Sharing and Building Power: understanding how power works and the tools that are needed
Summary of main points
In order to share and build power we need to understand how it works. There are many forms of power, from individual, collective, social and societal, and these interact with each other.
The Sheila McKechnie’s draft Framework for the Accountable Use of Power encourages us to take a hard look at access to resources and formal rules and policies and also to deepen our own consciousness of power and capabilities, as well as our culture and connections, leading to reflective practice and a conscious shift in exclusionary cultures, narratives and practices.
Taking power starts with oneself, including challenging self-limiting beliefs and practices. There is a dangerous narrative of finite power which can be self-constricting for individuals and organisations. Being reflective about the different types of power, whether power over, power within, power for, or power to, helps create a greater consciousness and can be enabling.
Asking the question ‘why’ can help to build a strong ‘power for’ with a common purpose and shared values which in turn makes it easier to give staff more power and to be more powerful externally. Radical listening, particularly with those who are effectively silenced now, helps unlock this power.
Relatively hidden forces can be a significant block to sharing and building power and these need to be understood and addressed. Internal governance, systems and processes, including regulatory requirements, can be disempowering to both staff and communities. Power imbalances, for example between professionals and those served, should be recognised and addressed. Culture can make cross sectoral alliances difficult, for example.
The social sector needs to do more to share its own power and build power with others, while also calling out abuses of power in society.
In more detail
Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of a Better Way, introduced the meeting by talking about what the network had already learnt about power:
Sharing power requires awareness and new tools
Each of us can play a part, by understanding the sources of power and privilege, including our own, and identifying the blockages that prevent power from being shared.Authentic voices can challenge existing sources of power
Authentic voices stemming from personal experience can challenge existing sources of power, if they are not used in a tokenistic way. Storytelling ‘from the heart’ can be powerful.Connecting people creates power
Connecting people – for example, through networks, coalitions and activities that link people together – creates new forms of power. Communities themselves also generate power, sometimes out of negative experiences, as Covid-19 has shown.
She explained that we were going to explore the first of these during this session, and introduced the thought leader for the cell, Sue Tibballs, the CEO of the Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK), which has been working on how to build and share power over the last few years.
Sue Tibballs said that in order to build and challenge power, we need an understanding of how power works, which is why SMK have been producing various tools to help and she said it would be great to get the group’s input to these at this meeting. These were still being finalised and would be published in an interim report in due course. There have been previous attempts to understand power, she said, but these have often included binary assumptions when in reality power was more complex, and they had not taken hold. Covid-19 had made it even more clear that we live in an unequal society. The significant challenge for the social sector is to reform itself so that it shares power more equally while also exercising its own power externally. This is all the more difficult when its power is currently being challenged by the Government.
Sarah Thomas from SMK then outlined the draft tools they are developing. She said that they had mapped examples and had identified a nested system of power, as shown below.
These interacted with each other, rather like a dance. Power is both an enabler and a constraint, and the draft Framework for the Accountable Use of Power SMK have developed allows us to understand better its nature and what we can do to share and build power ourselves. This framework has four dimensions – consciousness and capabilities; culture and connections; resources; and formal rules and policies including governance. This slide sets these out in more detail.
The last two quadrants show the formal and arguably more familiar elements. On resources, accountability is needed not just to ensure equitable access to money but also technology, information and networks. Inside organisations, a review of formal rules and policies is important, including governance and procedures, because these can be a barrier to sharing power. She also highlighted the top two quadrants. There is often too much emphasis on building capacity of people with lived experience to take power, she said, and not enough on looking at ourselves. Reflective practice, and dialogue with those with less power, is vital too. This new framework encourages us to look at shifting exclusionary cultures, including hidden codes and exclusionary networks and alliances.
In breakout groups, points made included:
Taking power starts with oneself and one’s own organisation, including our own assumptions and beliefs, which can be self-limiting. Perceived power is important. There is a dangerous narrative of finite power which can be self-restricting.
Being reflective about the different types of power, whether power over, power within, power for, or power to, helps create a greater consciousness and can be enabling.
We need to ask the question ‘why’ rather than accept current assumptions; and listen deeply to those who are effectively silenced in society and act upon what is learnt. We must make sure that the power we hold is genuinely working for, not against those we serve. Power ‘for’ is about creating a shared purpose and common values, and will have a really strong ‘why’. When it works well, it makes it easier to create self-organising teams within an organisation, as well as to provide a strong sense of external purpose and power.
Governance, systems and processes, including regulatory requirements, can be disempowering to both staff and communities, for example by taking away autonomy for staff or placing restrictions on how communities naturally work.
Culture can be a significant bar to building social power within and across sectors, with an example given of a large company attempting to work with the social sector but with difficulties in both sectors in understanding each other’s culture and language. It can also lead to ‘group think’, with people gravitating to people like themselves rather than people who challenge their assumptions.
Power imbalances, for example between professionals and those they work with, need to be recognised, and can get in the way of people realising their own power and agency because they defer to what they see as greater knowledge or are dependent on them to unlock further help. Professionals and organisations need to be aware of this and ‘gently hand the ball back’. Sharing power takes trust on both sides, and is a continuous process which has to involve all levels of the organisation.
Abuses of power are being used very effectively to bully certain groups, for example through racism, or attacks on the power of social sector, and need to be called out.
The social sector should be setting standards, being the best it can be internally, as well as making the best happen. It needs to challenge and call out the abuse of power in a way that is safe and effective while also getting our own house in order.
