Quantifying community cohesion

This is a wonder in the other direction, I freely admit, but it ties into social media quite closely, I think.

One of the biggest potentials often quoted for social media is improving community cohesion. I don't like buzzwords, so lets call it.....getting people to talk to each other a little bit more without any of the barriers in the way which the recent evolution of society has created.

Putting it that way makes one of the things I've been musing over today a little easier. You see, thinking of ways to quantify community cohesion is a little difficult. Or rather thinking of ways to measure the effeciveness of social media as a tool to increase community cohesion is a little difficult which is where all of this stems from as I attempt with some determination to wrestle all my thoughts, hopes, aspirations, doubts and questions on social media and its use to us into something approaching a professional document.

It's taken 5 hours of background processing but I'm finally at least at a place where I can understand that talking about community cohesion isn't terribly helpful, but that encouraging people to talk to each other and understand where each other is coming from actually is. So where does that get me? Well, if conversations are happening in places I don't know about, then chances are I wont be measuring those conversations. So the obvious answer to me is to bring the conversations into an arena where I can see them, which involves asking the right questions, providing some house rules and then listening very carefully.

But the other thing which I am wondering about is how you measure a sense of community within a town or county or country. In fluffy terms, it would be obvious - are people being nice to each other, do people help each other on and off buses or across roads, do people grit their own drives and the rest of the street be damned or do they grit the road as well, do people knock on their next door neighbours door to find out if they need a hand with the weekly shop, do people share information regarding dodgy people randomly loitering in the neighbourhood, do people investigate when they hear smashed glass at 3am............

None of this is quantifiable, measurable, put a finger uponable. It's all wavy hands stuff. I'm not interested in wavy hands stuff for the purpose of this exercise, I'm interested in real world outcomes.

Which I suppose is where big society comes in, isn't it. It's where it's come in all along. You can take the temperature of a towns sense of community by the amount of community projects which spring up inside it. By the amount of volunteers registered within it. By the amount of free time people donate on a daily/weekly/monthly basis in order to help someone they don't know out for no other reason than that they felt like helping someone. It's about people helping to build things physically, like youth clubs and church halls, but it's also about the more ephemeral stuff, the time spent leading the youth groups, leading local walks and bike rides, teaching people how to do the fundamental things in life like read and write.

If you wanted to measure community cohesion, which I think is less about people talking to each other, than perhaps about people practically helping each other, then I think I would map the community projects, efforts, outings and outcomes of the local community. It would be an interesting temperature to take in Blackburn with Darwen.

Of course, what I've actually done here is talk about community. Because talking about cohesion is a whole other post. What I wish, more than anything, is that I could march up to certain people within our Department and sit down and ask them if they'll talk to me so I can pick their brains. But I just don't know that it's appropriate, that it would be welcomed, that I am brave enough to do that without some kind of introduction or preamble. So the question then becomes, how on earth will I ever understand cohesion, or rather where people are and aren't talking and why and why not, unless I do.

A classless society to be a big society?

We are not a classless society. From where you are sitting, it may look like it is, and I commend you and congratulate you on your luck. I suspect you have been born into a different world to mine and many others. If you are sitting there raising an eyebrow in slight bewilderment about the concept that big society needs to address class issues, then let me try and explain. I am not comfortable with the task of explaining, because it is a complex issue that I will inevitably end up breaking down into a small blog post, but I have to try because annoying trends are emerging.

A while ago I said that I didn't think the big society could work in my street. I acknowledge fully I was wrong. I missed the point. The point, of course, being that the big society is very much alive and well here, but that due to cultural differences, we are welcome, but only when assistance is required for very specific problems. Otherwise, there is a language and cultural barrier which through no fault of anyones seems to be insurmountable at the moment. I believe that in 10 years time this will not be true. I believe this very much.

So after much soul searching, I came to the conclusion that I'd missed the point of big society, and that perhaps being a complete and utter sap, I believed in it more than I'd actually realised, because actually, attending conferences, discussions, joining in with debates online on Twitter, talking to people and trying to change their viewpoint of the world and trying to establish who the people are who can help me change the world a tiny little bit - all of that is the big society. It's about people giving up their time to share, talk, collaborate, inspire, challenge and discuss. It's about sparking epiphanies in others as much as it is about getting something out of it for yourself. Well, for some of us. :O) It's about giving something up for no reward, I think, about sharing with people with no expectation of reward, only a deep seated aspiration to try and change the colours of the world slightly for those who might come after.

