A few hackles seem to have been raised following an open meeting on 7 December 2010 to discuss the Big Society Show, convened by the Community Sector Coalition (CSC).
People at the meeting had the temerity to be openly critical of the government’s motives and intentions, and even discussed the need to resist them! About … Continue reading
The ‘Duty to Involve’ or the ‘Duty to be Involved’: who is involving who and why would you care?
The Duty to Involve is now with us – how does it feel to be ‘involved’? Have citizens up and down the country been writing to their local press in an upsurge of local debate and … Continue reading
As seasoned travellers on the highways and byways of community sector life, all of us are used to exercising a healthy scepticism in relation to rhetoric, which can often sound great, and delivery, which disappears down the memory hole.
Anyone remember the 2001 Neighbourhood Renewal Action Plan words about the Local Strategic Partnerships being a … Continue reading
“Community empowerment is local government’s core business”
Simon Milton (in DCLG’s 2007 Action Plan for Community Empowerment)
“Power is never given.”
Operation Black Vote organising slogan
One of the ironies of community empowerment networks (CEN’s) was that they couldn’t empower themselves, or more accurately save themselves from the crude dynamics of how power works at … Continue reading