Overall, the reaction to SMK’s new tools was extremely positive and we thanked them for their contribution to the discussion. SMK’s slides were circulated after the event and information about their social power project is available here.
The next meeting of the cell on 5 May will consider look at how to create inclusive platforms and encourage unheard voices through authentic voices.
Note from Sharing Power Cell 3
Summary of key points
We heard how one organisation is fundamentally reviewing their practices, examining their data, and considering how they can apply their resources and influence in ways that achieve a fundamental shift in power in society and in their own services for those they work with. Another told us how they were taking advantage of an increased interest by residents in their community to build agency (purpose, belonging, power).
Other organisations will also be reviewing how they work in the light of Covid-19 but change will require determined leadership, and new tools, including use of data, better frameworks for co-production and for accountability. It’s important agencies don’t undermine and disempower community building by temporarily parachuting volunteers in from outside.
While COVID-19 has highlighted the power of community and connection, some groups of people have become even more isolated, unheard and/or under-served, and some have effectively been silenced, eg prisoners confined to their cells without access to support. We need to do more to highlight this loss of power.
A discussion about inequality can allow everyone to talk about their own experience of power and privilege, and when they have felt themselves to be at a disadvantage. This type of discussion can lead to profound change.
We need to move away from extraction (where those in positions of relative power exploit others for their own ends) towards investment (where we support people and organisations to become more powerful, in their own right).
In more detail
Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of the Better Way, introduced the cell, the third in a series of meetings. She explained that the aim was to share insights with each other and inspire each other to do more, and that we would share learning from these discussions with the wider network and beyond.
Our Better Way Call to Action pointed out that power is in too few hands, and sharing power is one of the ways to redress that. Many of our Better Way discussions are pointing towards the importance of giving people authentic voices and platforms, through a process of what has been described as radical listening. At our first meeting Sue Tibballs, the thought-leader for this cell, reminded us that although power is concentrated in too few hands and formal institutions including government do have enormous power, we have more power than we think, and so a key question is how to mobilise that. In our second meeting Whitney Iles described the value of reflective practice when bringing lived experience into organisations and policy making, working genuinely together, not labelling people, putting aside preconceptions.
This time we want to explore how, as organisations are shifting in COVID-19, reviewing their strategies and structure, they do so in ways which share power better. We started with two presentations:
Sonya Ruparel from Turn2us pointed out that during COVID-19 power imbalances have increased and the charity’s data is showing that financial hardship has become worse for those who were already marginalised before COVID-19, including many Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic people, many disabled people, and many women. The data also reveals that Turn2u distributed £1.3m in emergency grants in eight weeks, and while people from BAME backgrounds received 35% of the grants, they were also less likely to be successful in their applications. The charity is seeking to understand why this happened and how that bias can be addressed in future.
Examination of the data has driven a stronger sense of urgency in Turn2us, to consider how to use its own power more responsibly, and not reinforce power imbalances in grant making and partnership formation for example. Turn2us is now working towards co-designing a framework for co-production. This will set out where, when, and how the charity should and must work with experts by experience. Sonya noted that in the crisis it has been easier to engage users in co-production, and that Zoom has been a good leveller.
Turn2us only exists because of power imbalances in society, Sonya said, and there is no good reason why people should have insufficient money to live on in the UK, and so the charity seeks to use its programme work and the relationships it holds to demand systemic change. Sometimes power is invisible and is visible only in the violence which is done to people’s lives, but it can be revealed through data analysis. So Turn2us is introducing a power analysis and policy and advocacy objectives in all its programmes, working with lived experts. It is also designing an accountability framework for the whole organisation, to enable service users to hold the charity to account, to deliver what it says it will deliver, and to use its resources and power responsibly, listening and learning from feedback, and responding.
As we learn to share power, Sonya said, we need to learn how to hold ourselves to account, and enable others to hold us to account, and have the humility to accept where we need to change what we do, how we work, and who we work with.
Tom Neumark, from the Peel in Clerkenwell, explained the organisation’s vision to build community connections in a neighbourhood, which is very mixed but where there has not always been a lot of mixing. The Peel aims to build ‘agency’ among local people, that is, the ability to shape the context of one’s life.
Tom quoted Jon Alexander, who has described agency as ‘purpose and belonging and power’, and he described the varied experiences in Clerkenwell, both positive and negative, in the pandemic:
Purpose: In COVID-19, as with many other neighbourhoods, there was an upsurge in community volunteering, mutual aid and participation. At the height of the lockdown 300 meals a week were donated by local restaurants and delivered by residents to people who were self-isolating. But for many their sense of purpose was shaken, with a lot of people searching for something else in their lives. And some were far too concerned with immediate pressing difficulties in their own lives to think beyond this.
Belonging: Clerkenwell was a dormitory neighbourhood for many of its residents, who go elsewhere for work and leisure. But in the pandemic that changed, and suddenly the neighbourhood assumed much more significance. Some people connected with their neighbours more and their sense of belonging increased. But for others the day to day routine in the neighbourhood has been severed, and the sense of belonging has been under strain.
Power: the Peel has been giving practical guidance for people who want to make something happen, in effect taking power into their own hands. For example a ‘bake and take’ initiative, where residents meet on line, bake something at the same time, and deliver it to a neighbour. But rules about how people can meet each other, use streets, and so on, are imposed quickly and change frequently, and this can produce a feeling of dislocation and powerlessness. New relationships had between mutual aid groups and the council but at the same time there is a tendency in the council to seek to formalise mutual aid activity, and this has resulted in resistance from those who don’t want to be turned into a service.
