Toward citizens enablement: A hand-up - not a hand out

ABSTRACT

Academics have the capability to enable citizens’ self-learning to empower them to achieve more for themselves. Those in current need must own their problems and issues, and learn to embrace them & enact solutions. The innovative capabilities of both academics and citizens can be combined to solve almost any issue facing a community. Past studies of best practice show what can be achieved across a broad range of problems. For significant changes to occur, the values and behavior of all collaborative partners must be combined, using a questioning framework, so they share ideas that lead to sensible working practices, and then enact feasible outcomes. This article presents a sensible working approach where academics have learned to support citizens and best practices have been developed in urban and rural contexts where disenfranchised citizens have indeed learned how to cope with their own social, economic, political, cultural, environmental and other human issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizen
• enablement
• empowerment

Introduction

This article provides a step-by-step approach to increase Citizen Enablement for all disenfranchised citizens and communities.¹ The approach sets forth several “home truths”, to those who wish to develop a more appropriate way of supporting citizens in an important new journey and is based on the observations of a collaboration of researchers from five British, and five other European ones, who received funding from both British and European agencies, to explore best practice which enabled the personal wealth of citizens/communities to increase, as well as their well-being and contentment. These studies have already led to these ten universities helping citizens in their urban and rural communities, throughout Europe, learn to develop schemes to satisfy their own aspirations for themselves. Best practices were found when universities helped the development of collaborative teams of the right academics and members of the community who began to work closely together using a fairly standard set of processes which required

1. insightful and caring academics, or other learning enablers, being prepared to reach out to citizens to explore local topics important to them.

2. project development teams being prepared to ask themselves penetrating questions which slowly, but surely, improved their collective ways of working on 21^st century skills which included:

   • social, soft, emotional, and entrepreneurial skills;

   • second chance opportunities in technology and commercial capabilities;

   • digital inclusion and mindful learning;

   • integration in society;

   • learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be;

   • gainful alternative employment;

   • care-leavers development post 18;

   • community engaged scholarship;

   • coping with disability, risk, protection, vulnerability, and resilience.

3. In all this work, it is critical that development teams tackled problems and issues citizens perceived to be theirs and they wanted to tackle.

Figure 1. Summaries of six best practice case studies.

Figure 2. Wordle diagram on the motivation of academic enablers in B/W.

Figure 3. Wordle diagram on the motivation of citizens in B/W.

Table 1. EUPBEAT Evaluatory Chart.

Factors	Questions	Influences
Political	Government ambition to tackle childhood obesity	An exercise machine for children might assist such a political drive; a new range of fast foods might not
Environmental
Social
Technological
Legal
Economic

Six typical cases of success in the rural context presented in Walzer (2021). The work reported here resulted in more than 150 best practice cases of what can be achieved (Powell, 2011b, 2011a) and summaries are shown below, in diagrammatic form to give the reader an early impression of the kinds of project:

Project developments like these have been shown to be effective in all environments where citizens and communities are directly involved in solving their own problems and issues. This article mainly shows how such success can be achieved and then shows three other short exemplary cases indicating typical success and what can be achieved to complete the picture.

“Why” do we need Citizen Enablement

After COVID-19, many citizens will try to develop “new normal ways of working”. Citizens and communities have already begun to realize that no longer does one size fit all, and they now want to become enabled/empowered to change their local world, for personal benefit and that of their fellow citizens. The world is now at a time, and stage, where new ways of working are now entirely possible. One example is the current growth of video conferencing/zooming during COVID-19, when the technology has already been available for more than 25 years. Their journey of self-development and enablement starts personally, with themselves and locally, when citizens are ready. For Citizens, now may be their only chance to ensure they can develop a future that is relevant to themselves, post-Covid.

“Why” do academics, and other learning providers, need to help Citizen Enablement

Developing Citizen Enablement is no longer simple, predictable, orderly, and defined, because the future is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. This requires those with skills, who want to help citizens, to think more systematically and systemically, about how to drive changes where the enablement/empowerment must be in person. The process is even more difficult in rural areas where citizens are often remote from enabling support and often misunderstood by academics who have, in the past, focused mainly on writing papers on research topics.

This is also at a time when education throughout the world often seems increasingly narrow in what it offers, down to the lowest common denominator (see Friere, 1970, 2018; Lockett, 2007; Jackson, 2012; Powell, 2011b, 2011a; Powell & Clark, 2012). The intent of this article is to use improved and alternative teaching and learning skills-based research (Duke et al., 2013; B Hall, 2021; Powell, 2011b, 2011a; Powell & Clark, 2012), which can lead citizens toward learning to learn for themselves. This is now possible, and perhaps even necessary, at a time of a more open societal context and where future conditions are almost experimental with many options and opportunities.

The current research is also part of a growing literature where college and university scholars and artists increasingly engage in public scholarship. Some academics (Kohl-Arenas & Rodrigues, 2011; Powell, 2011b; Syracuse University and University of California-Davis, 2021) are now prepared to leave their campuses to collaborate with communities, exploring such multidisciplinary issues as citizenship and patriotism, ethnicity and language, space and place, and the cultural dimensions of health and religion (Veen, 2021). Universities, such as Syracuse and California Institute of the Arts at Davis (Syracuse University and University of California-Davis, 2021), are creating innovative methods and vocabularies for scholarship using cutting-edge technology, pursuing novel kinds of creative work and integrating research with new teaching strategies. A question arises in the UK, and perhaps throughout the world, as to how, or whether, faculty who engage in such activities are promoted and rewarded for these efforts?

In the USA, by way of example, Syracuse University and the California Institute of the Arts have had notable successes in public scholarship. At Syracuse, Johnson and Mitchell (2004) from the geography department collaborated with a local coalition on a project to “map” hunger. Faculty and students worked with community agencies, food pantries, local government, and foundations to chart a complex topography that includes access to resources, the right to benefits, and the provision of emergency aid to needy residents. This mapping, effort, made possible by geographic-information-systems (GIS) technology, allows scholars and students to see hunger in new ways. For example, as Byrd (2020) reports, they can identify which food pantries are adequately stocked, and determine who is more vulnerable to hunger when neighborhood schools and school-based summer programs are closed or cut back.

This work, parallels that in the UK, where academics are beginning to work in communities to help them with local research on real problems (Powell, 2011b, 2011a). These academics consider this a form of research because such creative scholarship involves complex projects conducted by teams of experts from both the campus and the community. Such projects also normally result in peer-reviewed articles in scholarly journals, and new or revitalized teaching approaches. So, for instance, since 2007, APLU and the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, have partnered to honor the engagement scholarship and partnerships of four-year public universities in the USA. The award recognizes programs that demonstrate how colleges and universities have redesigned their learning, discovery, and engagement missions to deepen their partnerships to achieve broader impacts in their communities. The current article hopes that those following such an approach might also yield diverse other outcomes for citizens, such as policy recommendations for local government, collaborative museum exhibits, radio documentaries about local issues and other community-based projects.

