Case

Enabler’s Motivation

Citizen’s Motivation

Generic Process  A – UPBEAT

This Enabler, as a PVC responsible for leading Enterprise and Regional Affairs in his University, urgently needed to develop an evaluatory tool to help his academics staff, and the staff of 10 other British and European Universities, develop Citizen Enabling projects that worked well. He was therefore highly motivated to develop something that was user friendly to his academic enablers and the citizens they were trying to help. His immediate staff also recognized the need, and helped him develop, try, test and improve a tool that could help others with much effect. On a project funded to involve ten other British and European Universities, their academics were also keen to enhance the tool so it became useful to them as well from different cultures.

The European Academics, from the ten Universities involved in the UPBEAT programme, became highly motivated to help in this important evaluatory development. These Enabling Academic quickly saw how the questioning framework, this tool provided, could be used on some 150 projects they had agreed to deliver with each striving to deliver different aspects of Citizen Enablement. So they were actually demanding a tool to help them engage, enable & empower the citizens involved in these projects in order to achieve successful outcomes. These second-order Enablers found the tool also useful in working with the  citizens for whom they were collaboratively designing solutions. As a result they, and their citizen partners, were indeed highly motivated to become involved in using the evaluatory tool. 

Generic Process B – PUMR

This Enabler came from a working class family who had fought their way into the middle class. An academic failure in his youth, with strong educational support, he managed to go to a university in the front-line of the industrial era, where he gained a thirst for learning. In his resulting forty years as an academic he realized that Universities could be very different and PUMR was developed to provide him, and others, with an approach which would truly enable life-long-adult-learning. His motivation was to reach as many people as he could to enable and empower them, as he had himself been empowered before. The present proposal is simply an extension of that ambition.

Those using PUMR found it helpful in enabling them to reach and sensitively lead citizens in their region to undertake new ways of living, work & business. When citizens & small businesses saw what the PUMR approach had to offer, written in their language, they had no problem in being motivated to become involved. They also liked an approach which led to self-learning and ways of development, with the education handled in an enjoyable & rewarding way. Similarly, the learning Enablers, whether at a University, a University College, or independent provider wanted to use an approach that facilitated their working relationships. In Belgium, the approach was so successful, it was stage managed towards other regional colleges also with much effect.   

Case Study 1 – Community Banks

This Enabler, a financially acute, former Director of a major British Housing Association, was also a magistrate before he retired to undertake this project. In this latter role, he was aware that many of the people appearing before him for sentencing could not pay their fines, because they had no access to traditional banks and were being ripped off by loan sharks; there are 3 million such people in the UK. He decided to sort this out himself by becoming a Senior Fellow at Salford University to undertake the Community Banking project reported here. He had given up a great deal to do this which shows his motivation and desire to help citizens less fortunate than himself. He realized that if such ‘banks’ were to be of value to ordinary citizens they had to be developed and run by them so their banking business could be understood by their own kind.

Across the UK early studies had shown the real need for what was envisaged in this project, but not one had had the capability to work with citizens to help them, to help themselves, to become their own bankers. Further research showed that most of the poor were perfectly capable of handling the necessary banking affairs to make such facilities possible. As the Enabler began working with these citizens he was able to help them craft their own ‘community banks’ that would deliver, and then worked with the relevant government agencies and their officers to allow them to be ab le to do this. He found there was no problem in getting a team of citizens, in each environment he had explored, to undertake an appropriate development programme. Over the time of the development nearly thirty banks were developed by local citizens, all highly motivated and able to develop and run a community bank.

Case Study 2 – PUMR supported development at the University College Leuven Limburg (UCLL)

The first of these two Enablers had work closely with the PASCAL International Observatory for life-long-learning and found them extremely useful. He, and his local boss in a University College, who were joining with another college, at a time when there was much local regional industrial depression. PASCAL introduced both Enablers to PUMR and learning sessions were developed to take their fellow senior academics on a better process of solving their local problems by producing Citizen Focused Learning support for their region. The Enablers quickly understood what they needed to do this, & their staff, to help local people become Enabled/Empowered. The Enablers became so highly motivated in their developing process that they then stage managed it elsewhere. Indeed, one of them now act for the Country wide organization helping small businesses become more innovative for wealth creation.