So, the Peel as an organisation has been trying to redirect its resources to become a platform for those who have felt a loss of purpose, belonging, and power. It is learning to ask ‘what do you want to achieve and how can we meet you there?’ rather than expecting people to fit into processes set by the Peel. The organisation is also training local people to act as radical listeners, so that they can help to catalyse activity which comes from residents themselves.
Breakout sessions
Participants broke into smaller groups to discuss these topics further. Feedback from the breakout sessions, and the subsequent discussion facilitated by Steve Wyler, Better Way co-convenor, included the following points:
Shifting power in organisations
There are many example of positive practice, but many agencies are a long way behind. Some organisations still want to be seen as powerful in themselves. Big ‘oil tanker’ charities and public sector agencies will not achieve the turnaround needed without radical rethinking and redistribution of power, not just to those with lived experience and clients/beneficiaries, but also within the organisation itself.
Moreover, there are some big structural problems in the charity sector. A lot of charities still operate according to benevolent and paternalistic models developed in the Victorian era. We expect charity boards to be unpaid, but this results in less Board diversity among charities than among FTSE100 companies.
COVID has shown that large institutions can act at speed when necessary, but this requires leadership from the top. If the CEO and chair are not up for change, nothing will happen. It was suggested that those in leadership roles should consider what they control, what they influence, and what is beyond their influence and control. They can also reflect on their ability to bring about personal, interpersonal, organisational and societal change.
Voices that have been silenced
It’s a dangerous time. Many young people in particular are looking for security and certainty but feel things are out of their control, and are feeling powerless. Many people feel that things are not right, but that they don’t have a voice, and are not listened to, or when they are it is only as part of a tick-box exercise.
Furthermore, in the pandemic, many people have remained unheard and/or under-served. What is happening in prisons is silent, invisible, not covered in media, kept out of sight and out of mind. Because prisoners are being kept in isolation, groups working with them have been unable to visit and represent them properly. There are others who in different ways, have also found themselves effectively silenced, including for example, Gypsy and Romany communities, those experiencing domestic violence, and the families of patients with Do Not Resuscitate notices. There needs to be more concerted efforts to tell these stories and also data can be powerful in revealing where these power imbalances lie and where they have got worse.
When people are heard, those working in policy and media roles need to consider their responsibility to work with people in ways which do not ‘strip people’s stories from them.’
Addressing inequality
Many organisations have introduced EDI (Equality, Diversity, Inclusion) strategies. Some in our discussion felt that these were ineffective, especially when they categorise people according to protected characteristics groups, with the implication that one group of people has power and another group is a victim. A few people might be placed on Boards or appointed to other leadership roles, but this can be tokenistic, and deeper problems remain. Some less visible forms of inequality, including class, are largely ignored, and EDI strategies often fail to address intersectionality, and the reality that different forms of power (or the absence of it) can be experienced by everyone, to some degree.
It was suggested that a discussion about inequality can be a good way to begin, because it can allow everyone to talk about their own experience of power and privilege, and when they have felt themselves to be at a disadvantage. This type of discussion can be the start of more profound change.
Shifting power at community level
Some areas have experienced persistent disadvantage and social inequality, over many years, despite considerable spending on regeneration and renewal programmes. This was largely because those programmes focused on individual deficits, and failed to share power, or even ask people what they really wanted.
In the pandemic the community response came first, then the more formalised voluntary sector, then the state. This has produced a greater respect for community activity, and a desire for more porous boundaries between informal and formal action.
But not all community activity in COIVID-19 produced a positive shift in power. Where people offered their services as volunteers, well-meaning, often white middle-class people often became involved, sometimes from outside the area, and this could be disempowering and/or undermine the community building that comes through genuine mutual aid. Some even started to tell other people what they should be doing, even what they should be eating, in ways which were very disempowering.
We need to stop talking about disadvantaged communities, as if the people who live in the communities are the problem, and require outsiders to sort things out for them.
A need for change in the benefits system
Across the public and social sector there is a pervasive inequality between those who are employed and receive a salary, and those who are unemployed and on benefits and only, at best, receive a voucher for their work. There is a need to change the system so that it is possible to reward contributions without disrupting benefits. It was pointed out that ten years ago a coalition of charities called for a community allowance which would provide a benefits disregard for people carrying out paid part-time community work, but this was ultimately blocked by senior DWP officials and Ministers. It may be time to revive this campaign, or something equivalent.
Political education
Many people don’t only want to tell their story. They also want an opportunity to work with others on the solutions.
That means developing an understanding of how the system works, and carrying out a power analysis. This can include an understanding of how invisible power can operate, through ideas and beliefs which can be a force for progressive change but which can also produce harm.
Listening exercises therefore need to be accompanied by political education, if we wish to see a democracy which in which true sharing of power can take place.
Sue Tibballs, thought leader for this Better Way cell, shared some closing reflections. COVID19, she said, has had disruptive effects, for good and for bad. Central government has provided massive injections of state funding to support people and businesses. Local government has looked afresh at local charities and community groups, devolving more responsibility to them, asking them to step in.
For some people it has felt that their power to act and to make a difference has been growing. But as we head in the discussion many people have lost power, become more isolated, even silenced.
In the coming period, civil society will need to renegotiate relationships between those operating at different levels, e.g. people (as service users, donors, volunteers), the local voluntary and community sector, and the national voluntary and community sector.
We will need, Sue said, to make sure that the work we do moves away from ‘extraction’ where organisations are taking what they can use from people with lived experience, or where big organisations are exploiting small organisations. Instead, we need to find ways to practice ‘investment’ , and this will include helping the people we work with to understand how power operates, creating opportunities for them to be active in pursuit of greater power.
Caroline Slocock concluded by saying that it was good that the power of connection and community was increasingly being celebrated by politicians and others but we must do what we can to also highlight the isolation and loss of power of certain groups, despite the upsurge in mutual aid.
Next meeting
The group thanked Grace Wyld who has supported its work, and who is moving on from the Sheila McKecknie Foundation.
The group also agreed it would be useful to continue to meet. Themes could include:
Developing the accountability framework
Understanding sources of power
Documenting the loss of power
Changing the narrative of power
Caroline encouraged participants in the cell to suggest further ideas and also to contribute blogs on the topics we have been discussing. The date of the next meeting is 28 October, 3-4.30 pm.
Note from Sharing Power Cell 2
Summary of key points
Lived experience is powerful in designing and delivering better policies and practices but needs to be used thoughtfully, through ‘reflective practice’ in ways that promote co-creation with professionals and ensure power is genuinely shared.
Organisations need to provide spaces in which genuine listening can take place in open-ended ways which avoid labelling, harming or exploiting people and which enable them to feedback on the process and find out how their input has been used, and from which everyone involved can learn.
Staff with lived experience are an important resource but need appropriate support to avoid trauma leaking out into work or being re-traumatised, or burn-out.
Funders can do more to involve people with lived experience, including making funding available for involvement in pre-project shaping activities, as well as post-project evaluation.
In more detail
Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of the Better Way, introduced the cell. She explained that the aim was to share insights with each other and inspire each other to do more, and that we would share learning from these discussions with the wider network and beyond (for example we had been feeding network insights into the Danny Kruger report for the Prime Minister about the role of civil society).
Our Better Way Call to Action pointed out that power is in too few hands, she said, and sharing power is one of the ways to redress that. At our first meeting Sue Tibballs reminded us that we have more power than we think. As a result of COVID-19 we might see more division and inequality in society, but there are also opportunities and we see some organisations changing their strategy.
The topic for this meeting was how we create inclusive conversations that drive change, and what is it about giving up power that makes us so uncomfortable?
Our guest speaker was Whitney Iles from Project 507. This organisation, set up by Whitney in 2011, works in prisons and community settings with young people who are leading lifestyles that are physically, psychologically or emotionally harmful to themselves and others. Project 507 employs people with lived experience and has taken that lived experience and turned it into trauma informed professional practice. It does not see itself as being there to help, more to create a space in which people learn and create together through co-production in a way that benefits everyone and with the aim of people becoming healthy, happy people.
Whitney said that Project 507 also help other organisations and policy makers to make use of lived experience but in doing so it’s important to think what we mean by this and who do we leave out. We will always miss some voices, some experiences.
She underlined the importance of lived experience for ‘filling in the gaps’ for policy makers and those developing practice, for example in the prison system. Lived experience can be invaluable, not least informing those around the policy table or who put policies into practice who would not otherwise know about the nuances of how things actually work in practice and whether they change lives, or not. Without this knowledge, the danger is that policies and practices either will not work or actually create harm.
And there is a big difference between tokenism (using people only for their lived experience, projecting labels on people eg ex-offender or ex-gang member, not ensuring people are emotionally safe and forcing people to disclose, ignoring the risk to the individual, failing to pay for the expertise) and empowerment (opportunities to learn and develop, with agreed labels, roles and job titles, creating reflective space for people to think about how they apply their experience, and providing clinical supervision and other support). Those who are ex-service users can often become overloaded with work and responsibility, and can suffer burn-out.
Reflection is vital to creating together and the best way to build in lived experience is through ‘reflective practice’ for participants to think about and process their experience, she explained, and this applies to practitioners too – thinking about why they bring young people to the table, what it means for us as ex-service users, including reflecting on the power dynamics in the group.
This should happen throughout and – critically - after the end of work, whether it is changing policy, an event, or practice, as this is an important piece of learning. Did those with lived experience feel heard, are there things that have been learned about working together? Sharing the learning is sharing the power and helps us to deal with nuances of why we don’t share power in the first place, she said. This learning should be set out in documents which should be shared and discussed with everyone involved.
Through reflective practice, she concluded, people from different backgrounds and experiences are able to come together and create something that is incredible.
Breakout sessions
Participants broke into smaller groups to discuss these topics further. Feedback from the breakout sessions, and the subsequent discussion facilitated by Steve Wyler, Better Way co-convenor, included the following points:
Creating the conditions for better participation
We need to create listening organisations in which people are heard as people and are truly valued. Framing the question can be problematic so have to start with an open book and provide space for people to speak, without stereotyping. Spaces where people can relate to each other as people, rather than according to their functional roles, can help to break down power imbalances.
It is important to see a person as separate from their circumstances. Avoid labels and definition by a particular lived experience. If you get to know a person it is possible to build the trust that is necessary for inclusive conversations. Attempts to share power become uncomfortable where there isn’t sufficient trust.
We need to remember that sharing power takes a long time.
Setting the agenda and an organisation’s strategy is best done with a mix of those who are service users, front line staff, managers and Board members, providing payments for people with lived experiences as well as opportunities to learn and develop.
Moving from listening to action – it is important to maintain the dialogue and feedback to build trust and help people understand they have made a contribution.
Involvement of others
It is important to listen with the right people in the room, but much can also be gained by people connecting to others not in the room, building linking social capital and so sharing power.