My motivations, I suspect, are being questioned in some quarters. It's simple. I might come across as being exceptionally stupid and naive but I am a reasonably good judge of character - and this judging is usually done when people aren't aware they're being watched. I don't mean stalked - I mean people watching - the same people watching that we all do. The small difference might be that I do it consciously - perhaps not, I don't know. But I watch how people deal with others, above them, at the same level as them, below them. Process the data, and make decisions. Decisions about whether someone is the right person to trust. Decisions about whether someones motivations are the same as mine. Decisions about risk taking, rewards or lack of them, being trusted myself and about faith.

I do this for everyone I come into contact with, truth be told. From political leaders to friends, at every level. I can't help the way I am. It's how I roll. I give information freely to people, but it's filtered, always filtered until I trust someone.

Why is this important?

I grew up at the bottom.

Big society requires people to come together. It requires ideas and trust and faith and good intentions. It requires the commitment to give your time, ideas, enthusiasm and passion to some one or something with no hope of return or reward. It's not an easy thing to do. It requires excellent communication skills to convey your ideas. It requires immense confidence to stand up in situations you are terrified of being in and bely no signs of your fear but instead project the concrete absolute projection of believability. You're not fooling anyone. You're not lying. If someone saw how scared you really were, they might think you were, because they would be judging the person in front of them on their own social experience and not the social experience of the person in front of them. But it is necessary to stand in front of these people, these people who are not your people, to ask for money, acquire funding, acquire benefactores and gain support, which creates noise, which results in success.

Some of us are more comfortable than others. Some of us acquired a 'sod it lets see what happens' attitude somewhere along the way and the fear dissipates in the reflection of other peoples questions, curiosity and interest. Some of us are chasing something a little more elusive than job roles, a boyfriend who can pay all the bills or fame and glory. I can't speak for everyone who comes from where I come from, because you know I've not met anyone else yet who comes from where I come from and finds themselves here in this insane world of endless possibilities, or certainly what looks some days like a world of endless possibilities and other days looks like nothing short of an insurmountable obstacle course where I simply don't have the skills, any of the skills, to negotiate it.

But I don't want to hear only one conversation. I want to hear everyones voices. I assume the government wants to hear everyones voices, despite someone from the Tory party slapping down some of the disabled Twitter army last night. I'm going to assume her crass ignorance is in the minority. In order to hear everyones voices, please make sure you ask. Everyone. Don't expect everyone to be gobby enough to come to you. Don't expect everyone to be ballsy enough to come to you. Don't expect everyone to have come to the conclusion that there is nothing to lose and only in trying, in asking the difficult questions, in pushing harder and harder and harder is there a chance that a small tiny piece of the world might look different, might come together, might be okay. Not magnificent, but simply okay.

In order for the big society to happen, money is needed. In order to get money for your project, you have to, essentially, pitch. The thought fills me with absolute terror. I'll do anything to avoid it, absolutely anything. I don't think I'll be alone. So what do we do? Who do we go to? Who will advocate on our behalf? Who will be the presentable, eloquent, confident voice for us?

Is that even the answer? Or is the answer to actually teach people how to speak for themselves. Give them the tools. Allow them to practice, hone their speeches and their skills and then go and take their fire, passion, enthusiasm and care to the table and not choke on the words before a sentence has passed.

A conversation has to involve all. Please, will someone work out a way for everyone to have a voice?

A governments disassociation with reality

This isn't a political blog. I will be honest, my interest in politics is a fledgling thing, the vestiges of ignorance of which I sometimes passionately wish I could reclaim.

Frankly, the whole thing winds me up. But this wraps into social media and so please bear with me. We get there in the end. Via some irritation at the Big Society. You have been warned.

So. The Big Society speech happened this morning. I've read the speech. Sounds great - well reads great. Just the right amount of pregnant pauses (ellipses) and impassioned pleas for the coming together of a nation.

Well if we were all white and middle class, it would work. Don't look at me like that, it would. The dream of Mr Cameron's is one I have no doubt that a large amount of you share. I do too. I'm young(ish), idealistic, and full of passion, enthusiasm and belief that the world can be changed if someone just comes up with the right idea in the right place with the right people listening. I'm white, and much to my occasional embarrassment thoroughly middle class. If someone is having trouble, I offer to help. If I see someone doing something suspicious or blatantly wrong, I'll report it to the relevant people. I carry a little fireproof pouch to put my cigarette butts in when out walking or biking and I smile and greet everyone in my street. I read Exec Board meeting minutes for fun, Prime Ministers speeches for fun. I want to know, I want to be involved, I want to give time for free, hell despite my better judgement I've volunteered for the Olympics and will eventually be marshalling at a local mountain bike race series.

