Participle: All Feeds

[P'article] Engineering a Brighter Future - Loops

2010-06-14T15:41:00+00:00

Author: Cherie Fullerton

Alice Rawsthorn, writing in the New York Times on 13 June 2010, profiles Participle's Loops project for young people. “We’d wanted to help young people for some time, but the urgency came when Unicef published a study showing that the UK was the worst country in the Western world to grow up in,” explained Hilary Cottam, co-founder of Participle. “The government’s response was to build new youth centers and to encourage young people to avoid risk — not drinking, not getting pregnant, not doing drugs. All the research shows that locking them up in schools and youth centers doesn’t work. Youth development comes out of having lots of experiences and engaging with risk. We felt there had to be a better way.” See the full article here

[P'article] Ten Points for a Social Renaissance

2010-02-25T14:17:00+00:00

Author: Hilary Cottam

What should a new government do? At Participle, we believe that public services must provide new ways for people to shape their lives in a more meaningful way. We work with and for the public to make this happen. The current system isn’t working. It is both failing to support people and failing to address the major issues of modern society. This has little to do with money – most of our solutions are cheaper. Working with the public means that we have lived for six months on council estates to spend time with ‘families in chronic crisis.’ We spent most of 2007 intensively living and experiencing the lives of over 250 older people in South London. We have also spent six months living through the lives of over 60 young people. Through working in this unique way, immersing ourselves in some of the biggest issues of our time, we are fortunate to receive unique insights into particular parts of the population. Those who have seen our work have asked, what should a new government do to allow these bottom up, low cost approaches to flourish nationally. Here are our 10 points for a Social Renaissance.

[P'article] Learning from the Extremes - Charlie Leadbeater & Annika Wong

2010-01-26T13:49:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

Commissioned by Cisco, Charles Leadbeater interviewed 100 social entrepreneurs seeking to meet huge needs without the advantage of traditional resources. What we can learn from social entrepreneurs are innovating radically new ways to take learning into the poorest places in to the world. That kind of disruptive innovation may not come from the best schools. It is much more likely to come from social entrepreneurs who often seek to meet huge need without the resources for traditional solutions: teachers, text books and schools. Disruptive innovation frequently starts in the margins rather than the mainstream. Governments should continue to look to the very best school systems to guide improvement strategies. But increasingly they should also look to social entrepreneurs working at the extremes who may well create the low-cost, mass, participatory models of learning that will be needed in future. To find out more download the Learning from the Extremes White Paper here

[P'article] Get-Together

2010-01-18T11:32:00+00:00

Author: Hugo Manassei

In 2008, we piloted a wonderful service we call Get-Together. It's aim is to reduce some truly horrific statistics. Currently, in the UK, 3.1 million people over 65 do not see a friend, neighbour or family member, at least once a week and 1.8 million have no contact with friends, family or neighbours at least once a month. The link between social isolation and mental health is very strong, highlighted well in Daniel Goleman's book, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships - “Studies done over two decades involving more than thirty-seven thousand people show that social isolation - the sense that you have nobody with whom you can share your private feelings or have close contact - doubles the chance of sickness or death. Isolation itself, a 1987 report in Science concluded, "is as significant to mortality rates as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and lack of physical exercise." Indeed, smoking increases mortality risk by a factor of just 1.6, while social isolation does so by a factor of 2.0, making it a greater health risk." So, Participle, in conjunction with Westminster Council, developed this service called Get Together. For the past year, we have been developing a business case, and getting partners on board to finance and launch Get-Together across London. This is planned for 2010, so watch this space. In the meantime, watch this great film made of the pilot: For more information on Get-Together, view the case study. Also, read this article here written by Jonathan Freedland.

[P'article] Trying to Be Responsible and Cutting-Edge, Too

2009-12-27T13:58:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

LONDON — Let’s look back at what design was like a decade ago. If I’d mentioned the “S word” you’d have thought it meant “style,” not “sustainability.” See the full article here

[P'article] Seven ways to protect public services

2009-12-16T11:30:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

Seven ways to protect public services There are alternatives to Ryanair-style public services cut back to a basic low-cost offering, says Charles Leadbeater. See the full article here

[Blog] A Day in the Life: Southwark Circle, help for Older People in Southwark

2009-07-07T17:02:01+00:00

Author: Melanie Beasley
Category: Ageing

11:30am - Ryan answers the Southwark Circle phone and greets Alan. Alan is looking for some help with learning how to email. Within minutes, Ryan has called Caroline, a neighbourhood helper, and arranged a visit for the following day. Alan got on well with Caroline the last time she visited to have a look at why his printer wasn’t working. 12:00pm - Another member named Edith answers the door to Denise, a neighbourhood helper in her area. Denise has come round to help Edith sort out a cupboard and to take some of the things she no longer wants to the charity shop. Edith pays £30 a quarter for her membership to Southwark Circle and has used it to gets a number of DIY tasks done around the house. When her washing machine stopped working, another neighbourhood helper named Sarah took a look at it. According to Edith: “It turned out to be the filter, Sarah emptied it and it worked again. That saved me £40 in call out charges just to check it.” 1:45pm - Louis greets a neighbourhood helper, Luciana with ‘Hola!’ He has been learning Spanish from Luciana for a couple of weeks now. He read about another member in the Southwark Circle newsletter who learns Spanish and was inspired. Last week, Louis met up with another member, Derek, who like him is from the West Indies and a cricket fan. They watched the West Indies vs. England test match and, whilst they hit it off, the West Indies were less successful! Every one of our members personalises the service to match their own life. For some, it’s just about getting help with something specific like computer lessons or learning a musical instrument. For others, it is about getting help with bits and pieces around the home, and many members use it meet new people and do things for other members. If you’re looking for help yourself, or perhaps looking for help for your parents, Southwark Circle is now up and running. Call to find someone to help out with gardening, a spot of DIY or to share a coffee with! If you are interested in joining Southwark Circle give us a call on 0800 112 3441 or email info@southwarkcircle.org.uk for more information.

[P'article] Madeleine Bunting writes about Participle in today’s Guardian

2010-06-28T12:41:00+00:00

Author: Cherie Fullerton

See the full article here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/27/new-model-welfare-state

[P'article] Get Together design work on show at the National Design Triennial: Why Design Now? New York

2010-06-15T16:15:00+00:00

Author: Cherie Fullerton

Why Design Now? Designers around the world are answering this question by creating products, prototypes, buildings, landscapes, messages, and more that address social and environmental challenges. How can we power the world with clean energy? How can we move people and products safely and efficiently? How can we shelter communities in sustainable environments? How can we close the loop of materials extraction and disposal? How can we enable people around the globe to generate and share wealth? How can we improve the quality of life for all people through health-care innovations? How can we communicate ideas effectively and creatively? How can we discover beauty and wisdom in simple forms that use minimal resources? Collectively, designers are seeking to enhance human health, prosperity, and comfort while diminishing the conflicts between people and the global ecosystems we inhabit. Participle's Get Together work is now showing as part of this exhibition at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. See the full article here

[P'article] Putting the Social Back Into Services

2010-05-15T15:08:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

Is there an alternative to the seemingly inevitable cuts to public services? Hilary Cottam of Participle poses the question. See the full article here

[P'article] The Circle family is growing…

2010-04-27T16:36:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

Hammersmith & Fulham Council and Participle are working together to develop H&F Circle, building on the success of Southwark Circle. H&F Circle is looking for two inspiring and committed individuals to help us launch and grow this innovative social enterprise. Download the job description for Head of Operations here and the job description for Head of Membership Development here. Candidates should send a CV and cover letter to careers@hfcircle.org.uk by 12 noon on 28 July 2010.

[P'article] Interim report launch of Beyond Beveridge: Principles for 2020 Public Services

2010-03-19T17:04:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

'Beyond Beveridge' is the interim report of the Commission on 2020 Public Services. It sets out the urgency for change, the limits of our current public services settlement, and the need for a systematic and long-term approach to reform. The report offers a positive vision for 2020 public services, and three policy building blocks to get us there: a shift in culture, a shift in power, and a shift in finance. The report represents the interim findings of our diverse and experienced commission, and the principles on which it will base its final conclusions in summer 2010. Hilary Cottam, Principal Partner or Participle is one of the 20 cross party commissioners tasked with looking into the future of Britain's public services. This week Hilary was on the panel launching the Commission's interim report Beyond Beveridge: Principles for 2020 Public Services.

[P'article] Participatory Systems, Moving Beyond 20th Century Institutions, by Hilary Cottam

2010-03-19T09:53:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

BIG IDEAS for the next decade: Participatory Systems, Moving Beyond 20th Century Institutions by Hilary Cottam. Featured in the Winter 2010 - Vol.XXXI. No 4 - Harvard International Review. Read the full article here.

[P'article] The World’s Most Influential Designers

2010-02-03T09:55:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders

Not only is "influential" difficult to measure, but "design" is also nigh on impossible to define neatly... From design thinkers to hands-on design doers in industries from graphics to industrial to auto design, our chosen 27 luminaries represent a diverse cross-section of design disciplines. But all those selected have one thing in common: They are in some way responsible for shaping the world around us. Business Week names Hilary Cottam as one of the World's Most Influential Designers .

