Cases

Shown below are a myriad of successful applications of what James calls ‘Academic Enterprise’; an academic activity where James, and others, have used their skills for Citizen Enablement/Empowerment for communities and small businesses so they achieve meaningful success for themselves, and thus achieve their desired ends and wants. They have been  chosen to show the range of best practices possible to show the essence of what has already been achieved. James believes the case studies are great examples of the approach he has advocated, since he recognised the need to become more deeply involved in Citizen Enablement which occurred when he came to Salford University over 20 years ago. As well as developing this focus of attention his approach is best also summed up as developing mechanisms for deeper interaction. The processes in the majority of the case studies show the Citizen Enabler raising awareness for all involved, developing dialogue, identifying joint aspirations and embarking on joint projects which in many cases led to joint success. This process can be seen as much about building bridges between all parties, as enablement of citizens.

Such a broad range of example of best practices were chosen because collectively they showed the following Characteristics important to any project trying to engender Citizen Enablement:

• citizen focused issues and problems undoubtedly demand strong citizen involvement in the development of workable, sustainable and cost effective solutions to meet community needs;
• invention and innovation for successful solution development in all our cases comes just as much from the citizens as it does from those with professional expertise and the cases portrayed all show that creative projects are about problems, paradoxes, controversies and ambiguities that are truly persistent;
• almost any citizen focused problem or issue can be tackled by the right collaboration between (academic) enablers and citizens/communities, with the latter particularly deciding the way the solution is to be developed, whether there is a need for supplementary skills support in the development, or whether they can simply enhance their own skills;
• persistence, patience and being systematic and caring are key attributes to ensure the success of any collaborative venture, with the developing team being led towards being systemic in the way they tackle any problem, by using an appropriate step-by-step approach to drive for continuous improvement of their enterprise. They must also seek feedback to reinforce positive developments and be prepared to go through many test-redesign-test cycles to maximise the impact of any developed solution;
• recognising that a solution to any issue may already exist elsewhere, or at least be can be borrowed from a solution to a like-minded issue, it is important to explore these possibilities particularly with citizens who have explored such areas already – the internet provides much opportunity to make such successful explorations;
• start by enabling citizens to undertake a workable development and then proceed to empower them to get their solution into the real world;
• most successful solutions to human-centred problems and issues, occurring to citizens, are also human centred in nature, rather than being technological or legalistic etc. This makes them even more open to solution by citizens, rather than, so called ‘experts’;
• sensitive and caring leadership of a developing enterprise team is vital to ensure a continuous rebalancing and upgrading of the team to ensure the solution developed is truly workable and citizen focused;
• citizen can learn, and must learn, to become the eventual leaders and managers of any developing enterprise. A language and way of enablers communicating with citizens must recognise the latter are normally bright, but typically unqualified. The confidence that comes from a better understanding of their real issues, in their own terms, enables them to undertake even more complex and difficult problems and issues themselves than ever before;
• academics can learn new research and development skills that are equally as interesting, taxing, complex and difficult, as the hardest of their traditional academic studies;
• universities that recognise the importance of these different ways of academic working, truly embrace ‘excellence in diversity’, and thus prepare us all for a better life, after Covid 19
• finally, citizens must increasingly recognise the have to become involved, and can properly cope for themselves with their own problems and issues; they have to become stake holders in the development of better futures for themselves, but have to prepared to learn from, and work in collaboration with, partners having professional expertise; this requires all partners to understand what is at stake in any development.

A final few thoughts on the theoretical perspectives about Social Enablement

Mary Douglas’s theories have helped us, as social enablers, to ‘take time to listen to, and fully understand, what others want in order to unlock their potential. Her model helped us personally achieve things we hadn’t felt possible when younger and the proposal tries to provide an array of examples in a number of different contexts revealing how the model can work effectively’. My colleague, and Citizens Enabler (Case Study 12, page 72) Tim Field sees James use of this model leading ‘ultimately to an altruistic and collaborative approach based on a desire to share opportunity and, in so doing, increase the overall sum of social capital’.  We agree with him that this is what it does!!

Models like this, with sound “theoretical roots are interesting to look at in terms of social enablement from other theoretical perspectives in order to develop an even better understanding about how individuals and communities can move forward”. One that initially sprang to Tim’s mind arose from the thinking in the 1970’s of urban sociologist Ray Pahl. In his book Whose City?, Pahl argued that it is ‘urban gatekeepers’ who are the enablers for many people, for example, managers allocating public housing”; something that Bob Paterson confronted when he was trying to develop his ‘Community Land Trusts’ (Case Study 7, page 61). However, Field saw that the “power of the welfare state reduced in the wake of neoliberalism from the 1980’s, as the role of urban gatekeepers within the public sector diminished, as they also did in the private sector due to the standardisation of qualifying criteria (eg for loans or mortgages) through all-encompassing, digitised corporate systems”, which gave him hope as you will see in his case study.