For these outreach efforts to succeed, professors must be encouraged and incentivized to try this alternative form of research (B Hall, 2021; Jackson, 2012; Lockett, 2007; Powell & Clark, 2012). Until now, across the world, such activities have not been viewed as traditional research, and do not count heavily on tenure, promotion, and other decisions about rewards. With increasing demand from communities, fueled by situations arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, things are changing quickly. Roles of universities are being questioned and now could be a time to implement the sorts of approaches suggested next. However, success in this area will require optimism and persistence in the face of adversity, especially when trying to make relevant change. What will be necessary is “excellence in diversity” for all educational and learning support, so it becomes fit-for purpose at the individual level, and for communities, in whatever context they live and work.

The efforts discussed here were stimulated over 50 years ago by the publication of Freire’s (2018) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, whose ideas are as relevant or more today as they were when it was first written in 1970. Freire’s work was an intellectual tour de force about adult education and literacy, a field of educational discourse that was marginal and under-theorized; the work was stimulated by his exploration of Brazilian peasants who he sought to help. To do this he brought together classic socialist with existential thinkers, phenomenologists and human psychology, and theological ideas with revolutionary thinking (B Hall, 2021). No one previously had had the imagination to bring thinkers like these together. But, as Budd Hall (2021) states ‘Friere’s power is that the theoretical scaffolding which he created grew from his practice.

Prior to the theories, arguments came from the lived experience of Freire and the thousands of north-eastern Brazilian peasants who were part of the transformative literacy movement based on the creation of cultural circles, circles of dialog. At the heart of what happened when literacy learners and teachers came together to learn reading and writing through discussions of their lives of poverty, oppression, and subjugation was conscientization. Freire told the world what many knew from practices of teaching and learning that education is not neutral.

Many academics have already begun to question their “why” of what they are doing and at a time when universities are also trying to decide what a very different future might hold. Even the more traditional might have a desire to help disenfranchised citizens take control of their life enabling citizens to develop a more satisfying life.

If this occurs, the current work suggests how it might be achieved. Reaching-out and helping citizens directly is not always easy. As Ainscow (2016), and all our subsequent case studies show, it can be done. While just as academically demanding as traditional university-based R&D, Citizen Enablement/Empowerment can be even more rewarding. In a time of change many governments at all levels will see the need to participate, and benefit from, such academic and community development efforts

Ensuring that the suggested work has substance, requires a sound sociological perspective – “the cultural why” underlying current arguments. It is important that academics understand the “why” of current ways of working toward Citizen Enablement, and become more active listeners and indeed learning academics. The word citizens must include all disenfranchised such as Black, Asian, Minority and Ethnic groups and the young. The term citizen in the remainder of this article recognizes that not only do Black Lives Matter, but also Women’s Lives Matter, Rural Lives Matter, or even “ALL LIFE MATTERS.

Social anthropologist, Mary Douglas (1999, 2002) offers a further clue of necessary actions. She indicates that various cultures see the world in different ways, and thus acting on local issues. Her research revealed four constructive alternative ways of seeing and acting. Thus, when academics collaborate with citizens, they must recognize these different values and actions that may be different from their own. Douglas’s work (2002) can help them understand why they may need to act differently. Such cultural constructed world views explain that whatever skills academics possess in developing human futures, they should try to truly reflect what others want. This is a key thrust of all work to support citizens, if it is to have any chance of success.

Having recognized this issue, academics, or other learning enablers, must also become passionate about this different way of working, because enabling others to achieve that which is meaningful to them and then empowering them to enact it, will not be easy. As Peter Checkland (2010) said, while “governments around the world seek to turn universities into imitation bureaucratic corporations, and measure their research output in terms of publications … . the pressure on academics to publish is immense and they typically take the easy option: writing papers about other papers, rather than engaging with citizens to help them with their complex reality”.

Academics entering this new foray, wishing to engage in these strategies must be well-grounded in what Gramsci (Mayo, 1999) called “good sense” as is shown in the cases reported later. This is especially true in the Action Learning Case, in the project known a “Bouncing Higher” mentioned earlier. It shows how citizens can be supported in a cross-fertilization of their own best practice working to enable their small businesses to develop better innovation and wealth creation across a whole region both within cities and rural areas. This case showed small businesses could be developed to receive a gross value-added improvement in profit of nearly 24.5%.

Likewise, a Community Reporters Case Study, enabled by Peoples Voice Media to develop the skills of more than 2,000 citizens, working across the whole of Europe, to achieve different levels of skills which enabled them to become working media professionals and thus gain a new form of employment as bone fide reporters. The academics and other providers in these cases enabled citizens to learn a myriad of skills to ensure they could do things they had not previously considered possible.

Finally, it is well-known that the world has largely built its educational and economic system based on highly “competitive individuals”. This article turns this approach toward “enabling” and supporting ALL in “meaningfully rich collaborative ways”. Doing this requires shifting from “money to meaning”, and from “profit to purpose”, in this new era, while recognizing wealth will still be necessary to make any developments work in the real world.

It is also clear from 150 previous cases undertaken as part of the overall study behind this research (PASCAL PUMR, 2011) that the most effective progress starts by first tackling small and manageable projects within the grasp of all collaborators while still being aware of global consequences. Small steps first, by small teams, and then growing collaborations for larger scale problems.

So for both Citizens and their Enablers, the key must always be to understand where your purpose lies; this is at the heart of what everyone must do as they learn to work together in the future but it does beg a further question about the kind of leadership needed to make it happen. First one must know the “Whys” – why you are doing what you do, how it fits with your values, and then how it enables you to create a deeper and more enduring sense of purpose.

And the leaders of collaborations for change must do things “on purpose”, as it requires a sheer force of will, determination and persistence. Otherwise the vision will remain a mere dream. So those working to promote local collaborations must develop more appropriate “Whys” for themselves in this the new Citizen Enablement challenge. In this project, the “Whys” of our Enablers and Citizens were determined by asking about or their motivations for becoming involved. Following are the most frequent words mentioned by Academic Enablers to describe motivations for Citizen Enablement.

Using the 15 most frequently used word only, an ideal-type sentence, empathizing with enablers’ motivation, would be as follows:

“Academics from universities developed and motivated citizens

through leadership & learning to help their local community”.

The same analysis was performed for Citizens Motivations and showed the following Wordle:

The ideal-type sentence for citizens’ motivations, in this case is:

Citizens become motivated to help their local community through developing people

& small businesses by involvement with learning enablers with their work”.

