism was – to become more and more a tool for an ideological position that perhaps could be called Neo-Animalism are you?

You’re not suggesting that the social economy has been or could be coopted by the dominant political economy to somehow uncritically reflect all its basic ideological commitments and so replicate the very thing it was designed to eradicate are you?

You’re not suggesting that the very system that creates vast challenges for both people and planet and grinds the wheels of inequality, also promotes the social economy as the solution to the very problems it creates are you?

That’s as fanciful rubbish as George Orwell’s Animal Farm was in the first place.

I’ll take these ideas back to 1945 and stay there.

The post Animal Farm and the Social Economy appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Most of us apparently remember Albert for his hair – or at least how eccentric he looked. And then we leave it at that. Certainly we are taught about Albert’ science – not his hair – during our school years. And we leave it at that – just another academic, clever type person. Yawn.

But apparently there was a little more going on with Albert’s hair.

So what did Einstein’s hair signify you may ask? According to this biography it was a political statement – Albert refused to conform to social standards of personal appearance. He was unapologetic in his individuality and unashamed of being different.

Didn’t know that about Albert?

Well here is more that perhaps we were not taught about Albert. Here is what we learn from Steven Gimbel’s Einstein: His Space and Times:

Einstein’s science made him a worldwide celebrity, a status others might have enjoyed, but which Einstein despised. He was no shrinking violet, yet he detested the shallowness and meaningless absurdity that came with his universal adoration. But he realised that it could be handy.

He was given a cultural megaphone and he decided that its best use was to amplify the concerns of those whose voices were least heard. Whether it was his own Jewish brethren suffering the insults of antisemitism, African-Americans suffering systematic racism, the poor kept down by structural barriers to advancement, or political dissidents in the Soviet Union who were being repressed, Einstein was unabashedly vocal in trying to change the institutions that led to inequality and injustice. His standing provided him with a unique place to speak for those who were silenced and he made great use of it in the name of universal human dignity.

Einstein never lacked confidence. Strengthened by his convictions, he was impervious to the power of those with superior social or professional standing, and resolute in his willingness to state his beliefs publicly. As social psychologists have shown, humans are greatly influenced by the opinions of those around us, especially those who occupy positions of authority. We can shy away from reasonable and ethical beliefs, if we sense that we are in the minority for holding those views.

But Einstein stands as an example of intellectual commitment. His revolutionary physical theories and his advocacy for peace at times of war and for better treatment of those in need were often unpopular. Einstein was investigated by the FBI for his views, and he received death threats from Nazi sympathisers. He was threatened with the loss of his position at the Institute for Advanced Study for his vocal support for his beliefs and causes. Yet he steadfastly refused to give in to fashion, expedience or groupthink. It is a cliché to say someone has the “courage of his convictions”, but Einstein is a figure of great courage in publicly expounding views he thought correct and morally necessary when such positions were dangerously unpopular.

Einstein, with his wild hair, signalled that human advancement comes not from the conformity the authorities demand, but from difference – and that all of us at various times in our lives feel a sense of alienation. Einstein gives us pride in ourselves as individuals who can make a difference; we can revel in free thought, but there is no need in doing so to reject our shared humanity.

Perhaps Albert was a social innovation – well before the term became fashionable – unlike his hair.

The post Einstein’s Hair – A Social Innovation? appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

A comment on one of our articles in Pioneers Post shouted ‘don’t talk about it just do it!’

That’s fine if you know what you are doing but we have become increasingly aware that doing social innovation or doing social enterprise or doing social entrepreneur type stuff means a whole lot of things to whole lot of people. And what they are all doing using these words does not mean their actions end up making the world a better place – in fact sometimes it makes it worse. So we figured it was worth talking about a bit more.

We were surprised when we arrived two years ago in Austria with a great bunch of people from all over the world at a Masters of Arts in Social Innovation programme, to discover that what we thought social innovation was about was not quite what others made of it. In fact we discovered that for some a McDonald’s hamburger could qualify as a social innovation because it had social effects – even it that effect in many places was an increase in fat.

