Here’s news of an interesting event…. NCIA Assembly at the Bank of Ideas – Occupy community groups and public services: a discussion to find a new space for community and voluntary action. Tuesday December 13th, 2pm to 4pm, Room 1.05, The Bank of Ideas, 29 Sun Street (near Liverpool Street station), London Amongst other things […]
In July the Common Cause Handbook, from which the quotation below is taken, was added to the original Common Cause report (along with lots of other nice stuff on the valuesandframes.org website) “Social and environmental concern and action, it turns out, are based on more than simply access to the facts (a finding that may […]
We’ve had a lively 3 way conversation about what the Occupy movement can learn from the experience of movements such as Climate Camp. We (Dwight Towers, Seta and myself) ranged quite widely – leadership, accountability, meetings that work even for those with little time and so on. One area we didn’t cover was vision and […]
A couple of times this year I’ve been asked to sit on a panel as a speaker advocating nonviolent direct action or radical social change. Flattering to be asked. But my take on these topics is that they are fundamentally participatory – empowered social action making change from the grassroots up. And yet we revert […]
Recently I facilitated part of the second day of a 2 day gathering. I arrived on the night of the first day in time to catch the end of the day’s meeting. Energy was flagging a little and that meant that some of the dominant dynamics of the group were asserting themselves – a handful […]
I spent the afternoon in London on Wednesday at a meeting of the Capacity Building Forum. You may be glad to know that there was, finally, talk of agreeing a new name (the current one hardly trips off the tongue) and creating a website so that the outside world can locate and get involved with […]
In their 8 Tools for New Possibilities post, ISIC have pulled together 8 social media tools for connecting, hearing and organising people and their views. I’ve had a quick look and can see some of them being valuable additions to the toolkits of networks and NGOs with networks of grassroots groups. I imagine that next […]
Last Sunday I ran a short 4 hour NVDA training session for People and Planet at Leeds University, an interesting experience as, because it was the same weekend as Shared Planet , only 3 people attended which meant I had to really re-think what we were doing and how. It was actually wonderful to have […]
Rhizome started small. We always had plans to involve new people but times are hard and we wanted to offer them a living. Well, we changed the offer and instead offered a place in an interesting co-op doing interesting work with interesting groups and organisations (and a very modest contribution towards a living). Emily Hodgkinson, […]
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas Groups die. Networks die. Movements die. It’s meant to happen. It’s part of a natural cycle and we should embrace it rather than rage against it. Why? […]