While these analyses are far from scientifically rigorous, they do offer the current readers reasonable explanations of “Why” Academic Enablers and Citizens actually became involved in Citizens Enablement as part of this work and what will also convince them to do so in future.

Where the difficulties in delivering Citizen Enablement lie

Unfortunately, Citizen Enablement rarely occurs either in the UK (Jackson, 2012; Lockett, 2007; Powell & Clark, 2012; Powell, 2012) or throughout the rest of the world (Friere, 1998; Byrd, 2020; Canter, 2020; Canter & Lavine, 2006; Strum et al., 2011) for two main reasons. First, academics are often very traditional in wanting to remain in their “ivory tower”, conducting studies and research. Likewise, citizens lack the confidence to even think they could even become empowered to enact a better future for themselves. As Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger (Douglas, 1966) noted “to most citizens life is like a lottery” – only a lucky chance could ever make any real difference to their lives.

In the early stages of this project with such citizens, few felt any real control, but by hard work of an insightful Enabler – a person who makes things possible – this research shows this has always changed positively, for nearly all citizens. Those who had been unaligned became true stakeholders in their own futures and begun sharing a real vision of what they could achieve with fellow citizens, and for the first time come to know precisely what’s at “stake” for themselves. So, for instance, in both the Community Banking and Community Land Trusts projects (a key case studies undertaken by the author and mentioned earlier) show, after a little initial but important external support, citizens began to develop professionally managed facilities, normally open only to those from a very different culture and a different power base.

And Academic Enablers must have support from their universities and especially the senior university leaders and managers, for the proposed ways of working to succeed. In the current study, Salford University’s Vice Chancellor (the most senior manager in a British University) and his Chair of Council totally believed in the approach recommended here, fully embraced its approach and allowed university managers to enact what was necessary to make the processes work and become successful; without such support in any university the successes presented here would not have been possible. Similarly, the local authority where the university was based also fully supported the approach which made its acceptance more readily possible to local citizens. Consequently, Salford expanded this environment and now has a widely-recognised Media City, home to BBC Northern, is on the international map and is mentioned regularly in the national media. Citizen Enablement can be done but requires some “heavy lifting” to start and then embed it in everyday life.

So, this is the real problem for those wishing to adopt the approach suggested here. They need a strong commitment to even try, a belief it is possible, and then a passion to keep going when obstacles arise which, without question, they will. All who become involved in developing their own version of the current approach must be, persistent and politically astute, to tackle the range of problems faced. Several examples of best practice for citizens enablement/empowerment are provided later to show that what is possible. However, even when initially tackling small issues, the best start for Citizens Enablement, no one should underestimate the cultural change that must occur to ensure successful collaborations between citizens and academics.

How should we now act to ensure Citizen Enablement

A step-by-step approach is now proposed which shows “what”, and then “how”, to achieve necessary change. The approach is framed in a fairly straightforward way so both Enablers and Citizens can plan their way forward with concrete actions. In short, it shows how to become an Enabler of Citizens, and hopefully Empower them if you are an academic and for Citizens working in urban/rural contexts will give them the urge to try to improve life for themselves and shows how to gain the confidence to try.

The process must start with a reflective period where the relevant citizens are invited to join, with others of like-mind and their (academic) enablers – who themselves must also first identify citizens’ needs and wants, capabilities and the actual changes their teams are required to make. The key is active listening to participants on any development team, which is necessary on all sides to make real progress.

Indeed, the most important lesson for an enabler to learn is how to engage “relevant citizens” and this can be achieved only through closely working with potential team members capable of working collaboratively. The aim must be true collaboration, where everyone becomes part of a team, not the competitive ones of sport, but more “reflective communities” (Charles Savage 2020). The passions and visions of each team member in a joint enterprise are important and will set the scope and boundaries of any potential venture. They can be learned through ‘active listening.

Members of such a joint development venture must understand their aspirations first, then those of their colleagues, and finally how to get the best from teamwork. They must learn “how to learn” to undertake the skills missing from their team or find someone who can complete their “change needs”, and also recognize they may well have to be politically and socially astute to enable change at all and then become empowered to fully enact it. Evaluating a development teams’ own situation regularly is also necessary and can be achieved, using easily available and cost-effective tools to help all understand the development processes, first-hand. Both academics and citizens might well need such evaluations, related analyses, and other feedback in their own, readily accessible, language.

The UPBEAT matrix (Figure 4) was prepared by the team of researchers from the 10 universities who took part in all early studies of Citizens Enablement, as its major process to ensure the overall success of relevant, appropriate, and citizen/community focused projects. A key part of UPBEAT is a Questioning Framework that allows Enablement Collaborators to systemically explore necessary steps in any development in a way that suits them. More information is available on the details of this on the PASCAL International Observatory for Life-Long-Learning website (http://pumr.pascalobservatory.org). However, this evaluation tool, presented in diagrammatic form for simplicity and aid local understanding, has been shown, in a comprehensive study, by Lockett (2007), to enable citizens and their academic enablers to continuously develop projects

Figure 4. UPBEAT must be in color.

The matrix shown above underpins the successful evaluatory process used in UPBEAT to drive improved engagement with citizens, small businesses, and the community.

leading to substantial and meaningful improvements in many community-led projects. Its questioning framework, developed through several test-improvement cycles by the research team, represents a sequencing approach for those seeking to become Citizen Enablers and Empowerers.

This research demonstrated that by asking the right questions, in the right sequence, is the easiest way to achieve success. Start by asking the questions posed at the lower levels of the diagram and then work up step-by-step until reaching the highest honor of becoming a Global Steward. However, users must begin at the bottom in any new collaboration, by tackling issues open to early consideration; the questions raised begin to show ready improvements and gains to the overall development processes, which provides encouraging communities to continue trying higher levels of engagement. Citizen Enablement develops should be systematic and systemic and requires continuous follow through to ensure ultimate success.

Furthermore, studies of the leadership of exemplary academic entrepreneurs, by Powell (2011b, 2011a), Lockett (2007) and Jackson (2012), show their role to be critical in enabling positive change. Creative leadership can harness the power of citizens, with academics collaborating by showing innovative ways of working together. As the 150 case studies upon which this work is based show (Lockett, 2007; PASCAL PUMR, 2020; Powell, 2011a) many important developments can be achieved in areas of community art/design, multimedia design and small business development, community finance and affordable housing for all presently socially excluded communities. Continued active listening provides the deeper understanding needed for successful Citizen Enablement.

Maturing conversations among all members of any collaborative development will also ensure that overall understandings are shared. It is also important that such developments are undertaken by the whole team, so that all understand precisely what has been achieved and what needs to be done to satisfy citizens needs and wants. In addition, collaborations should try to find whether the currents proposed solution has been achieved previously, since much can be learned from prior attempts and in constructive ways repeat best practices learning from similar successes elsewhere.