The citizens of Leuven and Limburg, the catchment area surrounding the new combined college known as UCLL, are now extremely motivated to work with academics who speak their language and help them regenerate with ways and means that seem quite normal to them. With this in mind, for instance, a new regionally looking faculty has become the perfect place  for local citizens to come and learn how to get the best from their college academics. So new joint ventures are now regularly being developed of mutual benefit to the college and the regions citizens. UCCL has also explored other projects in the community itself, such as the development of ‘pop-up’ shops and the ZUMA centre where expectant mothers can learn about giving birth in a relaxed way. The whole emphasis on this Citizen Enablement development is the citizens and small businesses themselves and that is precisely why they are motivated to work with the college.

Case Study 3 – Contra-ception: The Board Game

This Enabler was a senior academic who started to devise the Contraceptive Education Board Game in the late nineties because she recognised the need for more effective methods of teaching young people about sexual health. She had become aware that her junior nurse educators and the parents of the young were unwilling or unable to do such teaching easily and capably, and a raft of government legislation had begun to suggest better methods of engagement on this controversial topic. So she became highly motivated to take on the challenge, and has spent most of her life developing valuable and well-timed educational tools to sort the situation for good. She has not only done this, but in the process has become internationally renowned for her innovations and now run a profitable business doing this.

Those in most need of her help, the young, and sometimes uneducated, have particular needs and requirements with respect to learning about sexual health. The Enabler undertook extensive research into developing a game that would be both enjoyable to the young, while helping them learn what was necessary. By testing a developing game with friends, and later student and colleagues, she improved the learning tool towards perfection. It is now used regularly across the UK, and increasingly through the world, because she has translated it into two other languages. She has also worked with people in South Africa to develop something more suitable for their culture. In short, she has produced a portfolio of developments that are so ‘fit-for-purpose’ that they are readily used by many young people who want to learn properly about contraception – motivating them to use the game is clearly no problem in  this context.

Case Study 4 – Peoples Voice Media

In his early career, this Enabler ran a video/audio visual department, in the International Community Development/Education Department of the Jewish Agency; he worked with community leaders across the world to develop local education and leadership programmes using audio visual media where he got his love for helping citizens give ‘voice’ to their needs. He also produced education films, ran training sessions, taught youth leadership skills & developed informal adult education programmes. As Regional Development Officer for the Citizens Advice Bureaux he helped it merge into districts which included restructures, redundancies and developing new leadership teams; he also taught staff development programmes and became regional lead on social policy and undertook a variety of evidence based work related to housing policy. It was in these roles that he gained the thirst to lead his own organisation, to become known as Peoples Voice Media, and highly motivated to develop Citizen Enablement using social media.

The citizens of Manchester willingly became involved in what Peoples Voice Media (PVM) had to offer because so many of them already wanted to learn how to master the use of social media for themselves. They particularly wanted to work with other like-minded local citizens to explore topics near to their hearts, like the natural history of the area or the intricacies of working on their  allotments to get better fruit and vegetables. Many also wanted to learn how to cope better with their own real issues and problems, to confront local city councillors and official, and to use their new ‘voices’ to put over their thoughts about how to solve particular local problems and issues. The citizens taking part in PVM had no real problem in becoming articulate in the use of social media and were soon wanting to go to a higher level of becoming their own reporters of local event; hence the follow up project mentioned later and known as the Community Reporters programme; with the BBC moving its Northern outpost to Salford’s Media City these citizen could see the opportunity of developing their growing skills into future job prospects.