These perspectives are indeed interesting because they can help to explain how complex things work and potentially enable us to formulate the sort of working models for various regeneration/development we are suggesting here and which are depicted in at least some of the following Case Studies. The key to Tim Field, who has helped the development of our approach, has been to “recognise that there are different layers and angles in the approach, as well as the changing contexts in which their relevance can be judged. The Marxist model is a comprehensive one and more effective in explaining the economic and political constraints in which change-makers are working, but it doesn’t provide many practical models for action. In Britain, its call for political agitation has never led to the revolution necessary to bring about fundamental regime change.

On the other hand, both the social enablement and urban gatekeeper models do provide practical templates for action, but work within a system; they do not change it. Therefore, the application of these models can be effective for certain individuals and, to some extent, whole communities (eg New Deal for Communities as seen in Case Study 12 later on page 72) and will always be limited by the broader economic and political structures in which they operate. As such, their impacts are likely to be partial.

These latter two models also seem to assume that the change being encouraged is inherently good. Whilst in many cases the change will be positive, it could be argued that this fails to recognise that where resource allocation and consumption are concerned there will be winners and losers. This certainly happens where the social enablement approach is applied to whole communities, as in the Charlestown and Lower Kersal New Deal initiative (Case Study 12 page 72). Here, many different interpretations of the impact of the programme depend on the perspectives of, and implications for, different individuals. In the ‘urban gatekeeper’ model this has been more specifically recognised, for instance, with certain allocation processes noted as having a racial bias creating clear winners and losers. However, there is no theoretical explanation for this. The Marxist approach has as a fundamental element of its theoretical construction a much clearer view on winners and losers and how this should be tackled.

Another celebrated thinker on theories of change in an urban context was Peter Hall and in 1988 when reflecting on his long and distinguished career, he wrote a book called Cities of Tomorrow. These are all approaches to urban planning which are again driven by specific theoretical perspectives. Peter Hall, who actually reflects, that whilst there may not be such a thing as a ‘theory of planning’, there are many theories involved in planning. Just as, it might be argued, there are as many in social enablement”.

Why we bring this to your attention, in agreement with Tim himself, is that we realise the World is indeed a complex place, but believe that by looking at it through different theoretical lenses (as we started with Mary Douglas’ cultural lenses in the main paper), we believe we can enrich our understanding of it, and hopefully yours, and thus act with more strategic purpose. As Tim concluded to his consideration of this theoretical stance, “it is also worth noting that while some might think that theoretical musings are spurious, the various models and theoretical approaches mentioned in this whole paper have evidently been influential in bringing about some profound changes, whether for good or ill’. You can judged for yourself when you read the following cases. Tim thinks as someone once said, “to act without thinking is reckless, to think without acting is pointless”. We hope you agree. Good reading of the Case Studies with this in mind.

              Concluding the Introduction to the Case Studies

To conclude this introduction to the Case Studies, James Powell is now happily retired and a Professor Emeritus of Salford University; his last full-time role was as Senior Pro Vice Chancellor (Academic Enterprise); he is also Honorary Professor at the University of Glasgow School of Education. He is regularly works on a range of research, development, innovation and academic enterprise projects which emanate from his successful time in leading Academic Enterprise at Salford University and especially his research into the ‘leadership, governance and management’ of a  new ways of enterprise engagement where universities would work in the community to drive improved ‘Citizens Enablement’. Several of the projects he either led, or was deeply involved with, which exemplify the above proposed approach, are written up in some detail in the next section; after each case report the main Citizen Enabler is highlighted in italics – such learning enablers rarely work alone and are often supported by those of like mind who also wish to empower citizens, communities and small businesses to learn how to improve their role in a meaningful way and to deliver the ends so many clearly desire.

We hope, as you read the cases in brief next you will get a flavour of the above in all the projects mentioned. This should also give academics (and other enablers) and citizens/communities the confidence to try the new for themselves and to undertake their own personal challenges for necessary change. Shown at the end of Case Study 1) concerning the Community Banking development, in blue type, the magic playbook approach mentioned in the main paper is reworked to show how Robert Paterson achieved success in his Enabling Citizens project.

Just before you explore the Case Studies for yourself we tell you about some tables we have prepared showing what ‘Motivated the (Academic) Enablers’ to want to Enable/Empower Citizens (shown in column 3) and similarly ‘Why’ the Citizens, or their equivalent, themselves were Motivated to learn new ways and means to become enabled and ideally empowered; we’ve done this because motivating involvement in our kind of proposal is critical. There is also another table for the same studies showing, for each, what we believe has been their major achievement to date in the same section.