A/UK 4th Anniversary: a new handbook, game and toolkit for Citizen Action Networks - in a world where CANs are opening up
Over the last four years of A/UK, one of our proposals for the kind of structure that could power communities and localities, regardless of official government or official representative politics - a CAN (a Citizen/Community Action/Agency Network) - seems to be gathering momentum. Both as concrete initiatives, actual CANs - and if not that, then at least a useful and mobilising concept (see our archive in the Daily Alternative, about citizen action networks).
From our own records, we find that we first explicitly mention the idea of a Citizens Action Network in this blog from January 13, 2019 - but it had been brewing up since our second “collaborators” in Plymouth, October 2018.
We had been wondering what kinds of wider structures were needed to “contain” the amazing and diverse talents of the social actors and agents we were encountering in Plymouth. Yet we felt these structures, arising from community ambition - and using complex tech and organisational tools - should be genuinely autonomous, and not just be pleading for support from (or waiting to be assimilated by) local and/or national administrations.
Please investigate our page and tag on CANs to sample more of its history and development (including the startling parallel - and entirely separate - establishment of CANs (community action networks) in Cape Town that we reported on last week. We’re due to start talking…).
But it might be true to say that the CANs are a concept created on the run, in the midst of everything, making sense of phenomena as they arise, in language that seeks to trigger action more than academic intellection. This is what McKenzie Wark once called “low theory”:
I am interested in low theory, which comprise those somewhat rarer moments when, coming out of everyday life, you get a certain milieu that can think itself. It happens when there is a mixing of the classes (another thing higher education doesn't do). It happens in certain spaces that we used to call bohemia. Low theory is the attempt to think everyday life within practices created in and of and for everyday life, using or misusing high theory to other ends. It happens in collaborative practices that invent their own economies of knowledge.
So we are delighted to report that some of our friends are helping to pull together what we might think of as a theory, practice and history of CANs (representing all the permutations of words behind that mnemonic). They are being pulled together on Appropedia, a Wikipedia-like platform that orchestrates collective writing and creativity.
Firstly, let us showcase the Citizen Action Network Handbook, a project initiated by one of our co-creators, Phil Green. He begins with a crisp statement and definition, using our I - We - World model of realms of action:
A Citizen Action Network is...
“I”:
Where any person – regardless of their perceived values – can go to, in their local community, to participate in the solutions to the multiple crises we face. And in so doing find belonging, meaning and agency
“We”
Where local civil society organisations can collaborate with local, national and global organisations to provide real, creative and effective solutions. While prototyping a new democracy
“World”
Where we can contribute to the process of getting the UK to carbon neutral by 2025 without waiting for Westminster to agree. And in so doing, pattern-match with others around the globe to reach critical mass.
Phil has also laid out a range of categories under which much of our running material on CANs has been gathered:
How to make a CAN · Collaboratories · Friendly - Inquiry - Action · A new system of change · Guide to CANs and the wider world · Menu of possibilities · Citizens doing it for themselves · Ways of working 2 · Resourcing CANs · Resourcing CANs 2 · CANs near you · Glossary
His colleague, the communities-and-tech expert David Wilcox, has added to this some proposals for a CAN “kit and game” - see his intro summary:
Here’s some “thinking out loud” about how to follow-through on ideas to support CANs. Phil Green is developing handbook content on a wiki. I think there is scope for a complementary kit and game. This would enable people to assemble the components of a CAN from existing assets in their community, plus ideas and resources from elsewhere.
The kit could be used “for real” or played as a game in the fictitious community of Slipham. We could co-create the kit/game by engaging groups, organisations and networks prepared to share their resources. This would promote their activities, and also provide them with learning and training resources.
The kit/game can draw on previous work by Drew Mackie and David Wilcox. This includes a Regeneration Game (which could now be a community recovery and resilience game); others on engagement and social media; the Social by Social game, and more recently the Slipham game.
The kit/game cards would be linked to more extensive documentation and howtos on the wiki and elsewhere. As content develops, we could create learning spaces for the CAN community, and a CAN of CANs. The framework, kit, wiki, learning spaces together would show how it would be possible to develop a citizen-led operating system for civil society.
More here. Beyond the game, David sets out some other targets and goals for the development of CANs, which we encourage those of you interested to explore further.
Probably the best way to do that is to sign-up as a co-creator to the Alternative UK - whereby we can invite you to our Loomio group on Citizens Action Networks, where much of this work has been prototyped with other co-creators. It’s a rich incubation space for other projects you might wish to launch, within the agenda of the Alternative UK.
Suffice to say that this process of mapping out the theory and practice of CANs, from those who would use and benefit from them, is exactly the kind of activity we hoped the idea would instigate! Thank you Phil and David!