Claudia Wittig now working with TECHO in Mexico City was equally surprised. Out of life experience as well as critical reflection we all felt uncomfortable with the nebulous nature of what the term meant so we decided to write a paper to put our case together for a clear definition that linked words and meaning to what these meant in action.

That paper has now been published by the Centre for Social Innovation in Vienna – ZSI – and has been also published by Social Innovation Europe.

Here is the abstract:

Social innovation is a term used globally to describe and identify quite different activities. While it is a term that everyone likes to use, precisely what it refers to is not always clear. This paper explores different definitional approaches or intentions –legitimating, theoretical, action-reflection, broad and distinctive– and considers why a definition of social innovation is important and what the crucial ingredients, informed more by practice than theory, might be. Following lessons learnt from postmodernity and critical theory, social marketing, democracy, governance and social entrepreneurship, we arrive at a definition that is value-laden, distinctive and focused – from inception to impact – on equality, justice and empowerment.

It is the last three words that are the most meaningful and require the most urgent action.

We believe these three words should also be applied to definitions of social enterprise – and that we should not be shy of using them when these words provide the meaning that drives our actions to make the world a fairer place.

Hope you have the time to read it and even enjoy it. Read the paper here:

Definition and Theory in Social Innovation

The post Social Innovation: words, meaning, and action appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Sixty-three percent of the voting population did not vote for the Conservatives (there is no proportional voting in the UK as there is in Australia) but the 36% that did have endorsed another five years of grievance and fear. Another five years of a particular form of capitalism that understands economic ‘growth’ is achieved when taxes are cut for those who are the better off in the belief that this will lead to more money and jobs, ensuring government does not interfere with the free market (unless the banks make a mess of it all again and need the government to bail them out) while at the same time balancing the books by reducing ‘welfare’ to the most vulnerable people in British society. Throw in a dose of ‘nobody tells us what to do’ and a vote in 2017 will determine if the UK stays in the EU? That inward looking boundary parochialism itself is enough to know grievance and fear will be the hallmarks of the next five years. And don’t forget the rhetoric of David Cameron who has captured the aspirational middle class vote with ‘those who work hard and do what is right will prosper’.

If you think this approach to running a country does not have the potential for a serious mess then remember dear old George Bush whose neoliberalism created more and more for the rich, less and less for the poor and eventually did all it could to assist with the GFC (read Joseph Stiglitz, The Great Divide if you are not sure this is for real).

And then there is Tony Blair lamenting the terrible lurch (although we didn’t see it) to the left by the Labor Party, apparently shunning business and focusing on the poor. Blair argues the Labour Party needs ambition and compassion – unfortunately ambition always seems to out balance compassion – especially at austerity time. Curioser and curioser is the announcement by David Cameron that in the next five years the Conservatives will stand for compassion and ambition for the working people – as one editorial puts it ‘parking tanks on Labour’s front lawn’.

So where does this leave the ‘social’ sector here in the UK?

Already there are many individual and peak charities calling for the sector to shape its own future in defiance to the Conservative austerity that will generate more and more poverty and widen the gap between the wealthy and the aspirational, as well as the poor.

Curiously quiet are the social enterprise advocates. They rejoice that all the political parties in the UK including UKIP endorsed ‘social enterprise’ and have announced two free drinks for anyone who can turn up at the appointed London venue next Tuesday!

So here is our guess at what will happen.

There will be those social enterprise advocates – thankfully the minority – who knowingly will continue to co-opt ‘businesses trading for a social purpose’ to roll out the Conservative neoliberal agenda. Mostly located in the intermediaries happily taking big society’s money, they work to reduce government provision of public services – privatisation by stealth.

