Report from Phase One
The 'Burning Issues'
October 2017
Contents
Part One: Background and Methods
What is The Social Change Project?
Working Approach
What do we mean by 'social change’?
Our three areas of interest/objectives
Our approach - Phases one, two and three - and impact
People - who is involved?
Design principles
Phase One –who, what, where?
Our Community of Practise
A note on language...
Part Two: Social Change Understandings and Common Features
What do people understand by the term ‘social change’?
Context
When positive change does happen, what are the common features?
Clear moral purpose
Ethics
Knowing how change works and having the right models, structures and resources
Flexible model/Strategy
Social change is about people
Collaboration
Tools, tactics, timing - the day-to-day work of change
What stops change from happening?
Organisations
Funders
Individuals
Part Three: Phase Two Propositions/Provocations
Part One: Background and Methods
What is The Social Change Project?
The Social Change Project is a fifteen-month initiative set up to strengthen civil society’s ability to effect positive social change.
Working Approach
What do we mean by 'social change’?
We are interested in activities within civil society which bring about change, both long and short term, legal, political and behaviour change, at the local, national and international. We are interested in change brought about by charities, community groups, social enterprises, individuals and other interesting collaborators. We see that change comes from a multitude of spaces, spurred on by different actors. We are interested in it all.
Our three areas of interest/objectives
- Understanding what enables and impedes social change and identifying ‘burning questions’
- Recommending responses to help practitioners to enhance their effectiveness and to know when they are being effective;
- Thought leadership and strategic advocacy towards strengthening the conditions in which positive social change can thrive.
Our approach - Phases one, two and three - and impact
Phase 1 (July and Aug) – building the evidence base, finding out “what works” and identifying the burning issues
Phase 2 (Sept to Dec) – bring together the community to pool inspirations and insights, tackle the burning issues and agree key ways forward
Phase 3 (Feb 18 to May 18) – test, refine and promote the ways forward via our community to the wider civil society and beyond
People - who is involved?
SMK is primarily the thought convenor and catalyst for encouraging anyone with an interest and commitment to civil society and social change to engage with the project. So far we have engaged a diverse community of
practise in the project including large and small charities, individual campaigners, community groups and initiatives, academics and funders. Further details of who is involved can be found in the participation report.
Design principles
We are designing The Social Change Project with the following principles in mind:
- We are co-investigators, not audiences: we are all in this together, as co-investigators, inquiring into and exploring what we understand by ‘social change’ and how to create the conditions for it to flourish, with authority and integrity.
- We believe less in answers than in the power of shared understanding in how to respond to the material of complexity as we experience it.
- ‘Community of practise’ is our objective: we hope to create the conditions for a sustainable community of practise that will gather around shared concern to better understand social change.
- Grounded in the actual context of use/experience: the content of our inquiry is our shared and diverse experience of trying to do good work in the context in which we work.
- We recognise that these is change happening at all levels of society and social change will mean something different in each context.
Phase One –who, what, where?
Our Community of Practise
We have very purposely reached out right across civil society in creating our community of practise. Taking part in conversations were people incampaigning roles in charities; local service delivery organisations; community development and organising; informal networks and voluntary initiatives; social enterprise and academia. We also had representatives from our funders in a workshops and in another someone from the public sector.
It is highly unusual for a project to bring together this breadth of people drawn from right across civil society. It is undoubtedly a real strength of this project and has created a rich and enlightening conversation. Not least, it
allowed us to look above the preoccupations of each discrete constituency to consider what are common interests, concerns and opportunities. For example, much of the literature in the campaigning world at the moment is focused on mobilisation and movement building. Coming together as a wider community helped us see that this is only piece of the whole social change jigsaw, and rarely delivers change in isolation. Our task what to look across the diversity of work being undertaken to ask what is common to all endeavours. What centrally is the work of social change about, and what are the models and approaches that successful instances of social change hold in common? (We set out our current thinking at the end of this document.)
