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By Ben Metz, August 20, 2010 10:56 am

Today I start a new project.  I’m part of a small team that’s recently obtained funding to explore how our waterways might realise maximum public benefit through its widely anticipated move from government quango to civil society body.  It’s an exciting time for Arm’s Length Bodies as government begins to think seriously about spinning many of these organisations out as Charities and Social Enterprises.  British Waterways is the largest of the bodies being scrutinised for such a move but its clear that such planned changes in governance arrangements could be much more far reaching and impact forests, nature reserves and a whole host of our country’s natural assets.

We are confident this new project will be able to contribute positively to the imminent transformation of our waterways by bringing the best thinking and practice from across Civil Society into the process.  And we are starting to realise that such work may have much broader implications as government pursues it’s Big Society agenda concurrently with it’s programme of budget cuts.

Below is a summary of the current situation and our project’s approach.  We’ll be establishing a dedicated web resource soon.  In the mean time if you are interested in finding out more or contributing then please get in touch.

Background

British Waterways (BW) is the Non-Departmental Public Body (NDPB) charged with managing the UK’s canals and inland waterways.  Despite a significant asset base it currently requires subsidy from government grants and falls substantially short of achieving the income levels required to maintain waterways infrastructure.

It’s present mandate, as well as governance and management arrangements, curtails its ability to move into profit and expand assets and services to deliver additional public benefit.

In 2009 BW opened a public debate about the potential for transformation into a civil society structure by launching ‘2020 Vision’. It has since done further work to develop its thinking on this issue as set out in ‘Setting a new Course’ (Nov 2009). The issue of moving to a new civil society structure was also included in the recent ‘Waterways for Everyone’ consultation.

Over the last six months a broad cross party consensus has developed with the new coalition government committing to follow through on the previous Labour government’s pledge to ‘mutualise’ BW with a target date for the new organisation to go live by April 2012.  This has been publically welcomed by the senior management of BW who are developing their proposals for a new structure and intend put these to public consultation in the autumn of 2010.

Overview Of The Project

This project offers civil society, as well as relevant public and private sector stakeholders, a collaborative platform through which to engage and inform the forthcoming consultation. Our aim is to ensure that the new arrangements put the waterways on a sustainable financial footing whilst maximising the opportunities for civil society, local communities and other stakeholders to actively engage in their management.  Over recent years British Waterways and local communities have successfully turned the waterways from a decaying industrial relic into a leisure, heritage, and environmental asset as well as a catalyst for regeneration.

Our vision is to support BW and Defra in ensuring that the new structure moves BW from grant funded NDPB to thriving civil society asset; one that maximises it’s financial, social and environmental return for public benefit; one that transforms the waterways into the primary example of community managed sustainability infrastructure in the UK.

We want to engage with the widest possible range of stakeholders to develop this proposition. In doing so we hope to demonstrate the wider potential for the transformation of public assets into beacons of public benefit delivery.

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By Ben Metz, August 16, 2010 2:05 pm

So the Summer may feel almost over but the fantastic Summer start-up, Hackney Pirates, is only just getting in to its stride…  Three weeks in and with only one week to go (plus the big end of scheme celebration) it’s clear to us that our piratical adventure is needing to continue.

Hackney Pirates started as the brain child of a few of us in early Summer.  We wanted to replicate the great work that 826 Valencia does in the States in supporting kids to realise their potential through one-to-one support focused on creativity and literacy in unconventional learning environments.

So we did just that.  We talked up our ideas a lot – to the point that we didn’t think we’d be able to deliver.  We got stuck in to raising some funding – but the funding came a little later than anticipated and we thought we’d start the scheme with no more than two pennies to rub together.  We promoted it to kids – but the kids were slow to show, at least initially, and we thought we’d have to shut up shop before we even got started…

But it has been a rip-roaring success!!!  And despite the testing times and break-neck speed of developments the last three weeks have proven that there is a place in the world for Hackney Pirates.  Next step, after we’ve made it through the final week and cooked up a storm at the celebratory barbeque (on the 26th – do come if you’ve been involved) is to hunker down and raise the funds to roll out in the first school term of the new school year.

Watch this space – the Hackney Pirates are abroad!!!

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By Ben Metz, July 27, 2010 7:51 am

This Sunday my friend Sarah Dodds would have been 40 years old.  If I stop for a moment I can hear her in full paradoxical throttle, railing against the aging process while reveling in the instantly acquired sagely wisdom of making it past two score years….

Unfortunately Sarah is no longer with us and we don’t get exposed to the wonder of her abilities to hold contradictory world views in the same opinion.

We do, however, get to continue wonderful and contradictory conversations via the memorial fund that has been set up in her memory.  It is no conciliation for losing Sarah, but I guess it keeps me (and quite a few other people) off the streets…

The Sarah Dodds Enterprise Accelerator (SDEA) matches early stage social initiatives with high-quality MBA graduate calibre individuals for internships that focus on capacity-building and investment readiness.  The purpose of these matchings are two-fold:

• To prepare the social initiative for scale – moving them towards sustainability, success and greatly increased impact, and
• To inspire and educate MBAs, influencing their career choices and further ‘mainstreaming’ social and environmental change into the MBA process.