[P'article] On the Big Society

2009-11-19T13:44:00+00:00

Author: Hilary Cottam

This week David Cameron gave his big ‘poverty’ speech. The press are still chewing it over and profoundly disagreeing about its implications. A ‘meaty’ speech, was the verdict of Ben Brogan in the Telegraph. ‘Incoherent’ and ‘utterly duplicitous’, claimed Madeleine Bunting on the left. From Participle’s perspective, David Cameron’s speech is welcome. Firstly because he has brought centre stage the big social challenges we are focused on. Secondly because he has put his finger on a number of issues that are so evident to the families and communities we work with. Current models of both service delivery and welfare reform are failing to connect to people’s lives in ways that foster and support deep and meaningful change. That said, there seem to me to be two central flaws in his argument. They matter because the way we frame the problem is likely to determine the solutions proposed. Cameron writes about the suffocating state, but he is absolutely silent on the rapacious market, to which the New Labour state has been so subservient and so closely connected. It is too simplistic to say that human kindness has been squeezed out by the state. Certainly target driven public services have squeezed out the space and time for human relationships. Their relentless, palliative focus has also forced people to categorise themselves as needy in order to receive support, which can squeeze out resilience and responsibility. Cameron is also right that feverish social engineering commanded by Westminster will not bring about change, but neither will ‘nudging’ in the context of entrenched poverty and increasing inequality. Ultimately all our current service targets are economic – they support an overarching market objective of economic growth. Human factors – the non-measurable elements of trust, time, friendship, human relationships are squeezed out within this market driven framework, no matter who is responsible for delivery – the state or the private sector. This brings me to the second problem with Cameron’s thesis – his views on inequality. Inequality is at the heart of the matter. Cameron approvingly quotes Wilkinson, author of the Spirit Level whose work shows that the more unequal a society, the worse every quality of life indicator. Bizarrely in his speech, Cameron then goes on to discuss how it is about redistribution between the middle and the bottom. But, as Wilkinson himself has commented, in reaction to the speech; ‘Bringing down the top incomes is very important.’ Wilkinson imagines income distribution in society as if we are all points on a piece of elastic, explaining that, if you pull out the top further, then everyone below gets spread further apart. Longitudinal research shows there is a clear correlation between income inequality and social glue. Britain is one of the most unequal societies in the world. Unless we are willing to talk about and address this disparity, neither a re-imagined state nor an army of social entrepreneurs can build Cameron’s big society. These are some of the structural issues that Participle seeks to address with our mission statement (Beveridge 4.0) and our work with families and communities across Britain. We have argued for a capabilities approach – a model that would invest in fostering a different value set including relationships. And in our practical work we are learning what it takes to bring this about – often with the most troubled families in the most isolated communities. In this context we welcome Cameron’s support for social enterprises such as the ones we are growing, but we would like to push him on the framework in which these enterprises are currently expected to operate. We find in our work that the community energy Cameron seeks to foster is alive and well. Circle – our enterprise providing a new form of elder support in London cannot handle the numbers who want to work and volunteer for us. Loops – our new universal youth service has shown in an early pilot stage that businesses and communities are prepared to contribute to providing experiences and reflection sessions for all young people – they have just never been asked before. To thrive and sustain themselves over time, these and other initiatives across Britain need a different framework in which to operate. Embedding change within communities takes time and cannot only be measured by economic indicators. It is all too easily strangled by expensive bureaucratic frameworks - protection policies for example, that actively work against transparent, caring human inter-action. We need a culture that welcomes a broader set of ideas about problem solving – not a centralised, one solution fits all approach that we have seen over the last 20 years. It is difficult work and those who support change at the front line need to be properly paid and emotionally supported – not fobbed off with the trappings of ‘professionalisation’. This will not make it more expensive – quite the contrary Participle’s work shows that significant financial savings can be made but resources need to be distributed right to the community level and again we need frameworks that facilitate this. Ultimately however all these ideas, the efforts of Participle and our activist siblings can only act as sticking plaster in a nation of increasing inequality. Let’s hope that Cameron really is listening to Richard Wilkinson and his colleagues

[Blog] Employability - the Bev 4.0 Way

2009-10-26T13:37:00+00:00

Author: Hilary Cottam
Category: Future Services

The economy is never static, so why is our approach to unemployment? Take Bernard: he cooks a mean fishcake and has great entrepreneurial skills but he cannot read and write and is low in confidence. To enter the labour market he needs an approach that helps him translate his skills. This takes time, and works better over a cup of tea in his kitchen, than in a job centre office. Working in a domestic setting we have been able to view the challenge Bernard and others like him face and translate this into employable skills, with considerable early success. This month the number of people unemployed made a worse than expected jump, to a new total of 2.38 million, with job vacancies reaching an all time low of 429,000. In response the DWP are scrambling to expand their network of job centres and the numbers who are employed within them – but to offer what exactly? Perhaps tea and sympathy sweetened with the £60.50 per week job seekers allowance. The problem we face is huge and expensive. In addition to those currently losing their jobs, there remains the so-called ‘stock’ of long term unemployed, people like Bernard. There are also a significant proportion of British workers, for whom the cycle will be a continual one between low skilled, vulnerable jobs and periods of unemployment. The human cost in terms of misery is high. So are the financial costs. David Freud, previously advisor to the government and to the opposition, recently estimated that it would be rational to spend up to £62,000 per person on getting people back to work because the cost of unemployment is so high. It is time for a radical re-think. We need a system that makes new vertical connections between British people and emerging areas of employment growth – for example green jobs, the caring professions, nano-tech, social enterprise. And new horizontal connections between soft skills, apprenticeships, learning and work. In other words we need an approach that brings together soft and hard skills, geography and industrial policy; that integrates and greatly reduces the £40bn cost of unemployment; that starts from people’s front rooms and has the capacity for continued evolution. Searching for work is a dispiriting process. Despite a physical re-design, job centres remain more suited to the bygone era in which the welfare state was founded. Searching for a job online, as I did last week, is no different. The electronic journey is long-winded and grey. I was a nameless cog, identified only by my postcode, viewing jobs which rarely had a real description or salary attached. The chasm between this and the compelling description of a job in the Times, or alternatively the way I might advertise my full range of skills on gumtree.com could not be wider. At Participle we work with young people, so called ‘chaotic’ families and those over 60 in communities across Britain developing 21st century public services. It has taught us a lot about work and how to move into it. In the eyes of the local job centre many of the families we work with have few if any of the skills that are needed to work in a modern service economy even in an upswing. In all cases however we have seen the power of meeting individuals and families where they are, visualising (literally) where they want to be, and working alongside them to get there. Some of the best providers of welfare to work services already go some way to this approach but all are currently hampered by the silos in which their service has to be delivered. In another strand of our work we have developed the concept of the ‘slip road job’: one that supports older people back into work either part time or in a different capacity. The BMW worker made redundant earlier this year is a different case. Here connections can be made between proven skills and job opportunities but new support systems are also needed to turn a potential crisis into a re-skilling opportunity, to keep motivated and think laterally about what is possible. There are four fatal flaws in the current system and these will continue in the new contracts currently being handed out across Britain to those responsible for getting people back into work. One, the system is over specialised – like vast areas of our public services too much time and money is spent on sorting people into ‘pathways’ and ‘customer’ types. Such an approach wastes more money on designing new entry points to what remains an old fashioned linear system. What is needed instead is an open network that can support people in multiple ways and continue to move them up the skills curve. Most of us find jobs through connections and you can’t do this if you are held in a queue with others whose barriers are too close to your own. Secondly, service providers are currently competing for the £1bn market of welfare to work. The real market however is approximately £40 bn when Further Education and so called ‘passported’ benefits to which the unemployed have access, are taken into account. There is a clear opportunity to develop a service that starts with the individual and wraps a full service around them, stripping out a significant percentage of the £40bn resulting from service overlaps. Thirdly, there needs to be a new approach to risk sharing. It is accepted that most work is found locally but there is currently little incentive to innovate locally since the returns and risks are held by central government. Again the result is a static, rigid system when what we need is a approach that addresses the constantly shifting needs of individuals based on a living, breathing, changing economy. Fourthly – it’s personal. Being unemployed is a deeply personal thing – whether you are the skilled but newly unemployed worker from BMW or the returning to work mum lacking in confidence – you need someone to work along side you. Despite the rhetoric providers do not currently work with people they do things for and to them, too often perpetuating a workless culture. Treat people like children and they will behave like them. Current service frameworks do not make it possible to take a whole life approach with an individual. Technology does, front line staff can and yes, the unemployed really want this type of approach. A reformed, modern welfare state would offer something completely different. The core would be a universal, locally rooted and highly personalised offer. Not a job centre at all, but a network of facilitators, linked to a powerful system of job vacancies, training opportunities, seed enterprise funding linked to the benefit system, mentors and coaches to keep your pecker up, peers you can speak to during the weeks ahead. Replicating the support networks that most people reading would automatically draw on, would cost less and more importantly, would work.