However, the diversity of our community has brought challenges too. There are experiences specific to particular groups that others are completely unaware of and found it hard to discuss (those outside of registered charities were completely unaware of many of the tensions introduced by the Lobbying Act and anti-advocacy clauses, for example); those working on their own or in small organisations are not confronted by any of the challenges of being in large organisations and vice versa; and language can be difficult.We had to start each workshop by sharing language and discussing terminology to ensure everyone in the group felt clear and comfortable about the material we wanted to discuss.
A note on language...
It is clear that language is a significant problem. There isn't a lexicon that is shared across civil society - and in some cases, it seems that there isn't any language that people feel fits what they are doing and that they are comfortable using.
The word 'campaigning', notably, divided our participants. For professionals working in campaign and policy teams, this is language that they use and value. They feel strongly that campaigning has been under attack from various Government measures, and that the sector has lost confidence in campaigning and they'd like to see the term defended and rehabilitated.
For others it brought different connotations. Interestingly, many people didn't like the term 'campaign' because they thought it conferred a necessarily oppositional approach. A woman who has reluctantly come to describe herself as a 'community activist' said all the available language was too much about fighting and resistance and she doesn't see her work as about this. She is more sophisticated in how she pursues change. For others, the term 'campaigning' was about challenging decisions made somewhere else. It didn't speak to more nuanced power relationships, and processes of negotiation.
'Advocacy' was broadly seen as something narrower - representing the views and interests of particular groups. 'Activism' as about public demonstration and protest. When asked what language people do use to describe themselves and their work - most struggled to answer and in the end talked about the purpose of their work. The term ‘social change’ has proved very useful in allowing this constituency to come together and explore what they hold in common – so absolutely the right ‘frame’ for the project.
It does feel like finding new ways to frame and talk about the work of social change could be an incredibly valuable output from this project, helping cohere this new community of practise; unlocking investment from funders who also feel uneasy with the term 'campaigning' and taking some of the toxicity out of policy narratives that have called into question the legitimacy and value of civil society having a voice, having agency and playing a full part in shaping their own lives, their communities and wider society.
Part Two: Social Change Understandings and Common Features
What do people understand by the term ‘social change’?
The term social change is broad and has been helpful in allowing this project to engage with a wide community of people. At each workshop we asked people to tell us what the term social change meant to them in no more than three words. Using their words we crafted this understanding:
Progressive social change comes from a place of hope which harnesses human agency to empower, to progress and to realise a more just society. It is progress focused and people powered by the brave and tenacious. Social change has the integrity to challenge.
We also took the data on what people had said was working in social change and created this word cloud:
Context
A strong theme in our conversations was that the environment we are all working in has changed dramatically in recent years – and continues to
change ever more rapidly. Political events such as Brexit and Trump’s ascendance in the US have made progressive social reformers re-think some of their assumptions about political attitudes and affiliations, and also triggered a new era of public protest. Politics has polarised and there is a lot to fight for.
Austerity and cuts in public spending are hitting many organisations very hard – particularly local service providers. Small charities that once enjoyed stable funding and positive relationships are finding themselves financially imperilled and having to think carefully and creatively about how to deliver their Mission, and in many cases, just survive. There is an acknowledgment by some that the ‘Big State’ we have enjoyed since the second world war is the blip in historical terms and that the current leaner, tighter environment the norm and likely to stay.
The Lobbying Act, anti-advocacy clauses and guidance from the Charity Commission are felt by professional charity campaigners to have had a“chilling effect” on their part of the sector. There seems to be a widespread loss of confidence in the legitimacy of campaigning – notably among trustees. Meanwhile, media stories about excessive pay and questionable fundraising practises have dented public confidence in charities.
There is a wider sense that we are in a period of profound flux and change. In broad social attitudes; in class distinctions; in how people access information; who they respect and trust. Digital technologies have made it much easier to access information, but it is also harder to edit or police even. The way information is managed or manipulated – the Fake News phenomenon - has become a big concern, as has safe and responsible use of data.
These big changes clearly bring many challenges for civil society change-making with implications that extend from tools and tactics of change-making to leadership and governance.