This year we have two fantastic interns, Geetika and Katie, and two great projects Bootstrap and MyBnk.  Geetika is working with Bootstrap (who provide managed workspace in Dalston) to devise a business plan to, literally, lift the roof off their building and create a new floor of workspace for charities and cultural industries businesses as well as a roof park).  Katie is working with MyBnk (who provide financial literacy training for young people) to develop their strategy for expansion, initially across the UK and then further afield.

So it’s developing into an action packed Summer for all of us involved with Sarah’s Fund.  It’s a lot of fun and sometimes pretty challenging content.  We are running dinners for all those involved and interested every Monday evening throughout the Summer, so please get in touch if you’d like to come along and join us.

It’s bitter-sweet that the result of losing a great friend results in so many good things happening and connections being made.  And I know that no-one involved will take offense when i say I’d rather have my friend back than be running this crazy-arsed internship scheme…!

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By Ben Metz, July 14, 2010 7:47 am

So, while I’ve been away Hackney Pirates have got all ship shape.  A coordinator is in place, volunteers are coming forward and the first roof top fundraiser is scheduled – for this coming Tuesday 20th July at 6.30pm – on the roof of the Bootstrap building in Dalston, the home of Hackney Pirates….  For directions see www.bootstrapcompany.co.uk and contact emma(at)bootstrapcompany(dot)co(dot)uk for more information.

And see below for an invitation to come and get involved through volunteering…

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By Ben Metz, June 22, 2010 11:38 am

Sweltering Hanoi, the city of a thousand lakes, home to Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and the best bowl of Phở you’ll ever eat, this week is hosting the seventeenth Katoomba conference.  I’m here helping out in taking the conference global in reach – through a dedicated conference website: Katoomba Live!

Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) is big news post the Copenhagen Summit.  Whatever your views, whether it’s the best thing since sliced bread and the cure to our climate change woes – or if you think it’s another wave of neo-liberal theft of the commons by stealth, it’s a topic that needs signifacantly increased attention, both in the awareness raising stakes and in the scrutiny of PES activity across the board.

The purpose of Katoomba Live is to draw some of this much needed attention to the subject matter and the medium we’ve chosen is video!  Kattomba Live is rough and ready.  No fancy editing and expensive graphics here.  Just basic wordpress scaffolding, volumes of content, a couple of video cameras and some much needed assistance translating into Vietnamese…

Whatever your interest in the subject there will be relevant content being posted onto the website over the next couple of days while the conference is running.  We are also welcoming contributions from people who can’t make it to the event.

It’s very much intended as an experiment as well as a practical resource – so comments, criticisms and suggestions for improvements are very welcome.  Get in touch!

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By Ben Metz, June 15, 2010 12:50 pm

It’s been a fun filled and furiously active couple of weeks.  The product of which is Hackney Pirates now has its’s own home.  www.hackneypirates.org.  Check it out.

Hackney Pirates has been inspired by the Pirate Supply Shop located at 826 Valencia in San Francisco and is being driven forward by a group of passionate folk interested in helping teachers and children get excited about literacy and creativity.

We have local schools engaged, a growing list of volunteers signed up, a FANTASTIC and very famous patron who will shortly be announced and the search is on for a project coordinator (it’s a paid position – check it out here if you are interested)

You can check out the website, follow @hackneypirates on Twitter and become a fan on facebook.

Even better you can stop messing around on your computer and come down to the Dalston Roof Park this summer, volunteer and get involved in brand new and completely fantastic summer activities with kids.  Hope to see you there…

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By Ben Metz, June 6, 2010 9:52 am

My last post was calling out for a Pirate Coordinator for a pilot summer literacy scheme planned for the Dalston Roof Park this summer.

This time, ahead of the Ashwin Street – Street Party today, we are putting the call out for volunteer pirates: swashbuckling literacy adventurers who are up for sparing a few hours a month over the summer to test what we think is a fantastic approach to supporting kids to excel and find their inner pirate / adventurer / astronaut / time traveler….

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By Ben Metz, June 3, 2010 8:51 pm

As part of the Sarah Dodds summer internship programme I’m helping Bootstrap, the Development Trust in Dalston, add to its pop-up garden with a summer literacy scheme we are code-naming Hackney Pirates.  And right now we are recruiting an intern to kick start the intiative.  Here’s the advert…

Internship with a start-up social enterprise: Hackney Pirates Inc (Working Title)

We are looking for an exceptionally organised, entrepreneurial and creative intern with with a passion for working with children to run a summer pilot project for a start-up social enterprise in Dalston, Hackney. Our plan is to develop a drop-in literacy centre where pupils receive one-to-one attention in an unconventional learning environment, based on the successful 826 Valencia model developed by Dave Eggers in San Francisco (please view this link):

We are a small steering group of social entrepreneurs committed to launching this project. Over the summer we will be running a pilot project to test out the model, in advance of applying for funding in the autumn. The planning for the pilot is at an early stage and the intern will have significant influence over the direction and content of the project. A small cohort of young people and volunteers will be taking part in the pilot, provisionally planned as daily sessions from 3-5pm.