[Blog] Get your loops here

2009-09-30T14:38:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

Loops is a youth and community development platform. It grows young people and community’s possibility and purpose through shared and surprising experiences. It’s about young people and communities wanting and getting more from each other. Read our latest brochure to learn about how Loops works. If you participated in the prototype, and want to see the video, click here. (requires password) For six-weeks, we tested Loops at a small-scale with with 25 young people, ages 12-19, in Brighton and Croydon. We use prototypes to help us learn about what works and what doesn’t in real-time, and to continuously iterate our propositions, training and tools, materials, front and back-end systems, and metrics. We made 90 experiences happen in the community and young people met with reflectors for over 60 reflective sessions. We learned that… It is possible to mobilize the community and generate new resource. High receptivity. In less than six-weeks, catalysts made 150 community contacts. We were more successful than we had anticipated. Small businesses and local organizations ‘got it’ immediately; many had never been asked to engage with the community in this way. It came in more shapes and sizes than work experience; and because the young person chose the experience, there was a real basis for exchange. Great diversity. We had experiences spawning 20 different interest areas: from building speakers at a high-end factory to meeting with the partner of a top law firm to collaborating with international artists on an exhibition to stuffing owls at a taxidermy museum. Young people, parents, parents, and hosts derive clear benefits from Loops. Changed attitudes, values and behaviors. Young people who were actively engaged in Loops found they were more confident in new settings, more independent, could ask better questions, had made at least one ‘link’ to the community, and were more willing to try new things. Parents talked about seeing their young person be more reflective, do more on their own, interact with adults more confidently, take more positive risks, and find future opportunity. Changed perceptions. Hosts of experiences were surprised to find that young people could be truly useful. Many began to see young people as collaborators, and were inspired to engage with young people more regularly. Changed practice. The youth professionals and youth services we closely engaged with saw that an asset-based, developmental approach could be integrated into all the things they do.

[Blog] Experience with B&W Speakers blows Regan’s mind

2009-09-04T10:28:00+00:00

Author: Jonas Piet
Category: Youth

blogpost by Tanya Palmer, August 2009 3:44pm: “That was well good!” says Regan stepping out of the show room door at Bowers and Wilkins (B&W Speakers), the giants in sound speaker manufacturing. “You can tell their stuff is good… but you have to hear their speakers to really know how great they are. That was amazing!” he trills beaming from ear to ear. This was Regan’s immediate response to spending 3 and a ½ fantastic hours building a state-of-the-art sound speaker with the craftsmen and -women on the B&W speaker factory floor, listening to acoustic guitar in the music room and watching a speeding Daniel Craig (aka James Bond) wrecking a shiny black Aston Martin in the cinema. 11:30am: When Regan had arrived at East Worthing station full of anticipation about his new experience with B&W Speakers, he would never have guessed he’d be following in the footsteps of Madonna and Fat Boy Slim! Like these film and music greats Regan had caught the B&W Speakers bug, he wanted to own a speaker too. 12 pm: Graham, the HR Manager, greeted Regan in reception and proudly directed him towards a surreal-looking sound speaker, which could be described as a something like a cross between the star trek enterprise and a snail on steroids. The Nautilus, as it is named, sat beneath a framed company award for enterprise given by HM the Queen. It looked sleek, glossy, cool… and extremely powerful too. [Photo of Regan and the snail] 12:20pm: Moving onto the factory floor, Regan began to share his top four questions with Graham. “Where do you get your ideas for your speakers? How did you get into making speakers? How do you make money for your business?” “Can I make a speaker please?” The host responded carefully to each of his requests including a fifth which was to ‘have fun’ on his experience with the B&W Speakers team. 12: 35pm: Armed with questions and snaking their way across the brightly-lit building, it soon became clear this was no ordinary factory, and as such would be no ordinary experience for Regan. Like the men and women in their blue jumpsuits, Regan would soon find himself helping to craft a beautiful work of ‘sound speaker’ art. 1:15pm: As Regan watched drills dangling on cables fall from the sky and computer screens flicker the letters P.A.S.S. as diamond-encrusted speaker discs rolled on by, his excitement intensified. And responding to this, Graham handed him over to Jenny, the trainer! 1:50pm: Regan donned a dark-blue B&W branded apron and got stuck into fixing a speaker disc into a wooden sound box while Jenny worked with him and watched on, gently giving him instructions and encouragement. Some 30 minutes later, with a screwdriver in hand, Regan watched proudly as the computer declared his speaker a P.A.S.S. Smiling into the camera with Jenny and his musical creation sitting by his side, he announced that he would do that experience all over again. Even then, Regan had no clue that the best was yet to come! 2:20pm: “Here you go,” said Graham handing over a goodie bag with CDs, a T-shirt, mug, brochures and so on… “I’ll walk you over to the showroom for the next bit of the tour.” En route Graham explained how female factory workers during World War I had influenced modern manufacturing. 2:35pm: “Hello, I’m Steve, the training manager. I’m going to show you some of our speakers and you can hear the quality of sound for yourself”. Leading us into a darkened-room filled with a range of top-class equipment from the ‘Zeppelin’, a large ruby ball-shaped iPod speaker through to a chrome funnel-like stereo, (something well-suited to a premier league footballer’s car), Steve explained the inspiration behind their unique futuristic designs. 2:55pm: Seated in the centre of a cream sofa, the exact sweet spot in the music room, Steve flicked on a CD. “Tell me what you think” he smiled as he adjusted the volume. And as the guitarist plucked the strings, it seemed as if he/she were in the room with us. “Wow!” Regan commented, “It was like they were right behind the curtains!” 3:15pm: Now it was movie time! Watching Bruce Willis flying through a tunnel limbs flaying, his body narrowly missing a car, the sound of the explosion filled the room leaving us struck dumb. 3:30pm: “This cinema system costs about 250,000 pounds. We sell a lot to owners of super yachts (though you can get fantastic sound for around 6,000 pounds).” As James Bond fled the baddies in his glossy black sports car, bullets ricocheting from every part of the bodywork, I couldn’t help but think I had been spoiled. There was no looking back now. I wanted a Bowers & Wilkins cinema sound system too. 3:45: Leaving the showroom, Regan turned to me and added, “I am really excited. I want to build a system for my scooter.” And so enthused was he that he decided there and then to send the Bowers and Wilkins team a thank you letter. Afterall “they didn’t have to give me their time… That was well good!” Regan’s experience had clearly left him inspired and full of ideas for how he could use his experience in the future. He wanted more! Learn more about Loops or see an overview of the 100s of experiences http://www.loops.tv The website of B&W Speakers, who hosted the experience: http://www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk/

[Blog] Test driving a new youth services model

2009-08-09T22:41:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

It all began back in January with a few principles and a process. Our principles were pretty basic: focus on young people’s assets and capabilities, not on their deficits or failings; and look at young people as products of and contributors to their communities. Our process was equally simple: start with young people, understand their perspectives and motivations, and develop new models for youth services with them from there. Now, seven-months after we started, we’re on-the-ground testing a new model for universal youth services. It’s less of a service, and more of a wholesale approach for community & youth development. For now, we’re calling it Loops. Loops is designed to expand young people’s sense of purpose and possibility. It’s based on one key premise: young people need compelling reasons to invest in themselves, their communities and their futures. Existing youth services are based on a different premise: young people need places to go and things to do to stay out of trouble. The main difference? Loops is developmental , not diversionary. Loops works by connecting young people to surprising experiences in the community. Young people work with a reflector—a person who enables young people to identify & build on their strengths & interests—to locate experiences in the community that expose them to new ways of living and doing. Experiences might last anywhere from an hour to several weeks; they might be a behind the scenes tour of a local restaurant and conversation with a chef to a week taking on a role or completing a project for a business or community group. People called catalysts are up-skilled to work with big and small businesses, community and faith groups to extract great experiences. Young people can take on both the role of reflector and catalyst. This summer, Loops is running at a very small scale. We’ve got 10 young people in Croydon and 10 young people in Brighton, ages 12-18, taking part. We’ve up-skilled 6 youth workers, teachers and life coaches as reflectors and 3 other people as catalysts. Our catalysts have made over 80 experiences happen this summer, with leads for another 60+. You can visit http://www.loops.tv to get a flavor for the kinds of experiences on offer. We’re running Loops at a small scale to learn and iterate. We know to make Loops happen at a much larger (universal) scale, we need to make it less of a service and more of a self-perpetuating entity owned and operated by young people and the community. Loops is helping us, in real-time, learn what a capability versus needs based approach looks like. And to think differently about the resources that drive public services. For Loops to work at scale, we need experiences to come from the community. Rather than invest in buildings and static services, ‘the state’ could more effectively invest in building the capacity of every sector of society to work with youth in different ways. It’s not a youth center in every constituency anymore. Its young people meaningfully embedded throughout our communities.