But these changes bring opportunities too. There is probably more public engagement in social change than ever before. For campaigners, digital technology has been hugely liberating and empowering. A new generation of campaigners are using tech to disrupt previous assumptions – much of it grown from political campaigning that has succeeded in pushing insurgents into the mainstream.
It also seems that people have more appetite to be actively engaged in social change. They don’t just want to pay a membership or make a
donation. People want to be active themselves, and many are taking up the mantle and starting their own campaigns and initiatives.
In summary, making change happen is hard. Given this, it is amazing what has been and is achieved given change-making is still largely a voluntary and untutored endeavour. For all these reasons, The Social Change Project is being seen as a welcome and timely initiative that can hopefully start to make a case for more meaningful civil society support.
Q’s: Are we good enough at horizon scanning, power mapping and future-proofing? Where do we go to get up to date and robust analysis and commentary? Are we proving adaptable enough to respond to external changes? Have progressives fallen behind the campaign curve?
Whenpositive change does happen, what are the common features?
Clear moral purpose
Values. Belief. Passion. Vision.
It was good to be reminded in our conversations that social change is always rooted in strong values, beliefs and principles. Behind all instances of social change lies a conviction that something is wrong. Or unjust. Or unfair. Or that things can be better.
Whether a professional campaigner working on climate change or poverty; a community worker helping people realise their local assets and potential; or a mother fighting to get the support her child needs – all these people are driven by passion, conviction and a desire to make something better.
It is also true that all of these people have to believe that change is possible. Indeed, it was striking the sheer ambition of people in the room. They are all visionaries. Driven to make the world, the UK, their communities, their families better. It is powerful stuff. And unique to civil society?
However, there were those in our discussions who felt civil society is not being sufficiently visionary and ambitious. That it has been too focused on dealing the effects of social ills and poor policy rather than campaigning for change that could prevent these problems arising. There is a link to leadership: does the sector have sufficient bold, visionary leaders who can influence public attitudes and political debate?
Ethics
A surprising 'burning issue' from Phase One was the issue of ethics. This was, in part, driven by observations about the Leave campaign at the time of the EU referendum and questions about the ethics of some of the tactics it used.
Participants asked about the role of ethics and values are in driving change – our sense of right and wrong and moral purpose. There were concerns about fake news and data manipulation – what are the ethical limits we should observe in campaigns? And how do we ensure others comply? There was a lot of discussion about the need for more inclusivity in campaigns. And questions about accountability – how should organisations be held accountable for their work?
Q’s: Is civil society proceeding from its moral purpose and mission? Do we have leaders who are championing bold ideas and are willing to challenge? Are the ways in which are pursuing change ethical? Are we sufficiently conscious of this? Does it matter?
Knowing how change works and having the right models, structures and resources
An 'eco-system' of change
The conversations also agreed that for significant instances of social change, there is not one thing alone that drives change. Rather, there is a confluence of events and activities, with different organisations and people playing different parts. The process of social change shows us that it is not about looking at what individual actors and entities did – but the whole ‘eco-system’. Easier to see when looking back – that significant change a push and pull between the public and their appetite for or acceptance of the need for change; involvement of politicians and legislators or other decision-makers to broker the change; often the role played by a significant event – a trigger. But the process also led, pushed, provoked by people of passion and principle. Whether campaigners, activists, reformers. Social change doesn’t happen without visionary people conceiving of it and arguing for it. It is interesting to consider how thisroleplayed. Sometimes by a leader – but often more like a conductor. “Dancing with the system” as Duncan Green puts it.
Flexible model/Strategy
Allied with the recognition that change happens within a system, is that change is rarely linear. Usually, it stops and starts and takes unexpected turns. For this reason, it can be hard to know exactly how and when change will happen. Which in turn links with challenges of measurement and attribution, and targets/outcomes discussed later). As one participant put it: “The destination is clear but the journey is not.”
Pursuing change therefore requires flexible agile thinking and action. At the heart of change-making is the ability to read the world and understand why things are as they are. Not as simple as just asserting that power lies over there in the hands of politicians or business leaders and task in hand is to persuade them to think and behave differently. There is much more going on. Interestingly, many of the most useful analogues are being drawnfrom the tech sector.