Case Study 5 Unlimited Potential

This Enablers motivation came from several sources. His parents & grandparents came from working class backgrounds, & some experienced severe poverty & he was raised with clear values, and went on to study social anthropology (studying how people live in different social and cultural settings). He became socially and politically aware in the 1980s, a time of division and conflict. It was clear to him that the dominant system sustained and reinforced inequalities in people’s life chances. He felt a need to take action to address issues of power and privilege, by working alongside people and communities, and drawing on their strengths and expertise, in order to tackle key issues and to enable change. For all these things, this social entrepreneur has dedicated his life to helping citizens achieve their own aspirations & is highly motivated to do so.

Local people who have engaged with projects run by Unlimited Potential have had a variety of reasons for doing so. For a small number, there is a burning passion to actively create social and political change. For some, it can be a personal interest in a particular issue or neighbourhood. Others are seeking meaningful, enjoyable activities in their lives or social engagement. Some people have started by involvement in a project, moving on to volunteering, and in some cases employment with UP.  People’s engagement in Unlimited Potential reflects its clear mission and values, and a culture of valuing what people have to offer and taking a relationship-centred approach, rather than a deficit-based needs-led one. Ideally, they want people to get to a point where they say that they do not need us anymore and take greater control of their own lives. But, once again, getting citizens involved in helping themselves at UP is easy.

Case Study 6 Bouncing Higher

These Enablers recognised the undoubted need, within the UK’s North West,to develop self-learning capabilities for the region’s Small Enterprises (SMEs); these are citizens who wanted to be brought up to the leading edge of their capabilities to win work in a fast developing world and thus create their own wealth. These Enablers had also used Action Learning with much effect to help the self-learning of a range of people, including ordinary citizens and managers of SMEs. They were therefore highly motivated to develop such small group learning themselves, alongside developing supportive open learning materials. The Educational lead person at the NWDA also recognised this potential and made almost £1 million available for them to develop, test, improve and run out to market a suitable product.

The 150 small business citizens, who took part in this development programme, were very keen to do so because they had recognised how far behind their competitors they had become. As they started to use the developing materials they soon became aware of how easy it was to use this form of self-learning with the supportive materials written in the business language of their everyday use. The process of Action Learning also lent itself to the positive  sharing of ideas with like-minded SMEs from non-competitive industries. Furthermore, much of the learning materials were in digital form easy to use at home or in work. So the small business managers quickly signed up for the whole programme which they both enjoyed and learn much from. They renamed the development ‘Bouncing Higher’ because they said it enabled their own learning to bounce to the highest level that HE had to offer.

Case Study 7 Community Land Trusts

This main Enabler also led the Community Banking Project in Case Study 1. His time as Director of a major Housing Association showed him of the real need to produce affordable housing for the disenfranchised poor of the UK. Once he had developed the earlier ‘Banks’ towards sustainability, he turned his attention to this new, yet related, cause, with a verve. He was similarly motivated to help citizens as before, this time to achieve the requisite ownership of their own dwellings, while leaving the land common to all – in perpetuity. He explored the opportunity of such a new form of tenure with the other Enabler who undertook the background research for them. The main Enabler had the skill, patience and persistence to work with Government, and it’s agencies to turn an opportunity into a reality, and at the same time, empowering local citizen groups across the UK to design, develop, enact and then use their own affordable home; a development welcomed by successive Governments which then became part of the everyday British housing offer.

The CLT development team demonstrated how a myriad of citizens across the UK could bring land and property into community ownership so as to: provide affordable homes and keep them affordable for people living or working locally; secure land for workspace, food growing and conservation; make local land available for community benefit; encourage private resident involvement; returned the value of public investment; enable people to take action to create social cohesion and a sustainable diverse community, and; offer a secure way for people to invest in community asset ownership. The completed development shows the motivation of citizens to take part in developing CLTs and tremendous achievements of the communities themselves. Citizens across the UK have, often against huge odds, set up CLTs and built homes and other community assets for the benefit of local people, while being guaranteed to remain affordable in perpetuity. They have delivered over 200 homes and, whilst this is a small dent in overall housing need, the CLTs have made a significant contribution to the communities they serve.