Often people want to talk about solutions and the systems – can we think about lived experience at a collective level not as heroic individuals?
We need to trust communities to know what they want and what they want to focus on, rather than impose a truth or theory of change on them, asking them to refine or test it.
In COVID-19 we need a blend of expert health professionals, as well as lived public health experience - things go wrong when one or the other is lacking.
If there is sufficient diversity people don’t have to feel grateful that they have been invited in.
In every meeting it is useful to have an empty chair, and ask the question, who isn’t here?
Managing the tensions within an organisation
Sharing power implies giving away control, and this comes with risks.
Within an organisation there is often a tension between the front line staff, who tend to have a depth of understanding and respect for the people they work with, and fundraising and communication teams who can treat lived experience as a commodity to be applied by the organisation for its own ends. This tension needs to be addressed at senior management or Board level, but rarely is.
As other Better Way discussions have explored, the dominant model of leadership is highly gendered, with centralising command-and control behaviours, and this needs to be challenged if we are to see more distributed forms of leadership, more conducive to sharing power.
Some pitfalls
Poverty-pimping is far too common. Staff members who are for example ex-gang members confer credibility and help attract funding for their organisation. As a result organisations often fail to encourage them to move on when they are ready for this.
Many organisations want their service users to tell their personal stories, but discourage their delivery staff from doing that. In fact, staff may have a great deal of lived experience they could share, and service users could play a much greater role in designing and shaping the delivery of services.
Organisations need to consider carefully what support is required. Without therapeutic training, trauma can ‘leak’ into work unproductively and this needs to be managed in a supportive and safe space.
There are concerns about how co-production is applied. When a professional has an agenda and gets people with lived experience into a room to design something according to that agendas this is not sharing power – those people might have wanted to design something different.
What does it mean to be an active ally? When professionals feel they don’t have legitimacy and pass the responsibility to those with lived experience that can do harm. It is tokenistic to think of lived experience as a trump card.
The term lived experience is not one some of those in the discussion liked because it is in danger of becoming just another label and we all have lived experience. It’s better to be more specific about what experience people have.
What funders can do to help
Lived experience is in vogue among some funders at the moment. But most still expect applications to come with fully worked out aims and interventions and outcomes, rather than investing in the process of working with a community to establish what these should be. This means that insight from lived experience becomes, in practice, an afterthought.
Funders could encourage organisations to include post-event reflection, as Whitney described, in their funding bids as a standard feature of the projects they fund.
Final reflections from Whitney
We need to understand better the intersectionality of gender and race, and avoid designating people in ways which places them in the impossible position of representing whole classes of people.
We have to be ready to do the difficult work, and be willing to give up control and power, however uncomfortable that makes us feel. In sharing power, and including people with lived experience and these whose voices haven’t been heard, there will be a spectrum of collusion, positive and negative, and many grey areas to navigate.
Next meeting
Wednesday 16 September, 2.00-3.30pm.
Topic: As organisational strategies change in the light of Covid-19, how can we use this shift to give more power to people in society?
Note from Sharing Power Cell 1
Note of a first Better Way cell on Sharing Power, held online 2nd June 2020
Aims of the Cell
Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of the Better Way, introduced the cell. The concept of power was at the heart of Our Call to Action for the Better Way which was launched at the end of last year: firstly the power of connection and community which we are trying to unlock, and secondly the fact that people feel powerless and that power is in too few hands.
We are at a crossroads moment, Caroline said. Things could go very badly and social inequality and divisions could deepen, or alternatively we can sense the possibility of opening up a new kind of society. This cell is a working group to share ideas and experiences, and develop new strategies which we can turn into a document to share across our network and beyond. Sue Tibballs has agreed to be a thought leader, and we will have a series of meetings over the coming months.
Participants introduced ourselves. We come from many different parts of the country and our experience extends across many parts of the social sector, e.g:
Social housing, homelessness, community action, community development and planning, community organising, migrants and refugees, advocacy and participation, participatory budgeting and citizens panels, the NHS, customer collaboration, grant-making, women and domestic abuse, policy development, social enterprise, campaigning, local government, social work and family support, relational activism, child protection, research, public sector transformation, international development, theatre and story-telling.
Our particular interests in the sharing power theme include:
Sharing power that is hoarded in too few hands.
Igniting the power that people have and don’t use.
Building power in places where people have not had the opportunity to do so.
The relationship between elected representatives and community democracy.
How power can be shared in the COVID recovery phase.
How organisations which are haver to change in response to the current crisis can do so in ways which are more deliberative and participative and empowering.
Race and power dynamics.
Strengths-based approaches and tackling stigma.
How theatre can tell untold stories ignite people’s own power and disrupt norms of how discussions take place.
Developing a shared understand of the term power, with a focus on making people’s lives more empowered.
Understanding better the barriers to sharing power.
The Power Sharing project
Sue Tibballs introduced the Sheila McKecknie Foundation (SMK) social change grid, noting that power is held in all four quadrants.
Agencies seeking social change have tended to focus their efforts on the bottom right quadrant (lobbying government or other formal institutions) but as Sue pointed out this quadrant has been the least interesting space for social change in recent years. Sue explained that social change can emerge from all four quadrants of this grid, and increasingly from the top half.
So in our discussions about sharing power we should not assume that the only task is to invite people who do not get heard to present themselves to politicians and business leaders. Change is complex and power is complex and we should keep that in our minds in the work of this cell.