Ultimately, the citizens themselves decide ultimate successes on their own terms and should never cease to strive for continuous improvement. Sensitive and citizen focused leadership is key to creating a new enterprise culture that works effectively by satisfying everyone’s needs and wants.

Universities embarking on this new approach will need to become “reflective centers” for all ages (not just “Executive Education) to tap the wisdom of the past and envision a wiser future. This is the essence of the approach suggested here.

The next several pages discuss ways to ensure Citizens Enablement/Empowerment, and portray the underlying principles of “how” that might best be done by focusing on several key features in more detail. Citizen Enablement might well be considered a Utopian dream by some, but, after COVID-19, now might be the only time to help create a different future for citizens and communities. This could also involve accepting the recent studies undertaken by the Royal Society of Arts which are beginning to reveal how this could be achieved through their “Bridge to the Future” program. In its report on the development the RSA (Taylor, 2021) realizes that no matter how difficult the suggested cultural change might be, the future will demand different cultures and a different type of societal contract. But now is the time to at least try to enroll and engage citizens in a more productive way.

Citizens’ Enablement with the right sensitivity

The base line for the types of citizens empowerment proposed must begin with enablement itself, since those taking part, and especially the Enablers, must have a unselfish desire to help others, to truly help them define what they want for themselves and then achieve it. It will be difficult to achieve the full, more radical and politically questioning form of Citizen Empowerment, since that would require a redistribution of power from those who have it already. Enablement, on the other hand, can at least be achieved without radically upsetting the status quo, although any change impacts the status quo to a greater or lesser extent. However, one need only listen to the aspirations of citizens to realize those in power rarely cede their authority to others which clearly includes both citizens and communities. However, as shown in the three case studies reported later, it may need Enablers of Citizen Enablement to become politically aware to deliver some of the changes, at least some of the time. Such Enablers, having professional, or other learning skills, must use their understanding of those in power to enable them to help citizens achieve their own ends. However active listening can help Enablers avoid their undoubted preference for a solution to “fix” things the way they would normally do.

Once Enablers are clear regarding their own values and why they want to be involved in Citizens Enablement, they then have to make sure other like-minded people, especially those citizens who need support, are engaged to work with them, to ensure a successful project. It is important for those wishing to help others, first to collect as many facts as they can about those with whom they are working. These include understanding what in their circumstances prevents them from achieving their aspirations and any social, economic, and political constraints on their actions and skills that can be used to help them by themselves. whether citizens, small businesses, and communities.

One must also recognize what each citizen in any community is already, or is capable of achieving alone, what they never will be able to do and how their skills can be used to help them learn how to do things for themselves. It is especially important that citizens learn how to ask the sort of open questions suggested by UPBEAT to guide their understanding of the ways of helping their own self-development. This is far from a trivial task as the skills, capabilities, and authority of those professionals currently in control gives them with a structural power that is difficult to overcome or rebalance, especially in the UK. And as noted previously but it bears repeating, whatever the problem, understanding the progress made in any effort by citizens trying to rebalance things in their favor requires evaluating what has been achieved and providing feedback to all involved.

So, all collaborations need good leadership, especially by the enabling originator and this leadership must be passed down through the team, until the citizens have learned to lead for themselves. This first leader must imbue citizens, without the confidence, to try new approaches then lead their colleagues to new heights; and they can learn themselves when a first leader listens carefully to them and works out the best way. The questioning framework mentioned earlier will help them do this.

The Leadership’ star figure is a simple way to describe the main requirements of effective (Figure 5). It is based on Ken Jarrold’s (2018) work on requisite characteristics of both leaderships and associated management. This diagram clearly shows what we believe to be better leadership practice developed as part of an earlier PASCAL project which suggested ways in which universities might strive toward seeking a modern renaissance. This figure has also been extended from Hall’s work on leadership (2002) with the numerals at the start of each characteristic representing the best sequence of leadership characteristics in order of delivery; the actual order may well depend on the project and its developers.

Figure 5. Leadership diagram in B/W.

Figure 6. Wordle diagram on the what’s been achieved in B/W.

Figure 5 confirms that successful leaders take collaboration through at least the following steps

1. The first action in any development is for the enabler to invite relevant citizens to work on the proposed joint development. Recognition and initiation are a key first step to ensure that: it is a project Citizens want to undertake for themselves; or after, active listening to the citizen’s needs by the Enablers, something the citizens want to learn to consider to change.

2. Then, they must define the problem carefully, and key Citizens to work on it: it is the citizens themselves who must define the problem, then lead the change development or at least learn to lead its development. This will often lead to a problem definition that differs from the outside “expert” opinion of the situation.

3. Third, determine any individual citizens, or groups in the community, who are already practicing a working solution, and thereby showing a good example to follow.

4. Fourth, discover uncommon practices or behaviors: so the community can find other best practices and identify positive deviants, and then use the relevant other behaviors (and attitudes or beliefs) to improve their approach, thereby giving it a chance to succeed.

5. Properly design the working project: once the community has identified successful strategies, they must decide which ones to adopt, they should design activities to help others access and practice these uncommon, positive, behaviors. Project design is not focused on spreading “best practices” but helping community members “act their way into a new way of thinking and acting” through hands-on activities with their own best practices.

6. Monitoring and evaluation are key to success and come next: The UPBEAT tools will enable the monitoring and evaluation of the project through a participatory process and support decision making in planning, designing, and overseeing their progress in project development.

7. Seventh, cascading improvement: As each citizen-focused project develops, participants must strive to master the role each plays in the team, gaining confidence, ease, and elegance in the handling of complexity and the unexpected that will always come with any project development. They should then seek to use their own developing and creative leadership skills to inspire others, driving excellence for “real improvement”.

8. Finally Enablement teams must learn to scale up all their activities for the future: The scaling up of citizen focused projects may happen through many mechanisms: the “ripple effect” of other communities observing the success and engaging in this project itself, through coordination of NGOs, or organizational development consultants. The case studies cited later show how most Citizen Enablement, and even Citizen Empowerment, follow these steps allowing citizens and (academic) partners to work together in powerful and creative ways.

