Social Enterprise and Civic Renewal

Social enterprise is a business model which offers the prospect of a greater equity of economic power and a more sustainable society - by combining market efficiency with social and environmental justice. The model exisits as part of a growing debate about the relationships between citizens and the state, including complex issues of taxation, empowerment and the reconciliation of family and employment.

“Income support has maintained people when they did not have income from industrial production, but it has not enabled them to develop. In short, income support is a passive social policy. The economy in which income based policies were sufficient is passing. Labour markets are less stable. In order to be employed, people will have to make decisions and invest in themselves through their lifetimes. In this new economy, people must be in control of resources and, in effect, make their own policy decisions. What is needed in this post-industrial economy is an active social policy, one that promotes engagement.” -Michael Sherraden, Asset Based Welfare and Poverty, Kober and Paxton 2002

“The common factor that unites our sector is our motivation: what we are for, not what we do. We exist because individual citizens are willing to come together, to act collectively, to make a positive difference to their lives and the life of their community. And doing so because they want to: not because the government compels them to; nor for commercial advantage or financial gain.” - Stuart Etherington, Chief Executive NCVO, November 2007

“Big Wide Talk Asset Clubs have arisen because parents want the best for their children, and they have learned within Big Wide Talk that they can do this best by working with each other.” – Big Wide Talk, 2007

“Ours is a government committed to greater democracy, devolution and control for communities. We want to see stronger local councils, more co-operatives and social enterprises, more people becoming active in their communities as volunteers, advocates, and elected representatives.” - The Government White Paper “Communities In Control: Real People, Real Power” 2008

“We believe that citizens and communities are capable of taking difficult decisions, balancing competing demands and solving complex problems themselves, given the right support and resources.”- The Government White Paper “Communities In Control: Real People, Real Power” 2008

Working steadily over a three year period within an EU funded EQUAL partnership Big Wide Talk explored the economic realities of parents’ and practitioners’ lives and the potential of some form of social enterprise to provide better tailored solutions to their needs and aspirations. A proposed collective Asset Club model has been devised as a result of this work. Parents were concerned to be taken seriously as economic contributors as well as parents and concerned citizens. Most of those who took part had few qualifications and most had no pensions whatsoever.

Currently Big Wide Talk has three asset groups, which deliver locally tailored services as well as Big Wide Talk packages. The Asset Club in York delivered a Theatre of Learning in 2007.

‘We have come to see that our shared experience with Big Wide Talk has helped shape our children and our own identity. We want to find work for ourselves that might help spread this experience to other parents and children and give us interesting things to do instead of finding boring work for example in the supermarkets. We arranged to work together in pairs so that we could share our childcare needs. This is our big asset. We are reluctant to have all sorts of wrap around for our children. We want them to have good times with people they know and who know them. Sharing our capacity to care for each other and our children is important to us. It is also not straightforward. Some of us know each other better than others. Working in pairs we can be sure that we are confident of the standards our children will experience in the care of the other person when we are not present.’ - BWT York Asset Club

BWT Asset Club Model

Asset Clubs are groups of local parents who have taken part in Big Wide Talk with their own children and are determined to work with the national organisation to improve outcomes for everyone’s children. Together we aim to deliver exhibitions as vehicles for shared experience and the creation of local agendas for change. Exhibitions in Plymouth, Cornwall, Bristol and Exeter have been acclaimed and our ambition is to bring these high quality experiences within the reach of all schools in the UK.

Within Big Wide Talk we pay particular attention to the investments we make for children and the ways in which this capacity to invest is interconnected with how we earn a living and the ideas and values which are important to us.

Asset Clubs all use Big Wide Talk methods and tools but each individual member contributes their energy and skills in different ways to suit their financial needs, aspirations and the ways in which they wish to bring up their children. Almost all wish only to work part-time. Sometimes members pair up to share childcare so that earnings and benefits are evenly accessible. Big Wide Talk often brings local parents onto the payroll and always provides training for the work in hand for example, computer skills, sign language. Some parents access training whilst volunteering. Each club is different but each has a common relationship to Big Wide Talk, which assures common standards of good practice at the very local level as well as providing advice and support on all organisational and contractual aspects. The Asset Clubs operate within the Every Child Matters agenda offering support for children with special needs, family support work and the provision of exciting activities for children including exhibitions.

The Asset Club model is:

• driven by learning and research

• sustained by the micro-markets of interdependence and need where people live

• democratic and meaningful

• driven by the search for new relationships which unite cash and social assets including parents love for their children.

• sustained by parents sharing skills, responsibilities(including childcare) and aspirations.

Benefits to society:

• Parents provide mutual support during the critical child rearing years

• Delivers locally tailored micro-services.

• Gives parents real agency within the economy whilst caring for their children, reducing current inequalities between men and women, rich and poor.

• Enables locally determined investment in pensions and further education.

Implications for government policy:

• Can government interact with previously informal groups of parents on a business-like basis?

• Does government need to recognise the ways in which a national network, such as Big Wide Talk can drive and sustain standards of practice in learning and local investment?

• Can the existing regulatory framework which supports the delivery of the five outcomes for children be extended to national networks such as Big Wide Talk?

Balance sheet for participation

We use these maps to recognise and organise our assets individually, locally and nationally: