We have never experienced a crisis like this before, and our communities, local organisations and our staff will be impacted in different ways
Our response to Covid 19 has shown how our values are even more important. More than ever, we need to build social justice and tackle inequality
How our organisation will work in the future will be very different but we have an opportunity to do this in a way that is inclusive, participatory and bold
We will work with residents to continue to protect themselves, supporting each other and helping deliver the solutions that can help rebuild our communities
We will bring our communities on this journey, every step of the way, listening to the experiences of our residents, staff & partners to help us rebuild
We will build on the collective power & creativity of our communities & partners to develop solutions that renew our economy
We will understand the new needs that emerged to help identify what we focus on and how we track the impact we’re having
We will build on where we’ve innovated before and during Covid 19 to assess and test what we need to stop, scale or reinvent to respond to the challenges
We will use our different policy levers to influence at a local, regional and national level to get the investment and support we need for our communities
7. To imagining how we recover, renew
and…reinvent?
www.medium.com/@noelito
www.twitter.com/noelito
Editor's Notes
We have never experienced a crisis like this before, and our communities, local organisations and our staff will be impacted in different ways
Our response to Covid 19 has shown how our values are even more important. More than ever, we need to build social justice and tackle inequality
How our organisation will work in the future will be very different but we have an opportunity to do this in a way that is inclusive, participatory and bold
We will work with residents to continue to protect themselves, supporting each other and helping deliver the solutions that can help rebuild our communities
We will bring our communities on this journey, every step of the way, listening to the experiences of our residents, staff & partners to help us rebuild
We will build on the collective power & creativity of our communities & partners to develop solutions that renew our economy
We will understand the new needs that emerged to help identify what we focus on and how we track the impact we’re having
We will build on where we’ve innovated before and during Covid 19 to assess and test what we need to stop, scale or reinvent to respond to the challenges
We will use our different policy levers to influence at a local, regional and national level to get the investment and support we need for our communities
What have we learnt?
Newer groups of people & organisations are becoming vulnerable as a result of Covid 19, with existing inequalities being deepened
Services & infrastructure are being designed & delivered rapidly to respond to the urgency of the needs Covid 19 has created
Residents, communities & businesses are giving their time, energy & money to support people most in need
Staff are working flexibly & collaboratively – often in new roles - to tackle new needs created by Covid 19
We will need to continue to work with uncertainty about the impacts of the virus and so we won't be "recovering" back to normal, but needing to anticipate longer term needs, while being responsive to an evolving situation
https://medium.com/@noelito/from-behaviour-change-to-systems-change-e7f6bb5081ca
In a previous post, I talked about how we’re moving from the surreal to the slowburn. What are the behaviours we’ve changed we want to sustain and what are the trends we want to accelerate or reverse? We know from past crises, that organisations and sectors can convert and quickly, whether it’s the massive increase of women in the workforce sustaining beyond WW2 or whether it’s the income tax being paid to fund a war still with us today. As an example, many of us will have had a much closer and active relationship with our neighbourhood during lockdown as we’ve been limited to only being able to the neighbourhood as places to go.
1. How can we change the system one step at a time?
Blend the experimental and the systemic
Don’t need to do everything at the same time
Develop communities of practice around the ideas
Continue researching even while you’re prototyping
Don’t just meet people’s needs, challenge what they need
Test different social norms
We’ll need to develop a whole place approach to resilience, where we can put ourselves in other people’s shoes, create experiences that embody people’s values, seed change throughout the local area and assemble all the actors involved to embed that change.
https://medium.com/@noelito/how-can-we-use-what-were-learning-to-shape-the-future-e20bf0e80af1
As organisations like councils are responding to the emergency, the situation has forced us to not just to rethink but practically transform:
what we know about the world where we challenge our unconscious biases and instead experience how different people live their lives
what our role is beyond a service provider to one which is just as much a sense maker, storyteller, facilitator, movement builder or protector
how we work in a way where we don’t come with ready-made solutions, but instead test and learn in a way which encourages challenge
how we work in the open to develop creative ways to tackle issues and challenge ourselves and others to constantly put our communities first
Scenarios however can feel very contrived, because they are designed with the lenses of how we currently see the world, which is why most scenarios pre-Covid 19 wouldn’t consider a pandemic as a scenario, either because it was so unlikely or because other trends felt more significant, be it automation or climate change.
You can’t develop future policies or practices if you don’t create the space for imagination. But you can’t just imagine those futures, you need to start enacting them so people can see what they might look like and then adjust & challenge them. And there are futures where you need systemic change that you can’t create just by practising it, you need to mobilise people to demand better futures.
We’ve
https://medium.com/@noelito/whos-responsible-for-solidarity-91010bde034a
Don’t come up with solutions to problems we don’t yet understand
Come up for air from the emergency response to learn from others
Create space for people to share to surface what can mobilise people for collective action
Open up people’s imaginations to test together ways to respond to the future