#likeminds - Steve Moore is building the Big Society


The Big Society – it’s an idea that started to emerge a year or so ago, from issues around the state of the economy. Other issues played into it: the aging population was one. The costs of health care, of looking after the elderly are rising all the time. Oh, and currently 80% of the decisions about the spending of public money is decided within one square mile in London. Nowhere else is that power so centralised. How can we hand that power back, asks Steve Moore?

Communities are fragmented. 3% percent of people attended a public meeting last year. Only around 25% of people volunteer in any way. 1 in 10 feel lonely, 60% isolated from any decision making.

Yes, it’s a political idea. It was part of the Conservative Party manifesto, and is part of the Coalition’s government. It’s being factored into the legislation.

Moore is involved through the Big Society Network. If we use networked technologies, if we use creative media, we can start to build the Big Society.

The government is serious about transferring power to a local level – and he means below local government level. Don’t expect contracts from central government, but make your focus on local projects on a very granular level.

Groups are the currency of the Big Society. Allowing local groups to take action in the local area is at the heart of the Big Society.

Everywhere he goes, he discovers remarkable stories of people doing remarkable things, unheralded. Tapping into that community entrepreneurship is going to be key. While Moore was preparing his talk, Ed Milliband was making a speech trashing his ideas. But Moore suggest that all the technological and social change going on means that we need to find new ways of doing things. And he thinks that over the next year we will be able to create some great new ideas.