[P'article] State of Loneliness

2009-07-01T09:20:00+00:00

Author: Melanie Beasley

The government's new public services reforms focus on rights and entitlements, but, argues Charles Leadbeater in the Guardian, supportive relationships are key to tackling social ills See the full article here

[P'article] Beveridge, Welfare Reform, Voluntary Action and Participle in The Times

2009-06-20T11:48:00+00:00

Author: Rabya Mughal

Whilst William Beveridge's pioneering 1948 report on welfare reform asked for "room, opportunity and encouragement for voluntary action in seeking new ways of social advance," current welfare systems manage a 'one way' relationship between the state and individuals in need. Today's Times article mentions Participle's involvement in community based initiatives to 'help people help themselves,' a motto of current Participle project Southwark Circle. Communities do not need to be reduced to simply 'people with needs,' rather that there are individuals who also have skills and knowledge to share. By expanding social networks to facilitate these skills into the community, the state need not expensively intervene, and we can indeed 'help people help themselves.' See Camilla's full editorial

[Blog] LOOPS up!

2009-06-16T22:40:00+00:00

Author: Jonas Piet
Category: Youth

We’re well on the way to start trying out our loops of experiences this summer! And we’re calling it LOOPS. We’re also rapidly growing the LOOPS team of four to about 20 people for a while. Young people are joining our team as catalysts and experience agents. Catalysts will work with local organisations and businesses to create new experiences for young people, whereas agents will evaluate the quality of the experiences and give us feedback. LOOPS will be up and running at small scale in July and August with about 20 young people and 5 families, in Brighton and Croydon. In this way we hope to learn how to make it work for real. And how to make it better! Last weeks we did a lesson in year 7, 9 and 10 in a school in Brighton to get feedback on our ideas and the way of presenting them. We’ve made this quick film to give a flavour of what LOOPS is about:

[Blog] A stronger duty of care

2009-05-30T16:13:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

Last week’s House of Lord’s judgment on duty of care widens our statutory definition of youth wellbeing. It’s about time. The ruling says it is not enough for local councils to put a roof over a homeless young person’s head, they must also provide all-around support. Safety isn’t just about attending to the most urgent of needs but also about adding to young people’s capacity to live life independently. Participle’s work with young people in Brighton and Croydon is all about widening the definition of youth wellbeing. We’ve met lots of young people who have basic needs being met, but who are not thriving. They don’t have a real sense of purpose or possibility. They don’t feel valued. They don’t have the capabilities to find and keep meaningful employment, let alone live life on their own terms. We think the good adolescence is about all of these things--not simply having a place to live or staying out of trouble. We already invest in young people through schools and a raft of children’s’ services; that investment shouldn’t be about responding to or averting crises, but actually inputting into young people’s success. That means increasing their sense of self, their connections, and their capabilities. Housing can be a powerful entry point to all of these things. Rather than look at housing as a way of getting young people off the streets, we should look at housing as an opportunity to build young people’s resiliency. This isn’t just an exercise in better coordination and ensuring young people have access to a full range of services. We need to look at what those services are designed to do, and the ways in which they help young people process past events and shape their sense of the future. The House of Lords was right to conclude young people are entitled to support beyond suitable housing; the real question is, what shape is that support and how can we make it an enabler rather than a gap-filler?

[Blog] Video postcards from a town called Thriving

2009-05-05T12:04:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders
Category: Youth

After an intensive 3 months of discovery and an even more intensive month of idea development Reach out is now entering the prototyping phase. We’ve developed a vision of a ‘youth development service’ based in a fictional town called Thriving. A town where young people and adults take part in loops of doing, sampling and reflective experiences. Doing experiences are self-designed projects where young people meet a need or goal in the family, community or workplace. A doing experience could be working with an adult to build a shed, running a campaign to reduce plastic bag usage or setting up a bike fixing business. We think that through doing experiences young people can develop their capabilities and sense of purpose. Doing experiences, like sampling experiences are followed by a reflective experience, to help young people reflect on what they have learnt and plan for their next loop of experience. Sampling experiences aim to expand young people’s sense of what’s possible by introducing them to new people, places and world views. A narrow sense of possibility was one of the things that surprised us most from our initial research. Over the next few months, in the prototyping phase of our project we will be try out elements of Thriving with our partners in Brighton & Hove and Croydon. So given the opportunity what would young people choose to ‘do’, who and what would they ‘sample’? Back in February we worked with 10 young ‘design teams’ from Brighton and Croydon. We worked with groups of friends and sibling to design experiences and services for people like them; experiences that would build their adult networks, expose them to difference and help build a strengthen their sense of self. The three videos below give an indication of what life in Thriving could be like from a young person’s perspective. (Voices in these videos have been changed) Communitube Summer and her siblings imagined a community that has a ‘communitube’ website which links people of different ages through common interest. In their community there is also a network of local coaches who spot talent and link people to local cross age experiences and provide them the opportunities to try out jobs as trainees. In Summer’s version of Thriving a film team continually documents what’s going on - the film is used later for local promotion and as a reflective tool. Chocolate talent ‘Chocolate talent’ is a Willy Wonka a scenario built by two 14 and 15 year old friends. Two girls meet in a cornershop buying a candybar with a ticket for a behind the scenes tour to Cadburyworld. In their sampling experience the owner or the chocolate factory teaches them the science of chocolate, recongnises their capability for science and connects them to a trip to Nasa’s laboratory (located in red square Moscow). At Nada they meet new ‘science people’ and following the trip make an online support group for teens to find their talents. They also get rich from the recipe of the new chocolate bar they invent. Camp Croydon In ‘Camp Croydon’ Karim and his friend spot an advertisment on the bus for volunteers - the free refreshments encourage them to go along and find out more. Meanwhile recluse Leo spots his advert on facebook. Eventually the two end up at Camp Croydon (which is not in Croydon). The camp turns out to be one big sampling experience, Leo and Karim meet different people, live in different cultures and get away from the city a chance to breath and think about new things. Over the next few months we’ll be prototyping doing, sampling and reflective experiences in Croydon and Brigton & Hove. There won’t be trips to Nasa or Africa but we will be brokering young people to people and places that can expand their sense of possibility. We can’t promise to make kids rich though their new chocolate bar but will set up doing experiences that give young people the opportunity to set up their own enterprises, and feel what it’s like to be valued. Stay tuned.

[Blog] On solitary

2009-05-01T17:49:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders
Category: Ageing

“Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.” So opens Atul Gawande’s recent article in the New Yorker, an exploration of social isolation in relation to the tens of thousands of US prisoners currently held in solitary confinement. The article goes on to explore the effect of social isolation on the human beings and their brains. Many of the stories resonate with what we heard and saw working with socially isolated older people living in Westminster during the Meetup project. Here are a few choice snippets from a fascinating article… A U.S. military study of almost a hundred and fifty naval aviators returned from imprisonment in Vietnam, many of whom were treated even worse than McCain, reported that they found social isolation to be as torturous and agonizing as any physical abuse they suffered. In 1992, fifty-seven prisoners of war, released after an average of six months in detention camps in the former Yugoslavia, were examined using EEG-like tests. The recordings revealed brain abnormalities months afterward; the most severe were found in prisoners who had endured either head trauma sufficient to render them unconscious or, yes, solitary confinement. Without sustained social interaction, the human brain may become as impaired as one that has incurred a traumatic injury. According to the Navy P.O.W. researchers, the instinct to fight back against the enemy constituted the most important coping mechanism for the prisoners they studied. Resistance was often their sole means of maintaining a sense of purpose, and so their sanity. Yet resistance is precisely what we wish to destroy in our supermax prisoners. Read the full article here in the New Yorker

[Blog] What the 2009 Budget Means for Youth Services.

2009-05-01T16:53:00+00:00

Author: Rabya Mughal
Category: Youth

Alistair Darling’s 2009 budget speech has come at a particularly volatile economic climate to “prepare Britain for the opportunities of the future”. Whilst the onus of debate and fiscal distribution lies in financial institutions, businesses and reinstating the labour market, Darling’s budget still seeks to “protect investment in schools, hospitals and other key public services.” - A £20m Hardship Fund will provide “short term relief” for charities facing hardship in the current economic climate. According to Joe Levenson, director of policy for Children of England, “The new hardship fund is a good start and should provide welcome short- term relief at a time when pressure on the voluntary sector is especially great.” - Unemployed young people will be offered 50,000 traineeships in the social care sector under a scheme called Care First. Young people who have been out of work for a year or more will be offered employment from subsidised social care providers. - Grandparent’s roles in childcare will be subsidised this year; grandparents of a working age who take time out for childcare for more than twenty hours a week will be reinstated in their state pensions. Sam Smethers of Grandparents Plus describes this as a “victory for the principle that grandparents roles in childcare is recognised and should be illustrated in other government policies.” - £260m has been put aside to help young people acquire skills and training for all unemployed 18- 24 year olds. Funding will be made available to engage young people in ‘socially useful’ activities and within job sectors in areas of high unemployment. According to the ONS, youth unemployment is at its highest since 1995. - Last month’s miscalculation by the LSC led to a funding shortfall; schools and sixth forms are to receive £250m funds for student places, which will be resolved by creating 54,000 new student places. A further £400m will be allocated to schools and colleges to fund places for 16-17 year olds in the academic year 2010/11 - An extra £100 will be given to all disabled children through the governments’ trust fund scheme- where every child at birth and aged seven is given £250. Children with severe disabilities will be given £200. Christine Lenehan, Director of the Council for Disabled Children says the money will go far, particularly for those with profound impairments who are “surviving into adulthood in numbers we have never seen before.” - £146m will be invested in teen community service programmes, whereby 16 – 19 year olds will engage in community activity as part of the Entry to Employment course. This is to complement new ministerial initiatives to integrate 50 hours of community service into the national curriculum by the time all students reach leaving age.

