Lighten the gloom by finding out what everyone’s been up to - and planning ahead for our next residential!

We know that many of you will have started the year battling floods and preparing responses to COVID-19 so are grateful to have seen a flurry of activity across the Collaborative in advance of our Birmingham residential. 

Please do make sure you’ve registered all your delegates for this event and booked any train tickets in advance. It’s in Birmingham on Thursday 26 March - Friday 27 March. You can register up to three participants using this form and we’ll be sending everyone an agenda and joining info closer to the date. Workgroups will have the opportunity to share progress, which will require a small amount of prep time from each group to make it valuable. We will check in separately about that.

We’ll be following any health advice that may be issued and will let you know if any of our plans change - please do keep an eye on your inbox for updates.

Workgroup updates & shout outs

Group 1. Framework for meaningful measurement 📋
We hosted a 'meaningful measurement' webinar on Monday, where we were joined by Dr Ailsa Cook, a leader in the field of outcomes and by Jonathan Breckon, Director of Nesta’s Alliance for Useful Evidence. We’ll be able to share a recording of this webinar in next month’s newsletter. We are also close to hiring a specialist consultant to help the group define a measurement framework.

Group 2. How do we redistribute power? 💪
This small group has had some useful conversations and narrowed their focus to exploring how to “improve decision making by giving communities more power in decisions that impact them”. They are considering how to capture their learning into a hints and tips guide.

Group 3. Embedding ABCD in local authorities 👪
Following an all-day workshop in Barnsley at the end of January, Workgroup 3 defined a basic structure for a guide to embedding ABCD practice and wrote a brief for a filmmaker to capture their stories. We’ve now appointed Curtis James to produce the video and are ready to start work.

Group 4. Harnessing digital 🔌
Workgroup 4 developed and distributed a survey to find out how the members of the Collaborative are using technology to empower citizens and improve outcomes. They’d like a few more responses before presenting the results back so if your council is yet to respond, please complete the survey ASAP.

Group 5. Innovation and risk - Theory and practice ⚠
We hosted a workshop for the Innovation and Risk group last week which was captured by a graphic recorder. We heard an overview of Surrey’s move towards building a more curious culture and then acted as curious friends in response to Derbyshire’s deep dive into their Thriving Communities work. Amanda from Cambridge shared their approach to helping members understand and mitigate risk - including a reframing of the Risk Register to highlight societal alongside corporate risk. And finally, Rosamund Mosse from Nesta’s Innovation Skills Team shared ideas from the Competency Framework for Experimenting and Public Problem Solving. Ellen is writing up the session and you’ll be able to hear more in Birmingham.

Group 6. Project to systems: ‘From margins to mainstream’ 💫
This group has managed to corral a massive topic into something more manageable by sharing the conditions they believe need to be in place to enable a system approach to their work. Over a number of calls, they’ve created a draft ‘system conditions’ framework which they’ll be developing further at a workshop in Leeds on Friday, ready to share back at the residential.

Group 7. People power - harnessing community assets 🏫
Having broadened their definition of community assets, Group 7 are planning a trip to see the Participatory City ‘Every One Every Day’ project in LB Barking & Dagenham and hoping to combine it with a visit to a new project in LB Newham.

Group 8. Leadership & culture 👌
This group has been focusing on the role of Middle leaders in terms of leadership and culture change. Recognising that they can either be enablers/promoters or blockers, they have been exploring the tools or techniques that could be adopted to create/embed a collaborative mindset and corresponding behaviours.

You can see the original overview of all the groups and who’s in which here.

If you can help out another group, or want to change groups, then just let us know. You’re free to join as many groups as you have capacity for. 
 

Jenni & Team Upstream

...other Nesta news and opportunities 💡

Collective intelligence is created when people work together, often with the help of technology, to mobilise a wider range of information, ideas and insights to address a social challenge. Nesta’s Centre for Collective Intelligence Design (CCID) has published a playbook to introduce design activities that can be used to orchestrate diverse groups of people, data and technology to achieve collective goals.

Over the last year, the CCID has funded 12 different experiments to test how human and machine intelligence can be combined and applied to tackle social challenges. Among these were the Alan Turing Institute and the Belgian social enterprise CitizenLab, which were exploring how machine learning techniques can improve digital democracy platforms for both citizens and local authorities. You can find out what they’ve learned at a morning event at Nesta’s office on 25 March 2020.

Democracy 2030: Explore the future of democracy with the pioneers shaping it. With public dissatisfaction at a record high, how do we reshape democracy and civic participation to be fit for future decades? Join us for a discussion with the winners of the Democracy Pioneers Award, who are all helping reshape and re-energise civic participation and democracy in the UK. The event will take place on Thursday 12 March 2020 at Nesta.

Reimagine public interest news with The Future News Pilot Fund grantees. Public interest news plays a vital role in empowering citizens, strengthening democracy and holding leaders to account. But the way we consume news is changing, and we need fresh new ideas to find and produce engaging stories that matter to communities. Meet the Future News Fund pilot cohort.

From Redcar and Cleveland to Bournemouth, a new movement of Parks Foundations is emerging with the aim to enhance public parks that play an important role in our lives. Join us at Nesta to explore how interest in Parks Foundations has emerged in the UK over the past five years, bringing new opportunities to the parks and green spaces sector. 

Snippets of interest 👀

• Weirdos and misfits: Following on from Dominic Cummings’ recent recruitment drive Rowan Conway of UCL’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose published a really excellent, thoughtful piece exploring the skills civil servants need to navigate the coming decade.

• Human-centred policy: In her article 'Blending ‘big data’ and ‘thick data’ in national policy' Policy Lab’s Andrea Siodmok looks at how to best involve citizens’ ‘lived-experiences’ in the policy-making process and how to combine it with other forms of data.

• The battle of big ideas: The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) continued their critique of NLGN’s Community Paradigm paper in a policy provocation that challenges the idea that communities can or should provide a substitute for the state and calls instead for policies that grow community and democratic ownership forms within the commercial economy.

Upcoming events 🎪

Stronger Things: Unleashing Community Power A year on from the publication of NLGN’s Community Paradigm, Stronger Things is for those who know that the solutions to our most pressing challenges can only be found in our communities. 
London
Thursday 12 March, 9:00 - 17:00

FutureFest 2020: How can the planet sustain us? What will Alexa do with your biggest secrets? How can we learn to be alone, together? Join us and build your survival kit for the future. The festival will host over 80 speakers including documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux, writer and director, Richard Ayoade, novelist and activist Elif Shafak, author and journalist George Monbiot plus David Lammy, Gail Bradbrook, Lemn Sissay, Laurence Scott and many more.
London
Friday 20 March, 10:00 - 22:00

Public Service Pioneers: Tools for change and how to use them will bring together bold keynotes, hands-on learning sessions, opportunities to connect with others as well as funders, and installations to equip you with new ideas.
Cardiff
Monday 23 March, 9:30 - 16:00

Caring Places - Building Healthy Communities Ever wondered what a conversation between Jos de Blok, Hilary Cottam, Alex Fox and Cormac Russell might produce? A Buurtzorg B&I event to explore how person-centred care can contribute to healthier and happier communities.
London 
Tuesday 21 April, 9:00 - 17:00

The Power of Citizenship Speakers from across the UK will describe practical ideas for positive social change. During the day there will also be opportunities to network and explore together how to make these ideas a reality.
Sheffield
Friday 22 May, 9:30 - 16:30
 

Stay in touch ✉

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