Finding the Big Society – on the streets

When you picture the Big Society, what do you think of? The great and the good descending on Downing Street for an exclusive launch party? People planting vegetables in public parks?

For myself, I picture the streets. If the Big Society starts anywhere, it starts there, in the streets and public spaces of Britain’s towns and cities. Jane Jacobs, urban sociologist and one of the patron saints of new economics, wrote eloquently about the importance of street-life: “Sidewalk contacts are the change from which a city’s wealth of public life might grow”. In other words, if you want to find the building blocks of community, look for the chance encounters that take place in public spaces: the school gates, the local park, and most of all the streets.

But the Big Society means more than just members of a community getting along, it means them mobilising - working together for a common purpose. And to do that means turning chance encounters into purposeful, mutual relationships.

It’s with that in mind that we’ve started our latest project. Street Talk is an attempt to make conversations happen in public spaces. We want to show that deliberation – active, informed conversations that help people exchange ideas and find common ground – can happen anywhere: not just in town halls or conference centres where most people are unlikely to ever go near it.

So this month, we are taking deliberation onto the streets of London, Manchester and Hereford. Thanks to funding from the Wellcome Trust, we’re working with Pathways, a fantastic public engagement organisation based in the North West, to setup stalls on street corners and get people to talk about their bodies, their health, their bodies and the contributions they can make. So far, we’ve had some great conversations, and learned a lot, but there’s still a long way to go. Making the leap from talking to people, to helping them talk to each other is a challenge. But if we can pull it off, there’s a lot to be gained.

After all, it’s conversations like these that lay the groundwork for everything else we want to achieve.  Sharing opinions, values and passions is what turns nodding relationships into the seeds of a movement which can transform lives.  And since everyone from the Prime Minister downwards seems so keen to find ways to bring people into the conversation (with sometimes limited success), perhaps it’s time to try taking conversation to the people.

Street Talk with be in MOSI, Manchester this Wednesday and Thursday and in Chorlton Library, Manchester on Friday.

Photo by Kate Goodacre