[Blog] David Cameron on Southwark Circle

2009-04-29T13:07:00+00:00

Author: Melanie Beasley
Category: Ageing

David Cameron has championed Southwark Circle in his Spring Conference speech. ‘In the London Borough of Southwark, a new social enterprise called Southwark Circle is delivering vastly improved care services for less money designed by elderly people for elderly people using local social networks to bring real improvements to people’s lives..’ Cameron by Participle See the video of the full speech here

[Blog] Are you Ephebiphobic?

2009-04-22T15:36:00+00:00

Author: Rabya Mughal
Category: Youth

The fear of young people is called Ephebiphobia. At first it was coined he “fear and loathing of teenagers” but is today recognised as the “inaccurate, exaggerated and sensational characterisation of young people.” This complements the fear of street culture and crime, and is time immemorial; it is not just today’s generation that holds this sort of view but has been an issue for centuries. Millenia even. Machiavelli is said to have noted the fear of youth is what kept the city of Florence from keeping a standing army. Plato attributes to Socrates in the Republic: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company and, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannise their teachers.” Similarly, the ancient Greek poet Hesiod noted: “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint” The twentieth century through sensationalism and media has seen the image of youth as embodying adventure and enlightenment, and therefore susceptible to a malleable, despiritualised version of morality. 60s student rebellions, drug taking, hippie culture, the Beat generation, and general ‘untoward’ behaviour seems to have come and gone for this generation; are the hippies of the sixties, now in stable jobs, the ones categorising our youth? Because the way that it’s seen now, this generation, more than any generation before it, is seen to be the most dangerous of them all.

[Blog] About bridges in winter and youth development

2009-04-17T09:54:00+00:00

Author: Jonas Piet
Category: Youth

Can you picture young people, who, despite disadvantage and overwhelming odds have the capacity to bounce back and are engaged, affective people? How did they do it? Why didn’t disadvantage become their destiny? Professor Michael Resnick asked us last week. As a expert in Adolescent Heath at the University of Minnesota, he had come over to give a lecture about youth development for Participle, our project partners and invited professionals. Michael Resnick talked about resilience and connectedness, about young people as resourceful, lively creatures instead of problems to be solved, and about investing in their development. Michael Resnick on Youth by Participle

[P'article] Only the Lonely: Public Service Reform, the Individual and the State

2009-04-08T08:09:00+00:00

Author: Melanie Beasley

In 2008, Participle worked with a diverse group of over 200 older people and their families in Westminster and Southwark. We spent time in their homes, going shopping with them, helping with the odd job and introducing them to one another, gaining insight into how individuals and families see themselves, their aspirations, their dreams. The aim of our work was to ensure a rich third age, one that every citizen, regardless of income level or assets might live: a life less ordinary. Specifically, in Southwark our goal was the design of a new universal service that might be replicated nationally - supporting older people to live in a way of their choosing as they age. In Westminster our work has been more closely focused, we have worked only with those who define themselves as lonely, the majority of whom are over 80 and housebound with the goal of facilitating rich social lives. This article briefly tells the story of this work, the affordable solutions we have designed and the nascent lessons for how we might re-think a welfare state, its relationship to individuals and most importantly of all to wider social bonds. To read the article click here

[Blog] MeetUp in the press

2009-04-06T10:35:00+00:00

Author: Melanie Beasley
Category: Ageing

“If you dump people in a roomful of strangers they retreat into their shells,” said Hilary Cottam, founding director of Participle. “The insight was to help them to form their own groups of like-minded people. We prototyped MeetUp for six months, and have proved that it works and that it can save a significant amount of money on health care and social services.” To view the full article click here

[Blog] Introducing the good adolescence

2009-04-05T08:57:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

Reach out has just finished the first of four phases of work in Brighton-Hove and Croydon. We’re in the third month of our 9 month project! Our goal? To co-design new models of youth-adult provision that enable young people to want more and get more out of life. Our starting point? Relationships are important. Successful adolescents have a range of people in their life to support them. After two months of on-the-ground work, we’re looking beyond successful adolescents to the good adolescence. The language may be subtle, but the concepts are different. A successful adolescent is a young person who makes it through adolescence and into adulthood, well prepared to enter the world of work, further education, and independent living. The path is linear and the period time limited. The good adolescence is an experience that can occur at any age. It is about exploration, recognizing what you’re good at, exposure to difference, connections to new people and new settings, and finding a sense of self /place in the world. The path is recurring and elements are life-long. Few of the adolescents we met are experiencing the good adolescence. We met about 200 young people and adults, and worked with 40 more intensively through ethnographies, psychoanalytic interviews, and design teams of siblings or friends. From comparing young people who were thriving with those who were not, we learned that four things seem particularly important for experiencing the good adolescence: 1) Feedback. Many of the young people we met receive a limited range of feedback about what they are good at and their underlying strengths (what we call capabilities). They may be immersed in a particularly dominant setting, like a friend group or the media or school, where the messages they hear don’t expand their sense of what’s possible. 2) Rich developmental narratives. Feedback is critical because it shapes the stories young people tell about themselves. The young people we met who are doing really well—who are experiencing the good adolescence—tell rich developmental narratives about themselves. These are stories that connect past experiences with the present and offer a future direction. Most of the young people we met articulated ‘limiting’ narratives, stories that are about a single skill, talent or role and offer a narrow sense of future possibility. 3) Connections across settings. Young people experiencing the good adolescence have ‘bridging’ relationships with people across at least three different settings—school or university, employment, a faith community, family, etc. Bridging relationships are those that broker young people to new experiences and opportunities. 4) Time and space. Resource is also critical—in particular, access to time and space. Young people experiencing the good adolescence had the time and space to explore and find out about themselves. This was time and space between institutions (maybe school and college or college and employment) or while embedded in institutions (like prison). The time and space was structured—it was set aside for reflection and self-development. Over the next few months, we’ll be coming up with practical ways to help young people recognize their capabilities, build narratives, connect with bridging people, and have the time and space to reflect and explore. These service concepts will span across a range of settings: business, home, school, community, youth services. As our thinking develops, we’ll continue to share….

[Blog] Raising aspiration

2008-12-15T17:13:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

Aspirations are too low. So says a new report by the Cabinet Office. 2.4 million young people, mostly White and male, have little to no ambition. They live in insular communities with few opportunities for exit. The answer is to re-appropriate the school as the focal point of the community. The Guardian quotes the Cabinet Office minister as saying, “Over the years to come we’re spending £35bn on Building Schools for the Future and we are spending hundreds of millions on renewing the fabric of the health service so in many low-income communities we are revolutionising public institutions. We have to think afresh about how those institutions become the ‘power supply’ for aspiration in the communities they serve.” Schools as hubs of community regeneration is not a new idea, but one that has produced results around the world. But it is not the building itself that lifts aspirations and cultivates hope. It is the relationships young people form with peers, community members, and professionals. Buildings can support (or not constrain) relationship building, but they don’t automatically generate new patterns of behavior. Later in the article, the minister describes how young people with a sense of community and religious belief have higher aspirations. That’s because they gain a sense of purpose--mediated through the wider range of people in their lives. The question is how to we increase the diversity of people in young people’s lives. Opening up more health centers, youth centers, and schools will not, by itself, change people’s experiences with people. If anything it can reconfirm existing patterns and power dynamics. What are some ways to shake things up? Hopefully, in January, we’ll start to find out as Participle does work with young people and adults, inside and outside of institutions.

[Blog] ‘Run’, Open Innovation, ‘Run’