Case Study 8 Community Reporters

This Enablers early work with People’s Voice Media prepared him to use his expertise to develop citizens who wanted to go further than simply understanding how to use the basics of social media to become ‘Community Reporters’ in their own right, with the potential to become engaged by others, perhaps securing them longer term employment. He was sufficiently motivated to create key partnerships across the UK and then in Europe, that have enabled PVM to expand its current services and offers. In the process he had demonstrated extensive experience of obtaining financial resources to achieve objectives through tendering, joint bidding, developing projects and products which have furthered the objectives of the developing organisation to train Community Reporters having the necessary skills and aptitudes.  So, local small teams of citizens throughout Europe learned how to find out about issues of interest in great detail, write stories of real interest to all, then produce audio/visual reports that are sufficiently compelling that some have been commissioned to produce copy by external agencies. His latest development is to launch the Institute of Community Reporters (ICR) bringing together citizens across Europe to raise the quality of reporting; it has become a powerful force to be considered.

This project was almost demanded, firstly by local citizens in Salford and Greater Manchester, then by others in the rest of the UK and finally from many countries across Europe. Citizens could clearly see the potential of becoming professional in the way they reported community affairs. With the growth in interest of media, many more citizens are aware of the scope of such a new reporting environment.  Local small teams of citizens throughout Europe learned how to find out about issues of interest in great detail, write stories of real interest to all, then produce audio/visual reports that were sufficiently compelling that they were commissioned to produce copy. The reporters also banded together to produce an Institute of Community Reporters to ensure the voice of these reporters were heard and they became a powerful force to be considered. In forming the Institute, itself a Europe wide increasingly professionally based body, they also realised the need to set up a network representing 4 different types of Citizen Reporter: basic Community Reporters: those who have accessed ICR approved Community Reporting training and have been badged accordingly; Trainers and Digital Curators: those who ICR has approved to deliver Community Reporting training and story curation activities; Social Licensees: those having a license agree to conduct Community Reporting activities; Partners: those delivering collaborative projects, sharing knowledge and developing new practices, methodologies and training materials.

Case Study 9 The Salford Innov-ation Forum

The Enabler’s motivation came from his early days in Salford where he recognised both the creative and innovative potential of Salfordians, but the lack of any support to enable them to deliver this easily. Part of this lack was because there were no physical facilities to support innovative design and development. As the leader of the University’s reach-out to the community he set about to change this by setting up the Salford Innovation Park where different organisations were encouraged to come to the area, sitting side-by-side with the University, to provide an overall environment of creative development and a building, to be known as the Salford Innovation Forum, where new developments could be initiated and developed into wealth creating success. He was highly motivated to use his entrepreneurial & leadership skills to work with other locals to deliver both the Park and the Forum; both of which became highly successful.

Local people, especially those in the Salford’s New Deal for Communities, the City’s Councillors and Offices and local businesses were all highly motivated to develop both the Park and Salford Innovation Forum, because they also recognised the potential both developments had to offer. They were therefore keen to become fully engaged in the committee set up the explore, develop, design and deliver these facilities even though they knew it would take a great deal of effort. In the end this development even became a burning passion for some local citizens who worked with a University Design Director to creatively explore different opportunities for their own innovative futures and for the design of the Innovation Forum itself. Many from the neighbourhood also became the first users of the Forum and some undertook early management tasks for the running of the SIF. The SIF soon became full of small companies, often initiated by Salfordians, who wanted to develop themselves in Salford and indeed led to the take over of its management by Manchester Science Parks.

