Green Alliance magazine on Big Society
By Ed Mitchell 12th October 2010
Pete Lipman our chairman seems to be getting around a bit these days. We know that he is a prolific sharer of many links (which grace our twitter feed regularly) and other behind the scenes inspiration and support, but it would appear that the current situation is finding him stepping into public.
He gave a fantastic presentation making sense of the Big Society at our recent workshop in Bristol, wrote a moving introduction to the Sustainable Ability report on arts and climate change, and now appears being interviewed in Inside Track Magazine on the subject of the Big Society.
You can read the whole magazine on the Green Alliance website, here’s a little sample:
Q; Does community action on the environment exemplify the Big Society in action?…
A: If it means people getting up and doing it for themselves and not waiting to be spoon fed by a government, national or local, then absolutely.
Will the Big Society be that? We are still waiting to see. But community action on the environment does show that there is enormous untapped power in communities to make radical changes, and good examples of this already exist.
It’s well known that where people take ownership for themselves they are far more likely to achieve their ambitions than if it’s imposed from above or handed on a plate.
The immense power of community action can begin to change social norms, particularly with environmental issues, where people own a whole different set of behaviours for themselves because they see their peers doing it. I think this is enormously powerful and can only come from people doing things together.