2008-12-05T21:23:00+00:00

Author: Hugo Manassei
Category: Future Services

Last week I was in Tokyo, exploring how we could develop the cuusoo.com Open Innovation platform here in the UK, for the creation of new public services (not for the design of products, its use in Japan). The system is currently in Japanese, but if you can manage it, have a go at designing your own product, then create and manage your own market for selling it. It’s a very powerful system, seen as an energising resource for the Japanese manufacturing industry, which is very similar in structure to the Italian model - comprising over 5 millions manufacturers, with the most common size of company just 5 people. I’ll post more about this system later. But, I left the UK in turmoil. The country was struggling. Yes, the population was dramatically split. On the one hand, we have those that believe Leona Lewis’ version of ’Run‘ is better than the original. On the other, those that remember the 2007 V festival, with Snow Patrol in full swing, as a complete high point of their life. I, myself, was eagerly awaiting Leona’s version’s entry into the charts, because really, if it reached higher than number 5 (which was the highest the original reached), then we’ve got some data to work with. While I was away, a record company error meant it failed to make it into the charts at all last week, but we’ve still got some data to work with. Readers of The Sun reckon it would have walked into the number one slot, and on iTunes in the UK and in Ireland, the song reached number one in minutes. In fact, the BBC reported yesterday that the track has become the fastest-selling digital-only track in the UK. In terms of numbers, I think that means Leona has it, sorry NME. The result, and Leona herself, have open innovation written all over. (Not least because of the lyrics of the song - Light up, light up, as if you have a choice.) Leona was voted to success by winning a UK TV show, the X Factor, which this year is enjoying weekly ratings in excess of 12m viewers (that’s roughly 1 in every 6 people in the UK), several million of whom vote for their favourite singer by telephone every week, week after week. Leona Lewis is one of us, the people, an East London girl who worked as a receptionist before going to her X-Factor audition. In my studying of Open Innovation systems, the most comprehensive list of activities I have found is here. I don’t find the catagorisation very useful. I prefer those that are broken down as follows: Mass Problem Solving (ie. Innocentive, in fact the vast majority of them listed), Mass Customisation (ie. My Starbucks, Lego Factory), Mass Customer Insights (ie. some of the early Proctor and Gamble systems, Muji) and Mass New Market Creation (ie. Cuusoo, Etsy, Threadless). If you have a better list of catagorisation, please let me know. Back to Leona and the X-Factor, not only did we participate in ‘Mass Problem Solving’ voting her to win, and receive a US$1.5m record deal, but we also ‘Mass Customised’ her success, her version of ‘Run’ was never planned for album or single release, but following Radio 1’s broadcasting of it, demand hit the roof, and the track was rapidly shoe-horned into a new ‘deluxe version’ of her latest album and released as a downloaded single. Snow Patrol, by contrast, followed the traditional band success route. They met at university (largely still the domain of the middle class), got a record deal in Glasgow, worked the gig circuit, and finally, their talent won out through CD sales and the festival circuit. It’s an old-skool type rise to fame, boosted by ‘those in the know’, starting with a record company A&R person finding them. NME helped out, too. But, it’s the traditional route, albeit largely down to luck, being in the right place at the right time, and having talent too. Leona has talent, let’s not say that her success is solely down to us, her voice, by any standard is outstanding, and her success outside the UK is testament to that. So, back to ‘Open Innovation.’ The web based communities can only dream of the numbers displayed on TV, 12m+ viewers of The X Factor, every week in the UK, 50m+ viewers of American Idol in the US. If our interaction with the X-Factor was translated into web based interactions (just go with me here), we would have a website that would have 48 million visitors per month, which would most likely translate into 250 million page views a month, the equivalent of a website receiving a billion hits. I know, I know, its boring to compare the TV with the internet, and boring to compare the entertainment industry to more ‘serious’ industries such as manufacturing, commerce, business and public services. I also know it is strange to try and compare the data between The X-Factor and, say Innocentive, but here’s my beef - If we are talking about ‘open innovation’ systems being ‘open’, particularly when we are talking about developing a system in public services, then we must reach as wide an audience as possible. If not, we’re not ‘open’, and we might as well re-think this in terms of ‘A-tiny-little-bit-open Innovation.’ So, help me out, here. I have 4 questions: 1) How can these ‘open innovation’ system reach as wide an audience as TV? 2) What can ‘open innovation’ in earnest sectors learn from the successes of the ‘open innovation’ entertainment business (politics seems to have managed it, no?)? 3) Where are the business models that actually work in ‘open innovation’? 4) Generally, please, tell me, where is the data to support the term ‘open’?

[Blog] Independence or interdependence?

2008-12-02T17:22:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

Contrast enables understanding. That’s why cross-cultural studies and comparative research can be so instructive, helping to trigger critical self-reflection. A 1992 article on the applicability of Western family therapy models to Japanese families might, at first glance, seem an unlikely candidate for sparking that critical self-reflection. But the authors get underneath concepts in a very vivid, tangible way. They argue that Western culture emphasizes separateness over connectedness. That means that problems tend to be defined in terms of individuals’ dependency and inability to function independently. What does this have to do with adolescence? Well, in Western cultures, the main ‘task’ of adolescence is conceptualized as independence--as establishing your own identity and transitioning away from the family unit and towards economic self-sustainability. As the authors note, “Problem solving in Britain is often directed toward increasing separation. Thus, independence and differentiation are the goals to be facilitated...In Japan, the ‘right’ balance of separateness/connectedness is defined much more toward the connected side of the continuum...To achieve connectedness in the family system, notions like mutual support, sensitivity to others, and maintenance of group harmony become important (p.7).” The authors illustrate their points with a series of case-studies. One details a 14-year old girl who refused to attend school for more than a year, in part, because she saw herself as protecting her mother from her father’s nagging and that of her fathers’ family (whom they lived next door to). While British therapists might deem ‘individuation’ as the primary goal and the marital relationship as the focal point, Japanese therapists would take the cross-generational and spousal relationships of equal importance and work towards re-calibrating the entire set of relationships (p.10). While the methods and techniques of family therapy have undoubtedly moved on since the article was written, the case-studies and analysis are useful in helping us to question some of our most basic assumptions and get underneath concepts like independence and autonomy which are rife in the adolescent literature. Source: Tamura, Takeshi and Annie Lau. 1992. “Connectedness versus separateness: Applicability of family therapy to Japanese families.” Fam Proc 31: 319-340.

[Blog] Youth and the street corner society

2008-11-26T22:05:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

Journal articles can often feel completely removed from day-to-day practice. But sometimes, just sometimes, they turn a concept on its head and help you to understand the ordinary in a new light. That’s what a Leisure Studies Article—called ‘Street Corner Society’—did for me. It took the all too common occurrence of young people hanging around the street and put it in a new context. ‘Hanging around’ became conceptualized as a ‘leisure career’ alongside ‘school careers’ ‘work careers’ ‘family careers’ and ‘housing careers.’ ‘Leisure careers’ are the norm—in and of themselves, they are not a bad thing. In fact, quite the opposite, through informal interaction (away from parents, teachers, and formal authority figures) young people try out and rework their personal and social identities. In other words, informal interaction that occurs in informal spaces (i.e. not youth centres or youth clubs) is a critical part of the developmental process. What’s problematic is when those spaces and interactions remain static and insular. As the authors write, “Repeatedly unemployed young men lacked the sites through which to establish new, more socially varied or geographically spread, social networks (p344).” This, for me, should be at the heart of our youth work—addressing some young people’s ‘network poverty.’ If we can come up with ways to expand young people’s informal social networks—and build more equal relationships between young people and adults—we could help ensure that young people’s leisure careers are an asset, rather than a deficit. Article: Street Corner Society: Leisure Careers, Youth (Sub)culture and Social Exclusion by Robert MacDonald and Tracy Shildrick. In Leisure Studies; 26:3, 339-355.

[Blog] The carrot and carrot approach

2008-11-26T22:00:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

A recent article in The Guardian highlights one community’s efforts to align healthy behaviours with healthy incentives. So often we assume children and young people have material motives and so try to encourage ‘good behaviour’ with commercial rewards. As a primary school student, if I performed well on a test or read a certain number of books in a month, I was rewarded with a gift certificate for pizza. Similarly, when my entire class exceeded expectations on an exam or assignment we got to visit the school ‘store’ where cheap prizes supposedly cultivated continued hard work. By linking student performance with material stuff, we can inadvertently compromise students’ intrinsic motivations. At the same time, positive feedback most certainly breeds success. That’s why a Scottish Council’s decision to reward students with charitable donations is such a bright, new idea. Students acquire points for healthy behaviour and then can use those points to select items in a Save the Children catalogue. Healthy behaviour is rewarded with caring and empathy. Ends and means are in synch. Read more at: Guardian article

[Blog] Transportation and Older Persons: Perceptions and Preferences - A Report on Focus Groups

2008-10-28T23:18:00+00:00

Author: Jonas Piet
Category: Ageing

“Transportation has been described as the ‘glue’ that holds together all the activities that we call life. Ready access to family, friends, social activities, health care, and goods and services are vital to full participation in daily life. Without such mobility, many older persons report a sense of loss and feelings of isolation from the world of their younger years.” Research on the transportation of older person has traditionally focused on daily trip-making behavior: how often they travel, what mode of transport they use, and the purposes for they travel. But despite all the quantitative data regarding trip-making by older persons, little research has been conducted to determine the perceptions and preferences among this group about their transportation choices and trip-making activity. This information is important to gather because it can guide policy makers and program managers towards policies and programs likely to enhance the ongoing mobility of older persons. — from the Executive Summary of the AARP Public Policy Institute focus group report in which Joseph Coughlin of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Transportation Studies and Age Lab tells how drivers and non-drivers age 75 and older regard their transportation options and how they stay connected to their communities. (20 pages) For more detail, click the link: http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/il/2001_05_transport.pdf

[Blog] Neighbourhood Teams

2008-10-28T17:38:00+00:00

Author: Daniel Dickens
Category: Ageing

Barack Obama’s campaign has succeeded in harnessing untapped resources in thousands of local communities. Here’s a micro-level look at their “New Organizers” and what happens when you give citizens a compelling opportunity to participate: Neighbourhood Teams Notice the progression of defined roles (field organizer, neighbourhood team leader, etc.), how each is inbued with a clear sense of purpose and the responsibility to pass on the torch to others. We’ve designed the neighbourhood teams in Southwark Circle with the same attention to detail and a similar determination to activate local resources for the benefit of the community. Here’s Jennifer from the Obama Campaign’s local team in Kansas City, talking about how she has changed after six weeks of volunteering: “Now, I’m really asking: how can I be most effective in my community? I’ve realized that these things I’ve been doing as a volunteer organizer—well, I’m really good at them, I have a passion for this. I want to continue to find ways to actively make this place, my community, a better place. There’s so much more than a regular job in this—and once you’ve had this, it’s hard to go back to a regular job. I’m asking now: Can I look for permanent work as an organizer in service of my community? And that’s a question I had not asked myself before the campaign. It never occurred to me that I could even ask that question.”