Grace Wyld noted that the Power Sharing project hosted by SMK is working across civil society in London, with a community of practice of more than 200 people, and is considering the question, ‘What would it look like if civil society in London was better at sharing power in pursuit of social change, and how would we get there?’ Grace and Sue will be able to share learning from this project at future meetings.
Breakout sessions
Participants broke into smaller groups to discuss the questions ‘Whose voices are heard and whose aren’t?’ and ‘What does this tell us about power and how it works?’ Feedback from the breakout sessions, and the subsequent discussion facilitated by Steve Wyler, Better Way co-convenor, included the following points:
Unheard voices
There are many unheard and marginalised voices, not least disabled people, people with learning disabilities, families under child protection arrangements, homeless people, people with substance abuse, to give just a few examples.
Many of these are people who are deemed to be un-deserving or at fault, or regarded as ‘not like us’. Stigma is driven by fear, and is made worse by the failure of communication.
We should not be thinking in paternalistic terms, e.g. ‘giving people a voice’. People already have a voice, but the problem is that often they have few opportunities to use it or when they do they are not listened to. Moreover, what matters is not just whose voices are being heard, but also who controls and sets the agenda.
As we have seen in the Covid-19 crisis there is a struggle between local and national power, and an ever-present tendency to centralise decision-making and resources. This leaves many people at community level feeling powerless and ignored.
Spaces which allow voices to be heard
So how do voices break through? It is possible to establish public or shared spaces which allow people to speak for themselves, on their own terms. One example is the family conversations model which Camden council has promoted.
However, we noted that public discussion can be fraught with tension. In some cases participation is motivated by adversity and anger. Often discussion about change and what the future could look like is felt to be too ‘political’ and is discouraged.
How we and others can move forward
We can challenge ourselves to think outside of our group or network.
We should not limit ourselves by valuing only the professionalised perspective.
We can build more power, by hearing more voices, and nurturing the ability to act.
In discussions on this topic it will be useful to distinguish between different types of power – for example, power to do something, or power over others.
Next steps
We considered who else to invite into the group. Various suggestions were made, which Caroline and Steve will follow up together with Sue and Grace, and we will prepare a template invitation. We noted that we must not approach people expecting them to ‘represent’ a particular section of society. We are all engaging in a journey of exploration together, and bringing our various experiences and insights and connections to bear.
It was also noted that we could make contact with other agencies such as the Institute for Community Studies, Engage Britain, and also interact as much as possible with the SMK Sharing Power project.
Suggestions for discussion topics at future meetings were:
How can we and others create inclusive conversations, which can drive change?
As organisations are being ‘remade’ in response to the Covid-19 crisis, how can we and others do so in ways which share power better?
There is a lot of relevant experience on these topics within the cell and in our wider network. We agreed that we should make sure our discussion is well-grounded by assembling a collection of relevant practice examples, examining some in depth. Several members offered to produce blogs or video clips, and it was suggested that we could use the hashtag #sharingpower to disseminate learning from the cell and open up the conversations more widely.
Next meetings:
Wednesday 22 July, 2.00-3.30pm
Wednesday 16 September, 2.00-3.30pm
Note from an online roundtable: Sharing Power
Introduction
Caroline Slocock from Better Way introduced the discussion topic: how to create opportunities for more people, especially those who are usually overlooked, to participate in setting the agenda. We need to help more people develop a ‘constructive sense of entitlement’. We need a shift in political life away from command and control behaviours, listening better, and thinking locally wherever possible.
We’ve already started to explore how to do so through a number of essays in Insights for A Better Way, and blogs on the Better Way website, which include contributions from:
· Sue Tibballs, who asks people to make more use of the immense latent ‘social power’ of civil society.
· So Jung Rim, who tells how the Social Innovation Exchange is creating platforms that bring in diverse voices.
· Richard Bridge, who argues that local authorities need to distribute power more equally.
· Mark Johnson, who writes about how he’s challenged the deep-seated bias against experts in lived experience in the criminal justice system and built a movement.
· Simon Shaw, who explains how Food Power is creating opportunities for people experiencing food poverty to set the agenda.
· Sufina Ahmed, who points out that sharing power has to start with understanding power and privilege.
· Rhiannon Bearne, who call for a redirection of effort towards making rather than shaping power.
· Avril McIntyre, who considers how to help others in ways which genuinely empower them.
Community organising
Nick Gardham from Community Organisers described the experience of community organising which listens to people and brings them together to take collective action on things they care about. He explored the concept of ‘sharing power’. This is not the same as giving power, or even shifting power. It implies a sense of responsibility on all sides. It requires trust and this is difficult for institutions and even more so for the majority of people, who do not believe that they can affect change, and are fearful of becoming visible. It can therefore be important to start on a small scale, with lunch clubs, litter-picks for example. Even small actions like these produce stories of personal change. They can and sometimes do also lead to campaigns for wider system change, and generate pressure on institutions to change their behaviour. So the experience of sharing power can produce conflict as well as collaboration. But sharing power does not happen of its own accord – it requires resources. The government funding in recent years to train community organisers is an example of what can and has been achieved.