This process requires outstanding and dedicated academic leaders prepared to change their ways of educating others for the benefit of Citizen Enablement; they, and their senior managers must return their Universities into systemic places of learning, places where citizens feel comfortable to explore their own futures in a constructive way. In terms of the star figure shown earlier, the Case Studies show that to succeed, Academic Leader Enablers, in such collaborations, must:

• be intensely professional, but have absolute personal humility

• have a clear view about what they are trying to achieve and the courage to show the way

• learn how to harness their own ability to influence others to follow them, by being motivator and team builder, while be able to actively listen and respond to their needs

• be Servant Leaders in all their collaborations, where those they lead actually seek guidance and council because of the service they provide to them

• ask challenging and penetrating questions of the status quo

• learn to live with risk because the organization/project requires this as opportunities develop

• learn to lead themselves and then spread that leadership to other team members, so they too can help the team shine by leading themselves were appropriate

• develop people to their maximum capacity

• deliver their practice, into everyone’s practice, which become the practice; create contexts where the positive successes of any development can be seen by others providing separate motivation and network building to good effect

• facilitate others, by being able to clearly/simply explain what needs to be done

• make processes as effective and efficient as possible

Successful Citizen Enablement/Empowerment

The sole recognition of success is when the citizens themselves show they have actually achieved their aspirations and, ideally, start driving for this enablement process onto others – themselves becoming leaders of their own Citizens Enablement. However, even when successful in the short term, collaborations should always strive for cascading improvements to be better, especially if developers are designing citizen suitable products for the open market. All the projects shown in the following short three Case Study portfolio are successful in their own terms, especially to the citizens who have been a major controlling part of them and who own these developed products and facilities.

In order to empower citizens to find solutions to their problems and issues that will work locally, and then ensure whatever is developed will also actually work for all communities, will require them to gain the authority to enact a solution allowing it to exist and/or make wealth for a community. So for instance, as the Community Banking Case mentioned earlier showed without government allowing such banks to be built and able to act as “banks” – which had never happened before in the UK – there would never have been Salford Moneyline or the other 30 community banks, etc. Similarly, the Action Learning development of the “Bouncing Higher”, learning development empowered small business managers to become more innovative, develop salable products, and actually become wealth creating in their own right. Britain’s North West Development Agency saw this as a way to bring small businesses to the leading edge of the market place and gave the project the permission to proceed by enhancing it. These projects worked because appropriate leadership aspirations and delivery had been passed to the citizens so they could continue their work and provide the learning empowerment to others.

Roles of universities, academics, and citizens for the future

Prof. John Dewar, Vice-Chancellor and President, La Trobe University, a university trying to make the sort of changes suggested here said recently (Dewar, 2020), “universities serve many diverse functions and communities but first and foremost they must be concerned with optimizing their self-interest … . This view leads to his case for a new approach University 4.0 – the “university for others” – one outward looking, deeply connected to industry and the communities around it, as well as committed to serving the needs of its students.

In simple terms, the reasons why we need to rethink the role of the university is, first, that the world of work for which we are preparing students is changing very quickly. Second are the expectations concerning universities themselves and their economic development and growth. Research in universities has been an important source of innovation since they began, but simply assuming that university research will somehow find its way into useful hands, is no longer enough. More generally, a university’s social license to operate, increasingly depends on its ability to demonstrate that it gives back to the surrounding community more directly than just through the production of graduates. The result will be a much more active pursuit of applied university research, through deep industry partnerships, accelerator programs, incubators, and the like. This is reinforced by the fact that technological innovation now happens much faster and at a smaller scale than in the past, meaning that old methods of translating university research into commercial outcomes simply take too long. These changes create a need, and a space, for the rapid stimulation of ideas and their translation to commercial outcomes.

Similarly, the community, citizens, and small businesses, no longer feel constrained by their existing culture, by their existing social, economic, and political circumstances, by their world view and actions, or by their ways of seeing and acting in the world as learned responses to the complex nature of their lives, or by their existing expectations. In working with an academic, even one wishing to help them, most citizens used to feel powerless and believed they were unable to compete creatively, innovatively or even to get the just recognition they think they deserve.

Similarly, academic leaders and other enablers must try to create an upward spiral of encouragement for citizens so that they begin to believe in themselves and want to try new and innovative ways for personal gain. This must begin with citizens believing there is more than a “one way for the ruling elite and quite another for themselves”. Enablers need to set up a support (counseling) processes that convinces citizens/communities that they are in a “culture of enablement” where they are in a position to achieve their desire aspirations. This is where sensitive and caring academic partners come into play, since they can give confidence of what is truly possible. While easy to understand the need, it is not a trivial thing to do as it requires a particular kind of sensitivity often absent from many traditional academics in their normal modes of working. In effect, citizens need to learn to become social entrepreneurs and citizen innovators adopting a new culture where the real challenge is to identify objective “truth”. In terms of overall achievement, the following Wordle shows what has actually been achieved in this respect; these words are the most frequently used by Enablers to show their best results achieved from effectively working jointly with citizens.

High on the list of achievements are words such as: Community; Development; People; Business; Learning; University; Local; Homes; Innovation; Support; Work and Support. Using the 15 most frequently used words only, an ideal type sentence empathizing with these “What was Achieved” would be as follows:

‘People and communities have been developed by local universities providing support for citizens on their innovations at work, businesses or in their homes’.

So, the general view is, with doubt, that this Citizen Enablement approach does fulfill its existing aspirations with respect to citizens and universities learning together to deliver.

Three promising practice case studies of Citizens Enablement

Already mentioned were summaries of six cases of best practices that illustrated disenfranchised citizens learning showing how to cope with communities social, economic, political, cultural, environmental, and other human issues. These are also discussed in more detail with another 10 cases elsewhere http://www.citizenenablement.net/forum/. However, to help readers understanding better, the next section shows three further best practices in more detail, describing the citizens enablement program itself, the way the developments were carried out and what each community has achieved so far.

Case study 1 – contraception: The Board Game

Summary

The development of a fun Board Game to help the young learn for themselves, about contraception developed with the help of young citizens, for themselves.

The case

“Contraception – The Board Game” was developed by a Maternity Nurse Senior Lecturer at Salford University who set up a social enterprise which developed a new learning process to help

A Visual showing the Contraception Board Game

youth learn for themselves about the need for, and better use of, contraception. The Game was devised in the late nineties because a particular university Enabler recognized the need for more effective methods of teaching young people about sexual health and she worked with senior managers to learn better how to lead citizens to help her do this. She had become aware that her junior nurses and nurse educators, and the parents of the young, were unwilling, or unable, to do such teaching easily and capably for themselves, and a raft of government legislation had begun to suggest better methods of engagement on this controversial topic – a true issue in many communities; Salford University managers took her through an initial coaching program where she learned the necessary skills to:

• invite appropriate young citizens to work on the proposed joint developments

• work with the citizens themselves to define the problem, then allowed them to lead the change development or in some cases helped them to learn how to lead its development.

• discover and explore best practices and behaviors for citizen centered studies.

• use the UPBEAT tool, mentioned earlier, to enable the monitoring and evaluation of their project through a participatory process and support decision making in planning, designing, and overseeing their progress.

• practice continuous improvement.