Then there will be those happy social entrepreneurial enterprise advocates who love the hype and the idea and who never really spend any time critically reflecting on anything much except their new app that will somehow become a social business (what business isn’t ‘social’ one could argue – not many anti-social businesses survive). Unfortunately there may be more non-reflective entrepreneurial types than is healthy for the future of ‘businesses trading for a social purpose’.

And then there are those social enterprise advocates and practitioners that are already deeply committed to justice and equity who will keep working at the coalface of human need generating opportunities for those who suffer the most from a Conservative victory. These practitioners are already aware of the politics of grievance and fear. They see it in the faces of those they work with. They have and will continue to shape their future and the futures of others in defiance to the neoliberal austerity that cements the divide between people with money and those without the opportunity to make enough to live with dignity – including those who work hard and do the right thing.

We agree with the call to shape our own destiny, and not unwittingly have it shaped for us by neoliberal ideologies. We agree that the politics of grievance and fear must be replaced by generosity and hope. We believe the social sector should refocus its energy not on quaint notions of doing ‘good’ but systems change with the intention and effect of justice, empowerment, and equality.

The post Grievance and Fear – shaping the future? appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Let’s start with some working assumptions. You can support the social sector, and social enterprise, while thinking critically about its assumptions, claims, actions and outcomes, in the same way you can support your country while thinking critically about its actions and its citizenry.

Secondly social innovation and social enterprise as tools for social change that address disadvantage and systemic unfairness are really useful tools and can make a significant difference to the lives of people. Social enterprise in the hands of the right people can make a radical difference.

So with these two working assumptions in mind we turn our attention to the politics of social enterprise (and its close cousin social innovation).

A recent blog on the Social Enterprise UK website in defence of a balanced NHS market, advocates for the contribution that social enterprise can make to alternative NHS provision. Whether or not you agree with the argument what is astonishing about the article is the statement made at the beginning of the second paragraph “my purpose . . . certainly isn’t to take political sides”. So in the context of one of the most highly politicized debates in the UK – who provides the NHS – the author appears to prefer to operate in a political vacuum.

At a recent debate on social investment at the School for Social Entrepreneurs it was equally astonishing to hear an advocate of social investment confront those questioning social investment as an effective tool for social change as representatives of the old ideologies of the political left. There was not an articulation of an alternative ideology to ‘the left’ but the proposition that debate about something like social investment had moved into a new space – one where ideologies of either the left or the right did not exist. In this ideologically free space politics is removed from the discussion. The neoliberal elephant in the room did not apparently count as either political or ideological.

In the midst of this ‘ideology free no politics zone’ is the Social Economy Alliance’s Social Economy Manifesto with the banner ‘the best ideas from the left and the right’. This is accompanied by several disconcerting images not the lest of which are Margaret Thatcher in Che Guevara’s clothes and Ronald Regan in Fidel Castro’s beard smoking a big Havana cigar. The Social Economy Manifesto is certainly a great advocate for all things social enterprise and social economy – no question about that. The associated policy statements appear to propose a kind of nonaligned centrist political space (which is in itself an aligned political stance) that suggests that the best idea from the left and the best idea from the right is social enterprise. It appears that the Social Economy Alliance believes the answer to the inadequacies of government funded public and private enterprise (the former from the ‘left’ and the latter from the ‘right’?) is social enterprise because it sits in the ‘middle’. This ‘middle’ occupies a kind of value neutral political position – certainly not taking ‘sides’ – from which to observe other ‘sides’. While the social enterprise model can and does have great value for the economy – that is a given – what is peculiar is the assumption that it does so in some space devoid of the reality of party politics or ideologically embedded political economics.

As any student of history, social sciences or politics will know – to claim to be taking no political side is in fact to take one. A middle centrist position is just as ideologically loaded as that of the left or the right. History is full of examples where movements and institutions proclaim to be ‘non-political’ – and as such allow the status quo to remain in place. Political neutrality does not question the status quo or identify alternatives. And not taking political sides allows what is in place to go on unchallenged.

