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Comment by Nick Wilding on September 9, 2011 at 10:10

A review from Dave Taylor in New Start Magazine published this week:

Book Review: Exploring community resilience in times of rapid change

7th September 2011  

Exploring community resilience in times of rapid change by Nick Wilding, Carnegie UK Trust

I jumped at the chance of reviewing this. I’ll audaciously claim that in my working life, I try to support community reliance (note the word ‘try’!). I’ve worked as a playworker and officer and in Sure Start in a number of northern councils; I’m now a freelance consultant working with local charities. I continue to spend many hours embedded in communities, attempting to resolve some of their tricky, depressing and abiding issues. Was this book going to give me answers, or at least some tools to move things on?

The book is ostensibly about reliance in the face of sudden crisis. It gives us a ‘compass’; a set of dimensions that allow us to consider where a given community may be now and how their reliance could be improved.

• Healthy engaged people
• Inclusive, creative culture
• Localised economy with ecological limits
• Cross community links

That ‘compass’ is developed from the experiences of real people acting for their communities, often in a time of crisis. These are taken from events facilitated by ‘fieryspirits.org‘ from Cumbria to Cornwall, stories from around the globe and the last 100 years. Those stories are connected to theoretical and practice frameworks that stretch from Paulo Freire’s work on education to Robert Putman’s thinking on social capital (and much more besides!) Elegantly, the book’s creation and tone mirrors its essential message that ‘localism works’. A community can build its own internal reliance, but not by sealing itself off. Local, regional, national and international connections are critical, applying theory helpful, but on the community’s terms.

I find the approach attractive. It’s seeking to establish paradigms that transcend the tides of policy fashion, political imperatives and economic cycles. ‘Move in this direction, and whatever happens, you’ll be coping better’. Refreshingly, the book isn’t trying to impose a hegemony of ideas, from a single professional or field perspective.

It’s not short of polemical views, but those views tend to support and celebrate the concepts of ‘messiness’ and plurality, which I find vital in my work with communities. I feel, therefore, their thinking goes beyond planning for future shocks. Many of the communities I worked within were stuck in shock mode, through poverty, discrimination etc. The model could be applied to regeneration as much as to the augmentation of emergency planning.

Problems? It’s a bit too focused on rural communities? Also, you may feel its exploration of the tensions and fault lines in communities are lacking. It’s there, but not to the extent I (or yourself) may have encountered in our work or neighbourhood. Theory is presented uncritically, but I feel that suits the intentions of the book. Also the books layout will better suit those of a visual bent.

For me these are all side issues. I actually feel the book could actually present a much needed focus for notion of localism. It’s ideas go deep. Whether you’re a commissioner, a funder, a politician or an activist; get reading!

• Review by Dave Taylor, a freelance consultant working with the voluntary an

Comment by Rachel Francis on September 8, 2011 at 10:25

I ordered the hardcopy because I love the idea and the design. Lots of work ... a melting pot of impressions and grassroots wisdom. Thank you.

Exploring Community resilience also raises old issues for me. The concept of resilience is almost TOO open and undefined.  I find it hard to pass on the idea of resilience to people outside a certain small circle of green and open minded people. Meanwhile the rest of the modern world rockets along on a different path. How would one develop this into clear messages for ordinary people? 

This is deep and lovely stuff but important that we do not get lost in ideology. My question ... as much to myself as anything ... is how do we explain this to new audiences and/or engage with them?

 

 

Comment by Nick Wilding on August 29, 2011 at 13:11

Thanks to Ruth Townsley for this:

Nick - Exploring Community Resilience will be really helpful to Locality members generally and to my team as we look at how members can demonstrate the resilience of their neighbourhoods. Very thoughtful and well integrated ideas. Nice one. Ruth xx

Comment by Nick Wilding on August 24, 2011 at 10:15

Thanks neil stoddart for posting this:

Enjoyed read through.Great to see another approach.Fantastic layout and graphic design. keep an eye out for our Community Bakery launch.