• learn to scale up the outreach of this Citizen-focused project across the nation and then world-wide.

Thus, this Enabler became highly motivated to take on the challenge, and has since spent most of the rest of her life developing valuable and well-timed educational tools to sort the situation for good.

The Enabler could see her nurse students did not like talking about sex and contraception, along with other young people, so decided to develop a game that did this for them. She firstly undertook extensive research into developing a game that would be both enjoyable to the young, while helping them learn what was necessary. And then, following the questioning framework laid down by UPBEAT, she designed a project development team of interested young citizens who rigorously identified the challenging real-world NEEDS of other young people and began to develop and innovative solution to satisfy it.

The research undertaken by the Enabler, helped by other university colleagues, had shown the UK teen pregnancy rate is the highest in Europe and assertiveness is an issue in sexual health. So, she set about finding individuals from the community, with the right talent, who also aspired to make a difference for the young in this context. When these locals lacked certain skills in her team to undertake particular aspects of the problem, she strived to correct this by undertaking different forms of training for them, e.g. marketing and finance for non-financial managers. They also found other stakeholders willing to accept a (felt) need for collaborative working. So, for instance, as the game developed, when some members of the team were reluctant to join the chamber of commerce to seek a business mentor to improve the marketing of the game, the Enabler convinced the team to seek help from others, which set up a real, lasting and rewarding marketing development for the project. The team soon recognized the breadth of the market for their growing idea, and this led it to become a powerful DEMAND-driven tool, which also satisfied new legislation; government eventually published a report on the game showing how it helped solve many sexual health and teen pregnancy issues of the time. The team also saw how the UPBEAT process had given them a real awareness of the basic requirements for a project having so many socio-technical and geo-political issues behind it.

By testing a developing game first with friends, and later student and colleagues, and then with other local young citizens, the development team improved the learning tool toward perfection. Those in most need of the games help, were young citizens who are sometimes uneducated, have particular needs and requirements with respect to learning about sexual health. The simple board game the team developed shown above as a photograph and similar in nature to the game “Monopoly” which is also played throughout the world proved to be extremely effective. Where parents had failed to appraise the young for all the implications of unprotected sex, the game embeds important new attitudes and behaviors with respect to aspects of contraception, in an enjoyable, but highly informative way.

Further research by university colleagues showed that CONTRACEPTION®, as it was now styled, indeed helped young nurse trainees cope better with explaining to other young people, how they could avoid unwanted pregnancies; this was seen by regional and national agencies who started to use the game in their everyday help to young people initially across the UK and this led to a demand for its translation into other languages for use in the rest of the world.

The Enabler then helped the team improve its practice-based R&D skills for other related real-world problem solving which it used to conduct important research into the board games development and future competent manufacturers in what UPBEAT calls capability building. Having tested ideas using an early model with students, and undertaken further research on contraception education, the team became self-motivated to develop the relevant skills to help develop other games, while also learning to run a competent enterprise for the existing game. According to young users, case studies showed the game worked well because:

“risk cards in the game created good discussion and debate”

“the game was informal and fun”

“Explanation on cards in the game told me what was good and bad”

“There are a lot of things to do and it’s very informative”

“It allowed me to learn all the safety points and the risky points on having sex”

And many other useful things that space here won’t allow reporting.

The young citizen reports shown above portray a real feel of the power of the developing game which truly enabled them to take control of their own contraception destiny. Nevertheless, in all her citizen enabling endeavors, the Enabler was still looking for her team to the offer even more to the young, to spread the information that the game offered world-wide, and to make sufficient profit from its sales to enable it to become a sustainable product. As the project progressed, the Enabler therefore used her growing coaching skills to build her own leadership capacity, gained a coaching certificate herself, and then helped the leadership skills of others in the team so they began to create their own ideas for future work. Necessary team roles and social and cultural networking skills were then developed in the team who built up their mentoring and database skills with respect to better future manufacturing and marketing of the game. The Enabler even decided to develop more appropriate functional enterprise skills herself and provided the initial funding for the venture from a small legacy to extend the existing game, while also pursuing other sources of finding.

The whole development team developed genuine empathy with relevant citizens and other contexts as they built up their professional competence – UPBEAT level 3. This led the Enabler to write articles about the game to improve its marketability yet further. The team also introduced the overall development to the relevant Government Ministry who then issued a guidance note using the educational value of the game as the basis of its guidance. The Enabler appointed another director and began to oversee relationships with external companies who provided specialized services to extend the game further and the development team itself became an efficient business which helped free the Enabler to develop other more interesting and viable enterprises while still safeguarding project assets.

Further evaluation by Surestart Plus, a teenage pregnancy initiative on behalf of the British government, showed the board game highly appropriate and successful with small groups, but the development team recognized the need to engage larger groups and decided to develop the game further to reach them. The Enabler also reached out further and became recognized as a master of real-world applications research, especially on sexual health issues, in South America, the USA & South Africa. She practiced continuous enhancement of game all the time and learned to access the skills of others, when developing her own was not possible. She also negotiated royalty agreements – a new skill developed whilst working on the project – and developed good relationships with other companies which help with product development. The core team expanded to include another director, who brought new skills to her team and it decided to organize a quarterly “Protect & Respect” conference and secured expert speakers. The event becomes a huge success and spread word about the project even further as the Enabler became a global steward of best enterprise practice herself.

Major learning point for Citizen Enablement

A powerful, and user-friendly, game has been developed by a citizen-focused team which enabled the young to understand their better use of contraception and to explore related issues, normally not open to general discussion because of embarrassment of their teachers and parents. The game is now used regularly across the UK, and increasingly through the world. The Enabler has also worked with people in South Africa to develop something more suitable for their culture. A new game has been developed with particular emphasis on the prevention of “Aids in South Africa” and works well in a totally different cultural context. This game is called – “safer sex”. In short, a portfolio of developments have been developed 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.

The Enabler has not only led this, but in the process has become internationally renowned for her innovations and now runs a profitable business doing this work. It is so successful that it has been translated into three languages and is sold around the world, helping the young learn the facts of life, in a fun way.

The Enabler used the evaluator mechanism of the UPBEAT approach to continuously learn how to improve the offer she was making, its uptake and influence and she gradually improved her offer, step by step, until she achieved world-wide status for the game and her work and became a Global Steward for the process. Her citizen-focused research made her recognize the importance of having the government agencies responsible for sex education sign off on her Contraception Board Game so that local authorities would purchase and allow it. This they did with a guidance note which mentioned the use of her game to help the young.

