Empowerment Works has been far from the only effort to energise people to create an alternative narrative to the Big Society that has decided to jack it in. The admirable Our Society website and its crew have done the same, and I can't do better than Julian Dobson in describing why things are as they are in what has turned into an empty space, so far as lively collaboration is concerned.
Empowerment Works is a movement of people and organisations committed to building support for community empowerment in the South West and beyond. For more information please visit the Empowering Communities website.
Showing posts with label community development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community development. Show all posts
Monday, 1 October 2012
The last post, maybe
This blog should have
been put to rest some time ago, I guess.
But late last rites are, I hope, better than none.
Empowerment Works has been far from the only effort to energise people to create an alternative narrative to the Big Society that has decided to jack it in. The admirable Our Society website and its crew have done the same, and I can't do better than Julian Dobson in describing why things are as they are in what has turned into an empty space, so far as lively collaboration is concerned.
Empowerment Works has been far from the only effort to energise people to create an alternative narrative to the Big Society that has decided to jack it in. The admirable Our Society website and its crew have done the same, and I can't do better than Julian Dobson in describing why things are as they are in what has turned into an empty space, so far as lively collaboration is concerned.
Monday, 19 December 2011
The Localism Act — Santa or Scrooge?
I’ve opened the shiny present in the capacious Christmas sack of the Localism Act marked ‘new rights and powers for local communities’, and had a horrid disappointment. It rattled enticingly, but what has fallen out of it strikes me as having greatly more potential to disempower than to empower. The year’s labour of the Elves over the Bill has, I fear, been wasted. It’s time to move on.
Thursday, 9 June 2011
Localism – What does that mean?
It’s something I’d rather not be asked by someone with a questioning mind. Should it be a relief that the Government is in the same boat? Or, to wrap it up in the more formal language of the newly published Report on Localism from the House of Commons Communities and Local Government Committee, there’s a ‘lack of clarity about the nature of localism . . . The Government should be explicit about the choices it has made about what type of localism it wants to pursue.’ Putting it another way ‘the actions the Government has set out so far, both in the Localism Bill and in the programmes of individual departments, give an overall impression of inconsistency and incoherence.’
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Big Society Empowerment Policy – going in the right direction?
When the authors of a report which gave a constructive welcome to much of the Big Society agenda in the Spring produce a longer follow-up, and write that ‘the objectives of community empowerment and personal responsibility are in danger of being lost’, it’s worth taking a closer look.
Monday, 22 November 2010
Government ‘upside down’. What does it mean for empowerment?
The department that funds the regional empowerment partnerships is being ‘turned upside-down’, according to a Deputy Director at the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) who came to speak to our national meeting last week. So are its staff, by the sound of it, 40% of whom will be going in a restructuring which will end in 2012.
The restructuring will leave DCLG (note: no more CLG – the ‘D’ is back) with two policy directorates, Neighbourhoods, which will deal with housing and related issues, and Localism, into which responsibility for ‘enabling Big Society’ will fall. That Big Society work will concentrate on three areas: community rights, race equality and integration, and evidence - ‘informing Big Society’.
The restructuring will leave DCLG (note: no more CLG – the ‘D’ is back) with two policy directorates, Neighbourhoods, which will deal with housing and related issues, and Localism, into which responsibility for ‘enabling Big Society’ will fall. That Big Society work will concentrate on three areas: community rights, race equality and integration, and evidence - ‘informing Big Society’.
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