Spending Circles
The purpose of this tool is to provide an opportunity for the residents of an area to consider where they spend their money with the intention of highlighting spend that is made outside of the local area. It is useful if the group has used the define local tool prior to this. The tool also provides the opportunity for the residents to consider how some of this external spend may be shifted to within the local area and to come up with actual ideas for doing so. These ideas can then be voted on and taken to action by those who are keen to do so.
The local community is represented by the yellow centre, the blue area represents the area surrounding the community for say three to five miles. The final red area represents any area from say 5 miles away to imported goods. If a spending survey has already been done for the area, then the colours on the circles could be plotted as being darker in shade according to how much is spent there. Darker the colour the more is spent there. This exercise is more meaningful when it follows an actual spending survey but can be used in itself on flip chart paper without colours but just the concentric circlesin order to raise awareness that leads to action.
The larger the area that the circles appear, the more obvious the local spending will appear.
Current situation
Preferred future
Task One
Each participant to list items that they spend money on with one item per post it note. Then place these post it notes onto the spending circles according to where they purchase them e.g. local, within five miles etc.
Task two
Participants identify which spending they can move closer to or within the local area. They also consider theways in whichthey could move some (not all) of the items closer to the centre . This should generate suggestions like – supermarket, local market, small shops etc. idea here is not so much to elicit only which spends can move, but rather, what needs to be done to move them locally.
Task three
Brief feedback from each group on Spending Circles regarding which spending they think could be shifted and how this would be done.
From here it’s possible to move to action by having the various ideas clustered onto a few sheets of flip chart paper and voting with dots to set priorities and to see who is prepared to take action on what and who is prepared to support those who wish to oversee group projects.