What was achieved

Since its launch the game has gone from strength to strength, and to date over 2,000 games have been bought by schools, youth clubs and health centers in the UK and overseas. In recognition of this success the company was nominated for a Salford City Council Export Award in 2002 and, more recently, the Enabler was nominated for the prestigious British Female Inventor of the Year prize. By thinking inventively about the real need for exciting and engaging teaching material, the Enabler and her team have made a major contribution to reducing unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections among young people. Finally, the game has also recently led to a separate enterprise where a computer learning tool can be used by whole classrooms to teach all aspects of sexual health care.

Exemplary Case Study 2 – Unlimited Potential (UP)

Summary

Developing new skills and sharing best practices by Salford citizens and communities through confidence building to reveal unlimited potential in all.

The case

Developed by Salford Local, who was supported closely by academics and other citizens from Salford, Unlimited Potential (or UP as it is more commonly known) is a social enterprise developed to enrich citizen’s lives by allowing them to undertake projects important to their local community. The main Enabler’s motivation to develop the approach came from several sources: his parents and grandparents came from working-class backgrounds in Salford, and experienced severe poverty; he was raised with clear values; he went on to study social anthropology (studying how people live in different social and cultural settings); and he became socially and politically aware in the 1980s, a time of division and conflict. It was clear to this Enabler that the dominant system sustained and reinforced inequalities in citizen’s life chances. He felt a need to take action to address issues of power and privilege, by working alongside citizens and communities, and drawing on their strengths and expertise, in order to tackle key issues and to enable change. For all these reasons, this social entrepreneur has dedicated his life to helping citizens achieve their own aspirations and is highly motivated to do so.

Many local other citizens were also motivated to engage with projects managed by Unlimited Potential for a variety of reasons. A few had a burning passion to actively create social and political change. For some, it was simply a personal interest in a particular issue or neighborhood. Others were 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. Citizen Engagement in Unlimited Potential reflects its clear mission and values, and a culture of valuing what people have to offer and taking a relationship-centered approach, rather than a deficit-based needs-led one. Ideally, they all wanted themselves and other citizens to get to a point where they say that they did not need external others to do things for them, but desired to take greater control of their own lives. So involving citizens in helping themselves at UP was relatively easy because of the way it was set up, where academics and other enablers were seen to support all develop citizen-led projects for themselves.

So, for instance, one of the early issues, reported by citizens within their neighborhood, was the lack of health care. In addition to having limited access to GP surgeries, death rates in this specific area was two and one-half times the national average. As such, six residents, who wanted to address the area’s health issues, formed a community group, which was later supported by a community development worker. The original aim of the community business was to create a healthy living center, which would be run by the local community. This small community business was incorporated in 2002, and depended on grant funding for the first four years. Examining the group’s strengths, the organizer could see that they were good at community engagement, but did not have the necessary skill set to run a health center. As such, he changed the focus of the business to deliver smaller health and wellbeing projects, working with people from the community that larger, more established health and wellbeing agencies were unable to reach.

More generally, in 2009, UP achieved legal status as a community benefit society and became the first social enterprise in the North of England to receive the Social Enterprise Mark. The aim of UP was to develop innovative solutions to health and well-being problems for a variety of different clients including the National Health Service (NHS), local authority, charitable foundations, and trusts. For example, UP has developed the “Breath Stars” project to test whether singing improves the breathing of children with asthma. This project is funded by The Big Lottery, Salford Clinical Commissioning Group, and Salford CVS and focuses solely on children in Salford.

Many beneficiaries of UP’s programmes are local residents with disadvantages, including those with dementia, teenagers, the long-term unemployed, and homeless people. UP is now recognized as a leader in employing people with disability and has been awarded Disability Confident Leader status by the Department of Work and Pensions. “People with Disability” (and the “Disability Scheme” as it is known in the UK) supports employers to make the most of the talents of people with disability. With its focus on social innovation, Unlimited Potential benefits massively from having the talents and insights of people with disabilities at all levels of its organization”, said Enabler of this project, “We want to encourage and help other employers on their journey to being Disability Confident”.

Major Learning point for Citizen Enablement All citizens, including those with disabilities became able to release their undoubted potential to do major projects of real value to the community by themselves.

What was achieved

Unlimited Potential developed and grew from a small community-focused organization at its inception to become a national beacon for change enabling the government to achieve citizen developments it would otherwise be unable to. Some of the things of which Unlimited Potential are most proud of creating together with local people, and their greatest achievements to date, include:

• Healthy Communities Collaborative – increasing the rate of early-stage diagnosis of cancer and heart disease in low-income communities

• Smoke-Free Spaces – reducing and quitting smoking by focussing on who people love and care

• health coaching – setting up one of the first health trainer services, which was then complemented by well-being coaching

• It’s A Goal! – using football as a metaphor to help long-term unemployed men to improve their mental health and well-being

• Realizing the Value – partner site for co-production as part of this national program on person and community-centered approach, led by Nesta and the Health Foundation for NHS England

• Dadly Does It – supporting dads to spread positive fatherhood in low-income communities

• Elephants Trail – co-producing new solutions with people with lived experience of severe and multiple disadvantage

• Fueling Ambitions Creatively Together (FACT) – exposing young people to meaningful experiences of local industry/business, outside the “norm” of school and home life, and exposing industry/business to future local talent and their new ideas.

• social value – developing our organizational social value through the use of social accounting and audit, and being a core member of the Salford Social Value Alliance and its 10% Better campaign.

• Living Wage – leading on spreading the real Living Wage in Salford, leading to it becoming the first place in England to get formal recognition for its ambition to become a Living Wage City.

Exemplary case study 3 – The Salford Innovation Forum

Summary

The design, development, and funding of a building for Citizens and local Small Businesses which is fit for the development of further Innovative Citizen led Projects.

The case

Salford University lies in the UK’s industrial North West epitomized in Ewan Maccols song “Dirty Old Town”. More than 30 years ago, senior managers of the University responsible for relations with the community recognized there was no place for local groups to go to talk about how they could themselves be more innovative, to prepare themselves for a better future, for the young to gain confidence to work their way out of poverty, or for the community to develop their own art and design, etc. The university recognized both the creative and innovative potential of Salfordians, but also realized there was a 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.

So as part of the “Reach-out” from the university, its staff set about developing such a place, using the UPBEAT approach as the basis for such a collaborative development. The university first improved relationships with local citizens, their politicians, interested city officers, local small business people and others, by setting up a collaborative committee which planned a way forward to develop a place which would make a real difference to community lives. A senior University Manager, responsible for its reach-out to the community, led this changed relationships by suggesting setting up and area to be known as the Salford Innovation Park, where different organizations could be encouraged to come together to sit, side-by-side with the university, for mutual benefit. He then suggested they try to provide a purpose made place to stimulate creative activity, where new developments could be initiated and developed into wealth creating success. He was highly motivated to use his entrepreneurial and leadership skills to work with other locals to deliver both the Park and the Forum; both of which eventually became highly successful. Comprehensive discussions between all interested in a community focused development resulted in what became known as the Salford Innovation Forum (SIF).