Case Study 10 HART

The Enabler in this context had himself been a volunteer member of a large Housing Association and with other, like minded voluntary citizens, recognised the weakness in his ‘duty of care’ in controlling the management of the Housing Association. Having been to several training programmes put on by the National Association of Housing Associations, he realised they really were not ‘fit-for-purpose’ in helping him, or similar citizens across the UK, learn how to undertake their role effectively and efficiently. As someone passionate about learning himself, he determined to work out how to do a better job and secured funding to study the needs of citizens like himself and then produce educational tools to help deliver cost effective learning that would deliver suitable improvements in the volunteers skills. They were particularly pleased that a simple ‘whist’ type game was so empowering to these volunteers self-learning.

The case studies of voluntary citizen HA controllers, guided a a senior research fellow, in determining how such volunteer citizens cope with their decision making; what they perceived to be their role; how successful they were in using advice from their professional and technological ’experts’; how they evaluated their actual achievements; and how successful they had been in the use of public finance. This enable HART to identify the training/learning needs of both lay and professional groups who made major decisions for Housing Associations. As a result, they developed illustrative case studies, role playing exercises, a cartoon style guidebook, scenario based exercises & a game called ‘Teams” to effectively support these citizens’ learning. So effective were they and so motivating for the citizens to want to use these tools, that they became part of the national movements regular training.

Case Study 11 Smart City Futures

The Enabler in this context was also Chairman of the organisation linking together the four Greater Manchester Universities who collectively wanted to encourage more local residents of the city become involved with themselves in collaborative partnership. His understanding of citizen needs and aspirations made him realise that a very different kind of community focused event, where citizens could truly have their say and make their voices known, might engender a very different kind of development. He therefore involved a social media specialist who truly knew how to engage, involve and empower citizens in a conference type event could work. So his motivation for Smart City Futures came from his knowledge that such a development could make a real difference for Manchester, it’s residents, it’s universities and it’s local professionals.

The use of powerful social media, used in a Greater Manchester conference at the Lowry Centre both engaged and empowered local citizens and communities to become more involved in joint working with the four Manchester  Universities. The powerful use of mobile phone technology helped citizen form unique partnerships, with academics, for mutual benefit and together they co-created over ten new projects which enabled all to flourish in the Knowledge Economy. So the event, called ‘’Smart City Future’s’ actually enabled Salford and Manchester to focus on the empowerment of professionals & policy leaders working closely with citizens and communities for the benefit of all. It did this by empowering local citizens to take part in a new and different form of collective conversation and they willingly did so.

Case Study 12 New Deal for Commun-ities Charleston & Lower Kersal

This Enabler is a person of humanity, socially aware, a good manager and a fine leader who, by his own admission, was at the right stage in his career to take on the senior role in the CLK NDC. He was also open,, & naturally suited, to meet the sensitive leadership needs of competing influences in the Scheme. Also he had already been involved in many regeneration programmes: urban programme, European regional development fund, city challenge, all with single regeneration budget. So he started his role highly motivated to enable the new deal for communities programme to work well and thus empower local citizens to learn to properly do it for themselves. For him, ‘it was also a big step to lead the team having previously (and subsequently) serving under others, and that responsibility was also a key motivator. He often reflects that it was the most demanding phase of his career but by far the most satisfying’. It also seemed an ideal opportunity for him to bring together all the good bits of his previous roles, and the skills he had developed, and despite the limitations of the job, he believes he did the job well.

It is perhaps more tricky to understand why local citizens would want to become involved in NDC. There were clearly many motivations. A key one was that a lot of the programmes activities directly affected people’s lives, especially better housing, but many other issues as well. It was also badged as the ‘community being in charge’, and ‘in charge’ of what appeared to be a huge pot of money (£53m). This issue probably & eventually led to frustration for some citizens when it was realised that being in charge also meant being accountable, along with the fact that whilst it was a large pot of money, it was a drop in the ocean in terms of overall public investment in the area. It could be argued that that frustration led some to become motivated to challenge the programme and seek change things in other ways. The citizens also had a fine community leader/enabler in her own right having played a community leader role at a local nursery and developed political awareness while volunteering for CREST, a community based employment and training project. And like all the other local residents the redevelopment proposals were very real, would impact on her life and that of the rest of the community whom she clearly loved.