Comment by Ruth Townsley on August 23, 2011 at 11:45

Nick - Exploring Community Resilience will be really helpful to Locality members generally and to my team as we look at how members can demonstrate the resilience of their neighbourhoods. Very thoughtful and well integrated ideas.  Nice one.  Ruth xx

Comment by Shakeel on August 19, 2011 at 18:28

Dear Nick,

congrats for such a useful resource with live case studies from the field.KEEP IT UP

Comment by Nick Wilding on August 19, 2011 at 16:31

An extra couple of comments:

Hi Nick,
 
Just wanted to say thanks for the 'exploring community resiliance' report. 
Excellent content with great ideas to chew on and in a fantastic format that makes the reading experience enjoyable.
 
Felix 

Dear Nick

I have just finished a quick reading of your Carnegie handbook which came in yesterday, and I have to say that I am very impressed indeed. I am, of course, honoured by the way that you have used some of my work, but much more widely than that, this is a beautifully produced, vibrant and easily-absorbed book.
It seems to me precisely the kind of work that I would hope for from the Carnegie Trust, and I cannot avoid feeling a certain satisfaction that this has originated in Scotland, with a strong emphasis on Celtic aspects of indigenous culture, but is beautifully woven in also with the rest of the UK … and wider … indeed, I have already bookmarked Moses Coady’s stuff on “weird pessimism” since it is a perfect context to use in the book I am currently writing about certain aspect of culture and religion in the Hebrides.

To me the importance of drawing on Celtic connections in the UK is that these are pools of indigenous community resilience, and the importance of our Scots Internationalist take on such indigeniety is that they are intrinsically xenophobic … as the poetry of Robert, Burns, Hamish Henderson, etc. makes very explicit in places. That is what matters for the future: how can we build very strong local identities but very open ones too. As Catherine Lockerbie said when she was directing the Edinburgh Book Festival, and I paraphrase her from memory: “to be very Scottish and very international.” ... I was struck just now in checking out Moses Coady on Wikipedia that his concern was with the fact that so many folks were emigrating from Nova Scotia. These, of course, were substantially Scots and Irish who had escaped the Clearances/famine (as well as French), and he spoke of “weird pessimism (that) so benumbed everybody that nothing has been attempted to break the spell.” That is precisely what we need to tackle in our present times, albeit in a different context...

What next? I picked up on the terms “core self”, “personal resilience” and even, in the context of a UN document, spirituality. What this book does is it takes further what is in the Transition handbook and provides rich community-based illustration of principles. What is needed most urgently next, in my view, is to deepen understanding of the social psychological, depth psychological and even spiritual and religious aspects of what resilience is about. For example, in my account of the 1966 Seamen’s Strike which you quote, a driving principle behind local resilence was, as the chief reporter of the Stonoway Gazette put it to my researcher, the Island’s religious values … and yet these aspects of resience often get marginalised in scholarly and policy discourse. It does not escape my notice, for example, the Moses Coady was the Rev Dr … a Catholic priest. I am not urging a return to old style religion, but like I have tried to do in Rekindling Community, I am urging that we start to ask fundamental questions about what a human being is, how come we have aethetic and emotional sensibility, what is the deep grounding of community, of empathy, etc.. These are questions that start with social psychology, move to depth psychology, and end, arguably, in spirituality including the forms of community spirituality that arise in nearly all indigenous communities that manifest high levels of reslience.

Is that something that Carnegie could start to explore next?

Alastair McIntosh (alastairmcintosh.com)

Comment by Nick Wilding on August 19, 2011 at 16:26

Eva - thanks for the prompt. The animation we've been working on is in production just now, due for release September. Watch this space!

Comment by Eva Schonveld on August 19, 2011 at 16:09

where can I see the cartoon Davie did? xe

Comment by Sally MacKinnon on August 18, 2011 at 22:31

Congratulations and thank you for “Exploring Community Resilience” Nick. I’ve just looked through the publication online and am full of admiration for what’s been produced. I love the work the Carnegie Trust is doing in the UK. Here in South East Qld Australia, and in particular, the local government area called the Scenic Rim, we are inspired and informed by your work. I don’t know if it’s of any interest to Fiery Spirits members but I recently wrote an article for the Griffith REVIEW in Australia called “Learning Like a Forest” which is very much aligned with your work in community resilience and systems thinking in concept and practice. I’ve linked "Learning Like A Forest" here in case it’s of interest to anyone. Thanks so much, sally

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