Residents, especially those in the Salford’s New Deal for Communities, the City’s Councillors and Offices and local businesses all became motivated to develop both the Park and Innovation Forum, because they also recognized the potential both developments had to offer. They thus became fully engaged in the committee set up to 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 other 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 neighborhood also became the first users of the Forum and some undertook early management tasks for the running of the SIF itself. The SIF soon became full of small companies, often initiated by Salfordians, who wanted to develop themselves in Salford.

SIF was designed by a team led by University Enablers to be close to the university to give it extra academic, research, sustenance, and laboratory support, where necessary, but a place designed specifically for residents, their communities, and small businesses. Senior University Managers, supported by the team of others mentioned above, took several years to obtained £10 million of European and Regional funds necessary to build such a place, but through careful planning and political maneuvering, they indeed developed a purpose-ready building. It was important for the proposed building to meet the needs of local people, so having secured the funds, the Enabling Development team worked with the architect, who already had a high reputation for developing citizen-centric buildings and a range of citizens, to ascertain their needs and wants. These discussions were enhanced through a series of workshops held in Salford, using placemaking and collaborative planning processes, to find a building fit for purpose. The architect was open to the idea that local people were their own “experts” with respect to their needs and responded with the design below.

Furthermore, a University Art and Design senior lecturer at Salford University worked with two local groups who had shown interest in his area of study:

• To develop the Salford’s color pallet, which was mainly “red”, since the local community revealed almost thirty shades of it being used throughout the City. He used this knowledge and the skills of local artists for the hues of red color to be chosen for the SIF, both outside, and in.

• He also worked with Salford’s young people so they began to think about new products they would like themselves and how to plan a way of marketing them into the real world, to give them a wealth creating future. They in fact developed a range of red nail varnishes and some exciting colored and luminescent shoelaces, both which went neutral under inside light; this was because the local schools refused to have color used in this way by the young while they were in lessons.

These two examples show how the developing project caused citizen residents to gain confidence to be more innovative, and the Innovation Forum provided a local place they could can go to implement their ideas. In short, the Forum gives the potential for all in the community to develop their own new projects, gain confidence to try the new and innovative, and then provide early stage and reasonably priced accommodations to enable successful development of a successful working enterprise.

The Innovation Forum is now owned by the Council, but managed by Manchester Science Partnerships which operate several science parks, none of which as being as citizen-centric as the SIF. Part of the University Enabler’s approach was to ensure that those citizens enabled through this whole would continue to control their own destiny completely, so the Innovation Forum will always provide a place to satisfy their aspirations.

Major learning point for Citizen Enablement

Local Salford residents have a place in which to explore joint interests and using the principles learned from each other which shows how to develop their own wealth creating ideas into working enterprises. The SIF became the hub for much future collaboration between different community group and with supportive academics from the university, bringing new, unique, and innovative ideas into the marketplace.

What has been achieved

SIF now has young and small businesses of local citizens who have learned to develop a new way of working to enable their future to flourish. The Salford Innovation Forum is unique in that it was developed by local citizens, communities, and small businesses for their own development. They developed a unique master plan that strives to create:

∙ A place of discovery and inspiration;

∙ A place to learn, research and collaborate;

∙ An environment where industry and academia come together;

∙ A place to meet the neighbors and make a home;

∙ A place to walk, cycle, play, and rest; and

∙ A place surrounded by art, culture, and heritage.

The SIF is therefore designed to be also in the middle of the university in an overall area which became known as Salford Innovation Park. It provides a series of office suites, from 100 sq. ft. to 7,000 sq. ft. with an option from an all-inclusive package of rent, services charges building insurance, utilities, and connectivity, to more flexible deals. Part of the scheme is available rent free to community organizations like Unlimited Potential – another case developed by the university with local people. And there is access for those with disabilities, lifts to all floors, communal kitchens freely available to all, an on-site café run by local citizens and “hot desks” freely available to local people which was perfect for freelancers, start-ups or small businesses. The Forum was therefore uniquely designed by and for local citizens to meet their daily needs.

Salford Innovation Park customers also benefit from being part of an innovative community with a wide range of free business support services. SIF’s managers work with the University to organize and host networking activities and monthly seminars/masterclasses to provide opportunities for customers to get to know each other, share knowledge and learn from experts in different fields. SIF users also have access to marketing and public relations advice as well as funding support and guidance. It has strong ties with the Salford City Council and the University of Salford, giving businesses locating there access to the University’s facilities and academic expertise, not to mention their pool of graduates. The SIF also hosted university-led conferences and meeting room facilities available for customers to rent from one hour to full days. The SIF is much used by all citizens in Salford and beyond and has formed the basis of much innovation, by them.

The three above summarized cases of best practices provide “snap-shots” of the range of citizen-led and developed projects using the processes shown earlier in the article.

Conclusions

This development of Citizens Enablement, in both Britain and Europe, now numbers over 150 examples of a broad range of projects that are encouraging, and the approach also reflects public scholarship currently also being undertaken in the USA and elsewhere across the world. The approach is relevant for all who wish to tackle a myriad of urban and rural issues which affect communities, including economic, social and cultural deprivation, political and human exclusion, and it might also lead onto something more overall. It is a new model of active welfare, in which, as Charles Leadbetter from DEMOS (Leadbetter, 1958) suggested

“citizens are encouraged to take more responsibility for their lives. In such new ways of working, schemes of development will no longer be seen in terms of a sum of money or package entitlements. Rather, they will embrace a philosophy where welfare and wellbeing become inseparable from self-control sand self-confidence. It could become the new creative individualism which is at odds with most citizen’s normal passive, recipient culture, provided in the Western word by most welfare states and ‘mass consumption capital’ appears to have the same stultifying effect in terms of dependency ‘culture’ ”.

In the post-Covid-19 era, the university’s role should be profoundly different. It must become a “reflective center” for all ages (not only “Executive Education), to tap the wisdom of the past and envision a wiser future. This means a shift from SMART to WISE and so much more. As Savage said in 2020 “Certainty is a thing of the past and future agreements will be more complicated, and respond to uncertainty wisely, if they are to be sustainable”. The hope is that we will learn to be “WISE” in the way “we live in TIME, not the linear clock tie, but human consciousness rather than OBJECTS in Space”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The author developed the work presented here while he was Pro Vice Chancellor at Salford University a decade ago, and is based upon more than three decades of research and development while he was enabling university academics to develop a better way of empowering disenfranchised and often poor citizens learn to control their lives in a more fulfilling way, for their benefit and those of others in their communities. For more details of the R&D, see http://www.citizenenablement/net/forum.