The Power Project
Steve Reed, Shadow Civil Society Minister, described the experience of introducing a Co-operative Council model in Lambeth when he was Council Leader. There was rapid improvement, but the gains fell away quickly when local policies shifted. It is not enough to address inequalities of wealth, health outcomes, etc, without addressing inequalities of power, which underpin them all. A non-violent revolution is needed, to take power from those who have it and abuse it, and share it with everyone else. This requires actions in different spheres: the economy, in community life, in local and national politics. Politics is broken. It is too remote from people. The social contract, that the proceeds of prosperity and growth should be shared fairly, has failed – a minority have accumulated even more. Big data has been used by companies to exploit us. We have failed to respond to the climate crisis. Our social institutions and our current forms of liberal democracy have failed to protect people, and so people are turning their backs on them. Brexit, Trump, Le Pen, the re-emergence of neo-fascism across Europe are all the result in a loss of public confidence in liberal democracy. But we cannot give up on democracy – rather we need to ‘double down on democracy’. This will require bottom up political renewal accompanied by change at the top. We need to give people direct power, forms of democracy which will allow the workforce to take back a fair share. We need to nurture and develop the capacity of people to self-organise, and institutions which encourage this, radical models of devolution and participation. There are many barriers. For example stasis within organisations – people in leadership roles are incentivised to maintain the organisational forms which have placed them at the top. There is always resistance to the threat that power will be taken away. Politicians are threatened by the idea of building the capacity of people to take decisions themselves, and ensure that they are kept as outsiders, and people have little choice but to take up placards. We cannot take democracy for granted. Throughout history in most parts of the world the default position has been the autocracy of the ‘strong man’. However, the appetite for democratic participation is evident. It can be seen in Barking & Dagenham, in Wigan, among climate change action groups, in the digital citizens’ platforms in Seoul. A new form of politics is trying to emerge. We need a new settlement between citizen and state, more respectful relationships, a break- up of public and private and digital monopolies. The Power Project aims to understand this and too build a movement for a radical transformative type of politics.
Discussion
In the discussion, the following points were made:
Powerless is a lack of connection. Relationships – deep value relationships – are needed to help people build trust, come together, and discover their own power. Connectedness and solidarity are the antidote to powerlessness. We should consider how to build connection, and therefore collective efficacy, and how those in a privileged place can help with this. We should also consider how to incorporate relationship-friendly design in many aspects of our lives if we are to overcome powerlessness.
There were different views about whether it is necessary to take power from those who have excessive amounts in order to increase power among those who have very little, or whether power is potentially infinite, and therefore the task should be to build power among those who have little. It was suggested that communities are latently powerful because all political power ultimately derives from them. It was also noted that even the most powerful can feel powerless in some circumstances, and that the oppressed can become the oppressor. But the reality is that the somewhat powerless are those who most exclude the completely powerless. If we are to achieve a power shift, people and agencies will need to give up some power, but will usually be resistant to this, or even where the leadership is willing to make a change, they will find it hard to do so. So we will need measures which support, guide, and reward the shifting and the sharing of power.
We need to help people understand how political systems work, and to deal honestly with unrealistic expectations. Concentrations of power are a problem. Power always agglomerates and perpetuates itself. In this country power is concentrated in Westminster and in the two party system. We need measures such as proportional representation or sortition (selection of people at random to exercise decision making, as with the jury system) to break it up. Participatory forms of democracy, as in participatory budgeting, and subsidiarity in decision making, are other measures which can resist the tendency towards centralisation of power. There appears to be an appetite in some parts of government to do things differently, as indicated in the Community Paradigm report from the New Local Government Network.
Power can operate horizontally (power with) rather than vertically (power over). We should develop institutions and practices which encourage the former and discourage the latter. The funding of social programmes should allow activity beyond formal limits when people have the appetite to go further themselves. It is possible to build a set of principles and tools, sing for example common good thinking, to encourage people to come together and share power. A lot of what is needed is already known. For example, a recent Big Lottery Fund report identified what is needed to help people take on power in the context of place:
o Know the history, background and context of place
o Invest in people and relationships
o Work with others to build a shared vision for change
o Start small, try different things
o Allow for variation
o Be realistic. Accept mistakes and failure, make space for learning and reflection.
o Keep looking for change.
If we can create connected, accountable communities we will be better placed to deal with the big national challenges, it was suggested. Forging relationships helps build movements such as MeToo and how people with HIV made change happen by demanding it.
However local action is not sufficient: locality can be the seat of disempowerment, a bastion of white and male privilege. It may be that ‘power’ is not the best way to organise our thinking. A focus on power, and how people can discover their power, tends to side-line considerations of equality and inclusion. People do not start from an equal place.
There is a relationship between power and wellness – listening, responding, self-organising, truth telling are the things which make people well, and powerful.
Some parts of the public services system are attempting to share power, though co-production, co-design etc, notably in the health services, but institutional change is proving extremely difficult in practice. The NHS Alliance, for example, has developed a model for power sharing.
A sense of entitlement is well developed among those who have power and wealth. Can we develop a sense of entitlement among other groups, including young people? Within our educational system we need to do much more to build an appreciation of what it is to be an individual in society. The most vulnerable may not be able to run things, but they still deserve a voice and to be listened to, and responded to. We need to provide support to help people build their voice.
The ways in which power is built and maintained is not only through hard power (coercion, legislation, military and economic systems) but also through soft power (persuasion, culture, values, etc). We should not underestimate how language, narrative, story-telling can act as a disruptor to prevailing power, or reinforce it. If we are to shift power we need to communicate differently, to ask questions rather than tell people, to encourage others to speak, to learn how to hear silence as well.
In a delta the pilots who live a fragile subsistence life know the intricate waterways and therefore have some power, because the ships which pass through depend upon the pilot for safe navigation. If the delta was to be bombed the waterways would became clear, the pilots would lose power. Do we need to empower people to be pilots, or bomb the delta – in other words work within the existing system, or change the system?
