The Amplified Resilient Community (ARC) aims to unlock community resilience as a way to navigate around global challenges and toward new solutions for wealth creation and life improvement. ARC is a framework which helps to reweave civic, economic and political life from the bottom up. The vision is for communities to develop capacities to become adaptive and flexible under the constraints and uncertainties of globalization. Thilo Boeck is a senior research fellow based in the Centre for Social Action at De Montfort University. He worked in Youth and Community Development in Peru, Germany and the UK which has influenced his commitment to participative research and training. He worked in several research projects exploring social capital and community cohesion. He was the social researcher on the Amplified Leicester project. Twitter: @tgboeck

1. The Amplified Resilient Community
Thilo Boeck
Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Social Action
De Montfort Univeristy
tgboeck@dmu.ac.uk
Twitter: @tgboeck

2. Context
 Social mobility and the ability to move out of
poverty are recognised as increasingly
urgent priorities due to the growing gap
between the rich and poor
 We are facing a range of social, cultural and
economic challenges.
 Many of them are beyond our own ability to
influence and control

3. Policy context:
 Big Society: a reduced role of the state and
reduction of the welfare state. Create a
climate that empowers local people and
communities.
 Resilience to tackle the wider consequences
of economic, social and spatial inequalities.
 People face a new type of social exclusion
within what is being called the "digital divide"
(Digital Britain 2009)

4.  Personal resilience as well as community
resilience will be needed to manage the
difficulties associated with financial and
social exclusion
 But: do we have the freedom to create,
change and influence events within our own
life, our community and our city?
 It is not just the DIY project of yourself

5. Social Justice
 Not only 'equality of opportunities‘
 Access to resources
 Individual and group capabilities
Social justice through participation

6. Resiliency
“Influencing how people are able to respond to
the challenges they may face, how they
‘bounce back' in a way that maintains or
even enhances their well-being, thus
producing relatively good outcomes despite
adversity”
 Social Capital
 Deep Diversity
 Access to Resources
 Amplification

7. Social Networks
 Social networks tend to magnify whatever they are
seeded with
 Social networks are creative and what these networks
create does not belong to any one individual. It is
shared by all those in the network
 Social networks grow and evolve. All sorts of things
flow and move within them
 Through social networks people can transcend
themselves and their own limitations
 Dissemination and contagion
Christakis and Fowler (2010)

8. Social Capital
 “Social networks, the reciprocities that arise
from them, and the value of these for
achieving mutual goals” (Baron et al 2001)
 Bridging/Bonding/Linking
 Glue and Resource

9. Diversity
 People prefer to hang with people like
themselves and tend to stereotype others
 Diversity leads to better outcomes Page (2007)
 Deep Diversity Capek and Mead (2006)
 “A group that thinks in diverse ways will
address a problem from many angles.”
Charles Leadbeater,(2008) The Difference Dividend

10. Cognitive
Difference
 Diverse perspectives: ways of representing
situations and problems
 Diverse Interpretations: ways of categorising
 Diverse Heuristics: ways of generating
solutions to problems
 Diverse Predictive Models: ways of inferring
cause and effect
Page (2007)

11. Diverse
preferences
 Difference in what we value
 Diverse perspectives coupled with diverse
fundamental preferences might frustrate the
process of making choices
 Collections of people with diverse
preferences often prove better at problem
solving
Page (2007)

12. Diverse Identity
 Only produces better outcomes indirectly
 To produce better outcomes it needs to be
– connected to cognitive diversity
– connected to relevant problems
Page (2007)

13. Resources
access to information and a healthy
social life through the relationships
‘relational capital’:
depends on an people’s individual
and intentional effort and thus is
almost a private good that can be
used when needed
people are trustfully involved in risky
ventures with other people
support, help and solidarity
attention to the fate and action of
other members of an entire network
‘system capital’:
collective phenomena and
represents collective goods and
cannot achieved by individual
intentional efforts alone.
climate of trust in the network
validity of norms, values, and
morality within a group,
organization, or society

14. Amplified Resilient Communities have four
important characteristics, they are:
1. highly social
2. highly collective
3. highly improvisational
4. highly augmented

15. The Amplified Resilient Community
Partnership between
De Montfort University (Centre for Social Action, IOCT) and
BRC
Developed from the Amplified Leicester project
funded by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA)

16.  All communities have some level of resilience.
 Residents, community and voluntary groups,
statutory bodies and the private sector are
considered part of the community, with a common
aim; to improve the community.
 Enhancing community resilience will build social
capital that will make communities ‘healthier’.
 There is un untapped potential within Leicester’s
deep diversity.

17. Unlock the potential in existing
organisations, networks and individuals as
well as identifying and engaging with new
dynamic individuals and forming new
networks (i.e. linking social capital)
Unlock the potential in existing
organisations, networks and individuals as
well as identifying and engaging with new
dynamic individuals and forming new
networks (i.e. linking social capital)
Resilient
communities have
more Social Capital
Resilient
communities have
more Social Capital
Communities already have organisations, groups
and individuals who have accepted a responsibility
(whether voluntary, statutory and private sector) to
improve the community
Communities already have organisations, groups
and individuals who have accepted a responsibility
(whether voluntary, statutory and private sector) to
improve the community
network weaversnetwork weavers
Tenants AssocTenants Assoc
Employment servicesEmployment services
ResidentsResidents
Residents AssocResidents Assoc
Community AssocCommunity Assoc
Faith GroupsFaith Groups
Special interest GroupsSpecial interest Groups
FireFire
EducationEducation
HealthHealth
Local AuthorityLocal Authority
PolicePolice
Local BusinessLocal Business
CouncillorsCouncillors
Develop a network of
community facilitators
from within existing
organisations
Develop a network of
community facilitators
from within existing
organisations
Communities will discover their
existing resources and unlock
their potential to develop new
resources.
Communities will discover their
existing resources and unlock
their potential to develop new
resources.

18. Vision
 Leicester will appreciate its diverse social networks as
critical infrastructure for collaboration, sense making, and
problem solving
 Leicester will be resilient and have access to new
resources through developing digital media skills and
facilitating community service platforms
 Leicester will nurture social capital as a valuable asset
which will contribute to initiating and maintaining healthy
participation in collaborative and cooperative community
efforts
 Open collaborative platforms will grow the edges of
Leicester’s innovation and knowledge networks tapping
into the deep diversity of the city.