Case Study 13 ICCARUS

At the start of this development, the Enabler led a socio-technical research team whose daily role was teaching architectural students; those not normally the most academic of individuals. His team had learned how to support their learning processes in the consideration of complex topics and, using these skills, had just completed a simulation showing ordinary people how to ‘exit buildings when they were on fire’. This came to the notice of the West Midland Fire Brigade who wanted to work with the team to develop a simulator for teaching fire officers how to ‘command and control major fire event’. The Enabler was keen to undertake a collaboration with them so he could keep his team together and show his architectural staff ,his team’s alternative design flair – a strong motivation.

Those primarily involved in this project were fire services officers, ordinary citizens mainly chosen because of their action based skills in the fighting of fires, often bright, but academically unqualified. As the officers proceed up the ranks they have to learn how to manage, command and therefore control increasingly larger fire events. Traditional this was done by rote learning, but the command and control guidance books are vast and difficult to properly understand. The command and control simulator developed by this academic team, with much fire officer support, helped them understand the necessary theory and management practice in a way to suite their existing needs and wants. ‘Mock-ups’ of the developing simulator, led to test-improvement cycles in use by normal fire officers; it was then honed it until it showed real potential. It was so good fire officers wanting promotion readily used the developed simulator, often in  a self-learning mode, to bring their understanding up to the highest level – the simulator was itself self-motivating as an educational tool.

Case Study 14 The Old Abbey Taphouse

The Enablers were both musicians where putting on events was a struggle for years because of overprices venues and spaces that were prescriptive in terms of what they would allow them to do, e.g. live music they would say is downstairs in a room separated from the rest of a pub and the only people who could come and see it were specifically for that event. They were looking for their own space where they could provide something more immersive, where people come down for the experience, and to meet people, but not particularly to see a particular act or community group or activist organization. So they decided to develop and run their own in the ‘Taphouse’. In short they now provide Citizen Enablement through spaces and places, and love to help this happen through the pub. And, as a former academic, one Enabler got to disseminate his research and provide opportunities for learning, politics and entertainment that connects a large institution like Manchester University with the communities and businesses that surround it.

The Enablers think Citizens come to the ‘Taphouse’ because they are providing a space/spaces at no charge (if you are local you can do donations at the door); they are also open to experiment with all genres, lectures and ideas, as long as they are open they ensure everyone has something to enjoy. This is a difficult opportunity to find elsewhere, these days. In a sense ‘Taphouse’ is a reflection of the communities that surround it – although the Enablers started out as promoters and musicians, they have increasingly found that their role is to facilitate other people who are putting on events or providing services, or engaging in citizen science, or disseminating their research to a wider audience. This is what encourages citizens to want to participate in its events. And in the pandemics lock-down ‘Taphouse’ has also developed other facilities much needed, and wanted, by the local communities; its take-home service and ‘TVdinners’ has proved very welcome by the local people as they provide food which other services seem unwilling, or unable, to provide; this caring provision is yet another reason why local people are endeared to making use of the pub.

Case Study 15  Human- Centered Research Distinction

Through the research projects and networks, the Enablers have established relationships with individuals and organisations interested in making a difference. They frequently work with action-oriented practitioners committed to problem-solving who recognise the value of a human-centred design approach

Case Study 16  Academic Enterprise Leader-ship

The Enablers in this case were simply writing up the theoretical basis for the work portrayed in the present text in a form suitable to convince fellow academics of the value and importance of the sort of Academic Enterprise for Citizens Enablement mentioned here.

The Leadership Foundation for Higher Education deliberately commissioned the Enablers to write up this theoretical basis of developing Academic Enterprise as a spur for others in Universities to take on an alternative Citizen Enablement role in the Enterprise Leadership and other educational support they offered.