My neighbours are very different. But before we discuss that, so that you understand the direction this is coming from, let me tell you a story.

Someone ploughed into our lovely company car last year. It was a stolen car, we now know driven by some local Asian kids. The race is relevant, I think, bear with me on this. They ploughed into it at such speed and ferocity that the entire front engine of a VW Passatt was left hanging off, almost entirely detached from the main chassis of the car. It was a write off. I was a bit upset. My other half was pretty shocked too as was our guest who we'd been playing Rock Band with and as a result hadn't heard a thing, not the impact, and not the lovely locals who'd knocked on our door to tell us. So those lovely locals? They know my other halves mother lives 15 doors up, went and knocked on the door and told her and asked her if she could phone us. So she did.

They didn't have to bother, you know? Our street is half Asian, half white. Old traditional ingrained white Lancashire. The people doing the running around that day were Asian. The kids handed themselves in eventually, we suspect entirely down to community pressure from families who recognised the kids as they ran away. They didn't tell the police a thing, something I was monumentally irritated about at the time. Instead they went behind the scenes, called mothers of uncles of friends and got them to hand themselves in. I have an immense amount of respect for those kids for doing that and any animosity I held against them dissipated in the understanding that perhaps they'd paid their dues to their community in ways I didn't know of.

The Big Lunch still couldn't happen here.

No, it really couldn't. Here's the reason why I told you the story above first. The wives wont look me in the eye. They wont greet me, wont talk to me, wont acknowledge me, never mind pass the time of day with me. I had the strangest moment while smoking a cigarette the other day in our back yard where I saw our next door neighbours face for the first time in 4 years of living here and I don't know who was more startled, me or her.

Me, possibly. It just floored me. I have become so accustomed to the way things are here, so inured to the traditions and respectful of the flow of life that someone stepping outside of that just broke my head a bit.

This is why the Big Society wont work. For a Society to be Big, all must be involved. Until there is more understanding of the psychological make up of all those who share the ground of the British Isles, how on earth are we going to work together? We've got to start having the Big Conversation first! We must learn to co-exist side by side, respecting the flow of other lives is different to ours, their priorities the same, but that the systems to ensure those priorities upheld a mystery to us too. We must be transparent in our behaviour and motivations and open with our smiles and greetings relentlessly and without thanks in order to attempt to engage with someone - anyone - who does not have the same skin colour as us.

That works both ways.

Sometimes, I still feel alienated here. I clumsily and entirely accidentally offend, I trip over words, I don't know who to make eye contact with, I confuse people here because I ride bikes and come home covered in mud even more than perhaps I would in an entirely white street. Yet I notice that the kids a few doors up have scooters now and one of the older girls has a bike and we smile at each other, and is there a shared acknowledgement of wanting to explore, to be free, to fly? Who knows? Neither of us say a word, both of us trapped in our confusion of the social rules of the others worlds. She doesn't know if I want to speak to her and I don't know if I am allowed, whether I would be offending someone, at what age it is okay to continue to smile and encourage and past which point it becomes offensive and wrong to do so.

Our society is a minefield and the current discussion with France banning the veil does nothing to calm the seas. I don't want to live in a white middle class society, I want to live in a truly Big Society, one in which everyone has a voice. Until it is possible for that to happen, I think we're floating in the clouds.

So where does social media come in?

I don't know anything about you except the value of your words on blogs and on Twitter. The social complications are removed, I can't accidentally offend by reading or responding to the wrong thing. There are no minefields, just conversation. A Big Conversation. The web is a great leveller, removing, in some cases, your job title, your doctorate, your Honourable status and many other things besides. It means I'll talk to many people who I would probably feel a bit too intimidated to engage with off those platforms, though a tentative interaction on those platforms make things very much easier for me when a face to face meeting happens. By that point, I know the jump off points, no matter who you are and where you are from. I know the subjects to avoid, I know the subjects which make you glow with enthusiasm, I sometimes know your political direction and will never hold that against you.

What concerns me, increasingly, is the demographic of social media channels. I have a growing suspicion that they are not representative of the wider demographic certainly, of our local Boroughs. Whether that's an issue or not, something to be messed with and changed or not, I'm still quietly arguing with myself over. What I do know is that perhaps the responsibility is on us to find out where all our target audiences are communicating and discussing and to try and engage with people in their own virtual worlds. But I think perhaps someone wiser than me needs to chase that one down, because I honestly don't know where to start. And that's something I am hugely embarrassed about too.