[Blog] I am not your sweetie, honey

2008-10-10T19:46:00+00:00

Author: Daniel Dickens
Category: Ageing

Who was the last person I called sweetie? I don’t think I’ve ever called anyone that, nor have I really thought much about it when someone has called me sweetie. But according to researchers like Dr. Becca Levy of Yale University, for older people these “little insults can lead to more negative images of aging,” Dr. Levy said. “And those who have more negative images of aging have worse functional health over time, including lower rates of survival.” The article continues: “In a long-term survey of 660 people over age 50 in a small Ohio town, published in 2002, Dr. Levy and her fellow researchers found that those who had positive perceptions of aging lived an average of 7.5 years longer, a bigger increase than that associated with exercising or not smoking. The findings held up even when the researchers controlled for differences in the participants’ health conditions. In her forthcoming study, Dr. Levy found that older people exposed to negative images of aging, including words like “forgetful,” “feeble” and “shaky,” performed significantly worse on memory and balance tests; in previous experiments, they also showed higher levels of stress.” We would happen if our language reflected participation instead of dependance? If we started from a position of strength, replacing needs with capabilities? What’s the opposite of ‘sweetie’? Here’s the full article: Sweetie and Dear

[Blog] Sibling relationships

2008-09-26T17:27:00+00:00

Author: Emma Southgate
Category: Ageing

Taking care of a parent in their old age can be a testing experience for adult children, both in terms of accessing care and the relationship between child and parent. This is compounded if there is a distance between parent and child. However this article in the Guardian shows that relationships between siblings can too be put under strain when looking after ageing parents. Siblings can have different ideas about what is right for mum or dad and problems can occur when one child feels they are doing more to help than the other. Rotas and job division depending on how close or far you are from a parent are identified in the article as methods to help adult children help their parents and maintain their relationships with their brothers and sisters at the same time. How else can we help support sibling relationships to help sons and daughters to support their parents? Arguments between siblings whilst caring for their parents can continue long after the parent’s death - there are examples of this in the article. In some cases parents have a strong role in keeping a family unit together and in some families the death of a parent can result in family relationships breaking down. An intervention which strengthens and eases relationships between siblings whilst caring for their parent could bring something positive out of this situation -closer sibling relationships lasting beyond the lifetime of the parent. What’s more, it could make caring for a parent that much easier.

[Blog] Saying Hello

2008-09-25T01:29:00+00:00

Author: Jennie Winhall
Category: Ageing

This film is from The ‘Saying Hello’ project, a three and half year project, funded by the Big Lottery, to investigate ways in which older people manage potential or actual loneliness and isolation, promote successful coping strategies and influence local, regional and national policies and practices with respect to the aspirations of older people. Completed in July 2007, it was a joint project conducted by Age Concern Wigan Borough and the Institute of Health and Social Care Research at the University of Salford together with a group of older volunteer co-researchers. A range of methods, including individual and group interviews and personally written narratives was drawn upon to produce rich data from 149 respondents. The resulting analysis was disseminated as a DVD and Talking Play, alongside reports and presentations.

[P'article] Unbelievable?

2008-09-24T18:31:00+00:00

Author: Hilary Cottam

We're launching our mission statement this week, we call it Beveridge 4.0. It is a brief but fundamental critique of the current condition of the UK's welfare state. At Participle, we believe as many others do, that its condition is critical. An outdated system, that cannot solve the problems we now face. A system dominated by large institutions, not the individuals who use them. Things are not going to get better. What hurts the most, is that the man widely regarded as the architect of our welfare state, William Beveridge, in the later part of his life, predicted the situation we now find ourselves in. And, what a situation we are in. At the time of writing, last week, one of America's largest financial institutions went bust, and another was effectively nationalised. In Britain, similar events were/are unfolding. Global stocks are making record falls, oil prices are rising in unprecedented daily jumps. A financial crisis has unveiled the short falls of capitalism. In the process, capitalism and the state have had an almost unprecedented strain put on their relationship. As we experience the unease of watching apparently solid institutional foundations all too easily turn liquid, we're revisiting our faith in the state. In times of trouble, we look to the state for support, from heavy intervention to new regulations. But, for many of us, our faith in the state took a similar bashing some years ago. For Britain's growing inequality and social recession have revealed the short falls in our welfare state. Shortfalls that have not been met by introducing elements of the market, or by trying to make the state more 'personal'. What is needed we argue is a very different set of arrangements which start from a local perspective with individuals and families, building a new set of capabilities, drawing on a wider set of resources and supported by very different institutions. Participle runs large scale projects that address the big social issues of our time, while demonstrating how a new welfare settlement might operate. Our work has made a big difference in some communities, but Participle is a small group of designers, policy analysts, social scientists and entrepreneurs based in South London. We need the help of others to inform our thinking, and doing. This document draws on our work with and for the public at the community level - it is in this broadest sense collaborative, and it will evolve collaboratively. Therefore, this document is written with an Open Source process in mind. It is just version 1. In 2009, we will launch Version 2, including all the relevant opinions, suggestions and contributions from people like you. This is the spirit of Beveridge 4.0. This document outlines a starting point, no more. Be part of this journey. We will be developing different ways to canvas involvement in Beveridge 4.0. For now, we ask you to comment on this blog. We promise to collate all comments, and where relevant develop them as themes in Version 2. The size of the task seems daunting, but at Participle, we see the giant Capitalism evolving before us, and see no reason why a similar transformation cannot take place within the welfare state. It's not unbelievable. Download Beveridge 4.0 here.

[Blog] Making (and paying for) good news

2008-09-21T16:38:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

Language is powerful. The words we use are not just reflections of reality, but help to actively construct the way things are. Back in 2005—before the recent spate of youth violence—an article appeared in the Observer describing the anxiety the word hoodie evoked, “Hoodies are, after all, public enemy number one - a social menace right up there in media perception with al-Qaeda and Kate Moss...barely a day goes by without another hoodie headline devoted to their vile behaviour, leaving most of us shaking with fear at the very sight of them...” For every hoodie headline, there are dozens more positive stories about young people that remain untold. A new innovation might help bring those stories to light, and in the process, spawn a more balanced image of our youth. Called http://spot.us/ the premise is simple: journalists will pitch stories to local communities, people can vote—with their money—for the stories they want to read, and the articles will be written and distributed to a wide variety of local sources. The question is whether people will pay to read ‘good’ news stories, but the idea of community-generated news content seems to be a step forward.

[Blog] What’s happening on your block?

2008-09-21T16:37:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

There’s a saying that all politics is local, and in a globalised era, so too is all news. What happens in other places reverberates—so much so—that we are often more aware of international events than local events. A neighbourhood newsletter gets slipped under my door once a month, but on a day-to-day basis, national newspapers and television programmes are my go-to-sources. I hope http://www.everyblock.com/ starts to change that. Go the site, pop in your location (in the US only right now), and the most localised of coverage appears—from police activity to photographs to restaurant reviews to recent news stories and blog posts rounded up from around the web. Getting back in touch with our neighbourhoods—both the people and happenings that shape it—is the essence of connectedness. If we want young people to feel more connected to their neighbourhoods, we have to emphasise the role of place, build up local knowledge, and overcome anonymity.

[Blog] Living and breathing connectedness

2008-09-21T16:25:00+00:00

Author: Sarah Schulman
Category: Youth

Our work on young people is about connectedness. It’s about the relationships young people have to themselves, their families, supportive adults, and the worlds beyond where they live. Most programmes and interventions aim to do something else: to reduce teenage pregnancy, to stop anti-social behavior, to curtail drug use. That’s why a recent article on a multi-generational community in Illinois struck such a nerve. Foster and adoptive families have moved to a neighborhood where rents are also subsidised for the elderly. The elderly serve as surrogate grandparents, opening up their homes and lives to young people who have experienced trauma, insecurity, and really just want to feel a part of a community that cares about them. The research is pretty clear: young people (and adults!) who feel like they matter do better. In fact, the Illinois example is working so well that the US-based Kellogg Foundation recently announced it will bring the model to seven other communities. It’s not just the youth outcomes that are impressive, it’s the elderly members’ renewed feeling of purpose and verve that makes the work notable and worth following…

[Blog] Family crisis

2008-09-20T00:15:00+00:00

Author: Jennie Winhall
Category: Families

We’re working with families facing multiple difficulties - but we suspect that some insights might lie in solutions other families have found to help them through difficult patches. It could be the transition to secondary school, moving to a new area, the joining of two families, stress or difficult behaviour. It could be as simple as structuring a breakfast routine or as complex as developing new ways of relating to and communicating with each other. It could be an activiity or a person who was particularly supportive. If it’s something you think that other families would benefit from hearing about, we welcome your contribution.