The intern will need to be flexible, full of ideas, and able to work independently. The intern will receive support and guidance from the core team, but will be leading on the actual running of the pilot as other team members work full time. The intern will have a critical role in helping develop the pilot at this exciting stage. It is a perfect position for budding social entrepreneurs and those seeking experience in start-up enterprises. An exaggerated interest in pirates, superheroes, detectives etc is a plus.

For more details and to apply, please send a CV and an application letter to: catriona(dot)l(dotmaclay(at)googlemail(dot)com. Candidates should feel free to contact us with questions about the project.

Length of internship: From right now until then end of the summer holidays

Start date: ASAP

Compensation: Travel and subsistence only (sorry)

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By Ben Metz, June 1, 2010 12:07 pm

Below is the text of the open letter I was invited to write by Caroline Hartnell, editior of Alliance Magazine, for this months edition.  It’s a follow on piece from the publication of my Social Economy in the UK mapping report and the Guardian article published the same week as the Skoll World Forum.  It is intended, as were the previous posts, to stimulate discussion and galvanise action about how to best support the social economy that is emerging all over the world…

Interestingly this same theme has been picked up in a blog post from Tim Draimin, one of the fantastic Canadian team working to develop a thriving social economy across the pond…

Supporting the social economy worldwide?

European foundations have a long history of supporting knowledge exchange to further the social economy, in Europe and increasingly in other parts of the world.  A window of opportunity has now opened up to build a global movement of developing social economies.

FutureBuilders, the loan fund supporting third sector organizations in England to bid for and deliver public service contracts, was established in 2003.  Initially feted as the panacea for social enterprises, the fund has received a somewhat mixed reception.  Despite a highly critical 2009 National Audit Office report, a recently completed evaluation by Sheffield Hallam University finds that the fund has had a positive impact.

So why focus on varying assessments of one particular UK government intervention to support the social economy?  Obviously there are lessons to be learned in the UK, by government and social enterprises alike. But there is a bigger issue at stake, namely the development of the social economy in a myriad countries across the globe.  Individuals and delegations from at least 20 countries are expressing interest, through repeated trips to the UK, in exploring what has and hasn’t worked in the UK.  The recent Skoll World Forum in Oxford had delegations from Canada, China, the US and New Zealand engaging with the likes of Volans and UnLtd to better navigate the maze of social economy support in the UK.

Support infrastructure is beginning to emerge. The British Council has recently allocated £3 million to assist around a dozen countries (including Thailand, Indonesia, Croatia and Turkey) to explore the UK social economy.  But a unique opportunity appears about to be missed.  Any semblance of coordination is lacking.  Sharing mechanisms are not in place. Information is flowing in one direction – from the UK to the visiting ‘beginners’.

We can continue in a business as usual manner with uncoordinated groups from all over the world descending on the UK to be given a less than complete picture of the UK’s social economy.  Or we can expose the whole story of social enterprise development here, and the growing pains, successes and failures experienced on the way.

The UK social economy has a huge amount to share with the world – both good and bad.  Many of the interested countries are less well off than the UK and simply don’t have the resources to make the same mistakes we’ve made.  They may have just one chance to make their social economy work.

So come on foundations and long-term supporters of the social economy, let’s get resourced up to help the rest of the world to take their best shot at getting it right.

Ben Metz
www.benmetz.org

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By Ben Metz, May 23, 2010 9:00 am

Following my attendance at the last Katoomba conference on Marine Payment for Ecosystems Services (PES) that I attended in Palo Alto (and blogged about here) I’ve been retained by Forest Trends to assist with the development of a stronger on-line presence for the next Katoomba event.

Scheduled for June 23rd and 24th in Hanoi, Vietnam, the meeting will bring together policy-makers, farmers, financiers, and others whose lives and livelihoods depend on preserving the region’s living ecosystems.

My job is to bring the event to a much, much larger audience than any of the previous Katoomba conferences using, yes you guessed it, social media.  You can view the conference website at http://live.katoombagroup.org.  All sessions will have video, audio and written resources added over the coming weeks.  Sessions will be videoed and uploaded live during the event.

You can follow @KatoombaGroup on Twitter where I’m posting general PES news as well as conference news.

You can join The Katoomba Group Facebook group here.

And you can join The Katoomba Group on LinkedIn here.

We are welcoming contributions of content from anyone with an interest and expertise in the field.  So please get in touch if you have something to offer.  I’m sure more posts will be forthcoming on this topic as it starts ramping up in my work load.