It may be that a shift in power and a sharing of power will require significant internal culture change, resources to make a sustained difference, and the need for both bottom up and top down actions.
Note from Better Way London Cell: Campaigning and Social Change
Note from Better Way London cell 2 – 17 July 2017
We considered the recent discussion by the Better Way London cell 1, following on from the Grenfell fire, about what generates social change – is it resident-led campaigning, or a sub-set of the elite winning the argument with their class, or an alliance of both, alongside technical specialists, journalists, academics, and others?
We also considered the observation from the June 2017 Better Way gathering that ‘the role of social activists is to grow the capacity for change making in others, not simply to lead the change ourselves’.
We observed that within much of the voluntary sector, ‘campaigning’ has become problematic.
Even the most progressive independent grant makers are finding it difficult to persuade their trustees to fund ‘campaigns’, feeling more comfortable with terms like social change. In the UK, compared to the United States, there is little institutional support, especially in the form of unencumbered grant aid, for the core operations of campaigning bodies.
Campaigning has become degraded within many charities. Staff with campaigning roles tend to be low status, and campaigning has become at best a function of policy or public affairs, building relationships behind the scenes with the powerful rather than generating mass mobilisation or speaking out against injustice. At worst it is little more than an adjunct to fundraising. ‘Born campaigners’ rarely sit comfortably within a conventional charity structure; their inherent tendency is to challenge and break the rules, not to adhere to a corporate brand. Campaigners are rarely promoted to leadership roles in charities, which tend to value professionalised managerial skills in order to safeguard and grow organisations, rather than to change the world. As a result we have few if any charity leaders who can bring an authentic campaigning voice into national public debates, as for example Sheila McKechnie once did. And we have too many ‘zombie charities’: organisations just concerned with continued existence rather than making a difference, more dead than alive.
The voluntary sector leadership response to the recent attacks by government and the Charity Commission on campaigning by charities has been weak; it seemed the priority was about defending organisational privilege rather than speaking up for the validity of bold and outspoken campaigning. We seem to lack intellectual leadership within civil society.
Perhaps this is in part a reflection of a dominant strain within the voluntary sector, which sees itself as emerging from a philanthropic heritage, and is therefore naturally aligned with the establishment (unlike in the USA where campaigning was born of the civil rights movement), and cautious about campaigning when it threatens to disrupt the status quo. And yet the voluntary sector and civil society also has another heritage which has evolved in parallel with philanthropy: self-help and mutual aid, stretching back at least to the eighteenth century. This emerged from friendly societies and other forms of working class association, and included union mill societies, corresponding societies, early trades unions, co-operative societies, early building societies and so on. Perhaps we need to rediscover and celebrate that heritage, and the more radical campaigning spirit which often went with it.
And indeed there are some signs of this. A generation of social activists are turning away from traditional philanthropic charity models and using other vehicles: community interest companies, community land trusts, community benefit societies, for example. They are applying associational methods, crowd-funding, community shares, and attracting large numbers of people into campaigns through social media. There is usually less preoccupation with organisational boundaries and brand, and there is often high energy and optimism. Overall, there seems to be more “fire” from leaders at local level and the change that is most effective is happening outside of charities. Sometimes this is coming from the private sector.
And yet much of this remains essentially consensual, often assuming that a combination of the many will of itself produce positive change, and is weakened by a lack of ananalysis of power, and how those without resources, or who are systematically marginalised, can bring about change. Social entrepreneurs it seems are not necessarily social activists or campaigners.
In this context it might be helpful to revisit Saul Alinsky’s ‘Rules for Radicals’, in which campaigning tactics start from the premise that power is concentrated in institutions which will not easily give it up. While sometimes criticised for adversarial positioning, many of Alinsky’s rules still have resonance today:
1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the expertise of your people.
3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
We considered what we might learn from successful campaigns in the recent past, eg the dramatic shift in gay and lesbian legal rights and in public attitudes over the last two decades. Reflecting on this we can see that a combination of elements was needed: a cause celebre (the Clause 28 campaign); campaigning agencies (eg Stonewall); determined and brave leadership figures (eg Peter Tatchell); skills to ‘dance with the system’ and win allies within the establishment and media (Tory MPs, Princess Diana, Ian McKellen, Michael Cashman). It seems that a change of this magnitude happens when people in power feel uncomfortable about standing in the way (even if they don’t necessarily believe wholeheartedly in the cause).
We should not forget that not all campaigning is about social change. Campaigning can also be about defending things which are valued, blocking change which is seen as damaging. Nor is the loudest campaigning necessarily the most effective: Sarah Corbett from the Craftivist Collective speaks up for the ‘quiet campaigners’ which, in her case, means exposing the scandal of global poverty and human rights injustices through the power of craft and public art.
Power, and how it is applied by institutions, is perhaps more complex now and operates in more disguised forms than when Saul Alinsky started out in 1930’s Chicago battling against the venal Town Hall, the corrupt Teamsters trade union, the Catholic Church, and the Mob! But as we look forward we will increasingly face big ethical questions: what are we for? And if we are, at least in part, for challenging injustice, and institutions which perpetuate injustice, how far are we prepared to go in pursuit of that?
We concluded by wondering why there was not more leadership in the voluntary secretary, including a leadership of ideas. The voluntary sector should not allow itself to be characterised just by its philanthropic history. Potentially Grenfell Tower had created a “teachable moment” and ways needed to be found to use this emotional heat but first we need to sharpen our tools and wake up.