Perhaps this is the “blind spot” identified by Remko Berkhout who notes after attending the 2104 London Unusual Suspects Festival that there appears to be in the social sector a “serial avoidance of politics”. He notes that “little deep digging is happening in the social innovation world to get at the underlying factors that perpetuate inequality and plunder the planet”.

All of which takes us back to the politics of social enterprise. With all its good intention, its trading for a social purpose, its social value, and its availability as a public service provider, is it naïve or deliberate for social enterprises to claim they take no political side and to centralise themselves in the middle of everyone else? What if social enterprise is more politically embedded in a particular view than it is aware off?

There is no value neutral space in politics or in life generally. Even apathy is a value. So what are the politics of social enterprise? What is the social good that they exist for? To what extent are they part of the dominant systems in power? To what extent are they embedded in the current ideological political economy in places like the UK and Australia that generates wider and wider gaps between rich and poor? Or to what extent are they active proponents of new ways of addressing the systemic and ideological foundations of inequality and injustice by developing innovative businesses trading for a purpose that clearly calls into question the current politics of the day?

It appears this approach contrasts to the view in Africa recorded by the Stanford Social Innovation Review that social enterprises have a political role to play and can help build stability in countries facing political crises by addressing root causes of civilian discontent. In Australia historically the social sector looking at new ways to address poverty, disadvantage and injustice had a clear political alliances and do so still today. And it goes without saying that there are many politically active social enterprises in the UK addressing key political issues including racism, immigration, poverty and social exclusion.

Apparently however, at a policy level and in the face of an impending election in the UK the big hitters in the social enterprise sector seek to do business in a politically value neutral space? But then again perhaps that location is not so politically value neutral at all?

The post The Politics of Social Enterprise appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

An unlikely mix that has combined to collaborate on a mosaic peace tree to be installed in a public location in Edgware as a symbol promoting peace and acceptance across a diversity of faiths, worldviews and abilities. We’re sharing it as an example of what can be done on a small scale in a local community to create cohesion.

Like in so many places across the world so to locally in Edgware pockets of social isolation, disengagement and fracturing along religious and ethnic boundaries are evident. We are also aware how this fracturing occurs between people of different abilities.

Suspicion of what is ‘different’ or ‘other’ is hard-wired in some people. Whether it is different abilities, different faiths, different clothes, different languages, different food, different traditions, or something that does not fit with our own ‘tribe’, globally or locally too many fractures between people fester and turn toxic.

While we can’t take on the whole world we can do something locally.

With a grant from the Near Neighbours Fund (http://tinyurl.com/n7ed6k3) we plan to combine people of all ages and abilities from local ethnic, cultural and religious groups in a series of cooperative three hour workshops led by Mosaic artist/psychologist Naomi Selig (http://tinyurl.com/puysx7r).

The real work will be to ensure that we generate a ‘safe space’ to explore difference and otherness, with a mix of people that more often than not are to be found apart rather than together.

Working together participants will cut glass and construct a mosaic peace tree. The design of the mosaic will specifically mix colour and shape together, to identify how diversity can be combined into a cohesive whole.

Each individual leaf will be designed by individuals or groups to identify their ‘uniqueness’ – whether that be ethnic, faith based, abilities based, age, gender or a mix of several of these distinctions. The first set of workshops will both design the individual leaves and the final form of the mosaic under the guidance of the mosaic artist. This will ensure that the final mosaic is a collaborative community design. In the second set of workshops all these individual leaves will combine into the one final mosaic – a strong symbol of peace and cohesion.

The plan is then to install the mosaic in a prominent public space in Edgware. Both the launch of the project and the installation of the final mosaic will bring together members of all the major different people groups in Edgware with a street party and food and a celebration of each others uniqueness and sameness. It will be a collective accomplishment and we anticipate it will in its own unique way generate new understanding between people and heal fractures that exist simply because people don’t know or understand each other’s way of living.

It’s a local example of the power collaboration can have in face of a global challenge. Maybe you could replicate the idea in your context. Please do!

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