[Blog] Bread and circuses

2008-09-19T23:58:00+00:00

Author: Jennie Winhall
Category: Families

Stress is a contributing factor to poor parenting and family dysfunction. Where a family is coping with multiple problems, low income, stress and external triggers can combine to ‘tip’ things over the edge and affect children’s outcomes in a negative way. This Times article outlines the significance of holidays in the lives of low income families and some of the initiatives that help families to take a break.

[Blog] What are you doing Friday night?

2008-09-19T23:29:00+00:00

Author: Jennie Winhall
Category: Families

Louise Casey, former head of the Respect Taskforce, calls for Friday night youth projects as one of her ‘top ten’ ways to cut crime published in the Independent. Our research into ‘problem families’ so far shows a strong case for options that provide children with activities and the chance to develop new pro-social friendships and parents with a break so they can maintain a social life of their own. There is little available for teenagers and parents on Friday night, when many anti-social behaviour problems occur.

[Blog] Help in Southwark Requested

2008-09-18T17:35:00+00:00

Author: Emma Southgate
Category: Ageing

Participle has developed Southwark Circle a membership organisation that helps older people take care of household tasks and keep on top of the little things that crop up at home, forge social connections and take advantage of new opportunities. It is a local organisation enhancing local resources through older people themselves and their neighbours. Southwark Circle is being launched throughout Southwark in early 2009, and will be piloted in two areas, most likely Peckham and Dulwich East in autumn 2008. If you live in either of these areas, have a parent or relative living in these areas or live locally and want to get involved, then we would like to hear from you… Perhaps you are looking for some help for your parent or relative living in Southwark and would like to find out more about the help that Southwark Circle can offer? Perhaps you are someone, young or old, who lives in one of these areas and would like to help your neighbours in a voluntary, flexible way? Perhaps you are someone who would be interested in the flexible paid roles that Southwark Circle is looking to fill in these areas, roles that allow you to work as little as a couple of hours a week, as and when you can? Or perhaps you are someone who would like some help yourself. If you identify with any of the above we would like to hear from you, email us .

[Blog] New Channel 4 Series - The Family

2008-09-18T17:21:00+00:00

Author: Emma Southgate
Category: Families

The first episode of The Family was aired on Channel 4 last night and came with both criticism and applause. For four months the Hughes lived with 21 fixed cameras and 16 microphones and the resulting footage has been translated into 8 hour long programmes. The family were chosen because in many ways they are unremarkable and the programmes, billed as a documentary series, show aspects of family life that many of us can relate to. Read reviews from The Independent and The Guardian

[Blog] Meet like-minded people

2008-09-18T01:53:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders
Category: Ageing

We’re working with Westminster Council to develop a social networking service for older people. The aim is to make it easier for people to lead more social lives; make friends and maintain relationships, even for those who find it difficult to get out of the house. If you’re over 50 and interested in meeting like minded people drop Jonas an . You could take part in our prototype and maybe find a new buddy.

[Blog] Three things I read this summer…

2008-08-26T22:11:00+00:00

Author: Hilary Cottam
Category: Future Services

On a wet and windy beach, which made me think about families, youth, the Beveridge welfare state.. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. Set in Manchester in the 1840s – a period of industrial unrest and extreme deprivation, at the height of the industrial revolution – this novel tells the story of Mary, a factory worker’s daughter whose beauty attracts the attention of the mill owner’s son. A page turning Victorian romance, Mary Barton made headlines in its day for its realistic portrayal of the lives of the mill workers and their acute suffering. Chronic hunger, infant deaths, atrocious living conditions and the struggles of the early union movement...it’s a sobering reminder of just how much our welfare state and the original Beveridge achieved. Governing the Present by Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose. These two LSE academics have spent the last decade thinking about how personal and social lives have become the subject of government. They look closely at how issues become constructed as ‘problems’ and in particular how policy has come to focus on behaviours and engineering the human soul. They argue that it is false to think of issues waiting to be uncovered or discovered – they are rather things constructed and Miller and Rose are interested in how something is made into a policy area. So far, so good. What is great is the way they explore these ideas through numerous everyday mechanisms from accounting, to advertising. It’s pertinent and challenging for our work. Did you know that the idea of ‘growth’ as a key indicator of economic health only emerged in the 1960s? Because the technology finally existed for measurement. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. With the rest of the Dominican diaspora, I have been waiting 10 years for Diaz to write this book, after reading his brilliant collection of short stories, Drown. It was worth it. A great sancocho of science fiction, Dominican history and family sagas. ‘What did you know about states or diasporas? What did you know about Nueba Yol or children whose self hate short circuited their minds? What did you know … about immigration?’ Apart from being wildly original and entertaining this fiction tells the story of the myriad ways in which behaviour seen as perverse by the social policy makers is a deeply rational response to realities at the margin.

[Blog] People Library

2008-08-22T18:52:00+00:00

Author: Emma Southgate
Category: Future Services

One man’s experience as a human book in the first Living Library in the UK can be read on Times Online The UK Living Library website can be found here

[Blog] Watch me Disappear

2008-08-20T18:22:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders
Category: Ageing

School photo of Sandra Drummond grabbed from the Channel 4 documentary “Watch me Disappear” In the UK around 200 funerals a month are unattended, a figure set to rise as it is estimated that, by 2010, 16 million people in the UK will live on their own, often the deceased’s ashes are disposed of in unmarked graves. A Channel 4 documentary this Friday (Friday Aug 22, 7:35pm) sets out to tell their story. Read a preview courtesy of the Observer

[Blog] The New Old Age

2008-08-19T18:12:00+00:00

Author: Jennie Winhall
Category: Ageing

Thanks to the marvels of medical science, our parents are living longer than ever before. Adults over age 80 are the fastest growing segment of the population, and most will spend years dependent on others for the most basic needs. That burden falls to their baby boomer children, 77 million strong, who are flummoxed by the technicalities of eldercare, turned upside down by the changed architecture of their families, struggling to balance work and caregiving, and depleting their own retirement savings in the process. The New Old Age, a new blog from New York Times, explores new financing options, gay elders, thoughtful depictions of old age on screen and in literature, and the experiences of those in the ‘sandwich generation’, caught between the needs of ageing parents and their own children.

[Blog] What defies defining but exists everywhere?

2008-08-19T17:49:00+00:00

Author: Jennie Winhall
Category: Ageing

Alice Rawsthorn in the Herald International Tribune illustrates ‘design and behaviour’ with a current Participle project as she explores contemporary definitions of design.

[Blog] Kernels, cotton wool and latex gloves - Simulating ageing

2008-08-18T21:07:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders
Category: Ageing

New York Times article on a programme to sensitise organisations to older people - simulating impaired senses and putting people through a series of everyday tasks - such as planning a road trip..

[Blog] Public services on the wireless

2008-07-17T11:57:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders
Category: Ageing

The Audit commission report ‘Don’t Stop me Now’ found local authorities ‘woefully unprepared’ for the increase in the ageing population. They’ve pulled out some examples of good practice too - including this council-funded community radio station for older people in rural Cornwall. A few weeks back this Thai Community radio station caught our eye. “Bangkok’s ‘quality of life’ radio station provides a lifeline in a city where public services are haphazard at best. The all-talk format of RDCK is a call to action and an attempt to solve problems via the community and its bulging Roladex. Lawyers, doctors, bus drivers, midwives and snake catchers are glued to the frequency. Monocle’s Bangkok correspondent David Fullbrook tuned in for the day.” Spend three minutes with the video here if you can...

[Blog] The Apple Store for the Elderly

2008-06-26T23:44:01+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders
Category: Ageing

HOJO is a health an wellness store for seniors. They recently opened in Lyon and have plans to spread across France. Whereas many existing senior-focused merchants tend to focus on disabilities - ElderDepot.com is one example - HOJO offers a more holistic variety of about 400 lifestyle products dedicated to keeping senior citizens happy, healthy and independent for as long as possible. Inspired by Spain’s SeniorStore, HOJO groups its products into categories including wellness and health, daily living, leisure and comfort, communication and security… Read the full article on Springwise

[Blog] Japanese elders turn to extreme sheltered housing option

2008-04-03T23:54:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders
Category: Ageing

According to a recent report by the Ministry of Justice, more and more elderly Japanese are turning to crime out of poverty and isolation, suggesting a breakdown in traditional family and community ties. With nowhere else to go, more elderly inmates serve out their full sentences, instead of being released on parole like younger prisoners. What is more, recidivism is higher among them. “There are some elderly who are afraid of going back into society”, said Takashi Hayashi, Onomichi’s vice director. “If they stay in prison, everything’s taken care of. There are examples of elderly who’ve left prison, used up what money they had, then were arrested after shoplifting at a convenience store. They’d made up their minds to go back to prison.” Read the full article in the International Herald Tribune

[Blog] I retired too early!

2008-03-17T22:58:00+00:00

Author: Amelia Sanders
Category: Ageing

In a case of a real life less ordinary, El Inglé, a Matador from Salford, has announced that he is returning to bull fighting aged 65 after retiring “too early”. (Aged 62) This is despite a recent heart bypass and an artifical knee… Full article in the Guardian