Looking for examples of successful enabling of vital civil action
Hi all! I’m making a small study on promising solutions on supporting or enabling civic action, as part of a project aiming to address the development of Finland as a ground for vital and autonomous civil society. The task is wide and I would very much appreciate suggestions and tips from you as commons experts on examples worth studying in more detail!
We are interested in a wide scale of international examples Finland could learn from, for example
- Holistic approaches such as Enspiral as a network community with co-creation tools and practices
- governmental attempts such as the Oregon Kitchen table serving as a forum for interaction between the government and local actors, including things like support for P2P lending
- platforms for organising and funding civic initiatives, for example Open collective enabling transparent crowdfunding and follow-up of the economy of the initiatives
- reported cases illustrating vitality of civic action and how it has been enabled
- any other particularly useful approaches, practices and tools related to governmental action in relation to civil society: regulation, resourcing, education, evaluation etc.
Our project is funded by the Prime Minister’s Office and our results should serve national governmental actors especially but we can make suggestions also for other actors, for example municipalities, civil society organisations and enterprises.
Maija Faehnle Tue 3 Sep 2019 8:12AM
Heartfelt thanks to all, what a wonderful community you are here! <3 Lots of really interesting and relevant tips, sources and ways to get forward. I'll go through all this. Will definitely look at the Synergia MOOC and consider participating when it's run next time. @joshafairhead could you maybe link something about the metabolic network? Didn't find by googling. @sobeit I'll contact you. @dilgreen these developments around open credit are highly relevant as inspirational examples as in Finland there is an ongoing process about reforming the national funding system. New solutions are needed to improve the autonomy.
Josh Fairhead Fri 30 Aug 2019 11:05AM
Fundraising in crypto world is getting interesting with curved bonding emerging as a primitive for many collectives like metacartel, Moloch DAO, Aragon fundraising, panvala, and of course Giveth/Commons stack.
John Restakis Fri 30 Aug 2019 11:17AM
Hello Maija,
I was happy to receive your email and am encouraged by the description of your work.
I would like to suggest you have a look at Synergia Institut’es work on system change, in particular the course titled, Toward Co-operative Commonwealth - Transition in A Perilous Century. The program is an online course (just finished) that explores both the theoretical and practical dimensions of achieving system change in a number of strategic sectors (land & housing, food, social care, energy, finance), and includesa a curated collection of videos, articles, and case studies that cover a wide range of strategies and models, all of whoch are illustrations of system change at local, regional and, national/international levels. The course material is accessible and may be viewed/downloaded for further study and application.
As one of the founders and organizers of the course, I am certain you would find it useful in your work. We are also close coallaborators with the good folks at the P2P Foundation and Commons Transition.
Please do let me know if you have any questions, or how we might help further.
In Solidarity,
John Restakis
Jeff Regino Thu 5 Sep 2019 3:11PM
Hi John, I'm one of those who took the course but was unable to finish. Would it be possible to keep the course open forever?
Many online courses do this. Thanks!
John Restakis Fri 30 Aug 2019 11:19AM
To get further info on how to access the course material, please contact: [email protected]
John
Sophie Jerram Fri 30 Aug 2019 11:23AM
HI Maija - greetings ! In haste - there's a big movement toward 'co-city' practice in Italy (and elsewhere but often driven from Italy) - see https://labgov.city/co-city-protocol/
Graham Fri 30 Aug 2019 12:30PM
Hi. You are probably already there with this one, but just in case, the Fearless Cities book (http://fearlesscities.com/en/book), and more broadly a lot of the work that's been happening in Barcelona and other places mentioned in the book, is worth looking at.
Graham Fri 30 Aug 2019 12:33PM
Also the whole community wealth building agenda, which seems to be gaining real ground here in the UK, building on the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio, seems highly relevant. See https://democracycollaborative.org for more on that.
Graham Fri 30 Aug 2019 12:35PM
And of course @John Restakis piece on the Cooperative Commonwealth and the Partner State seems highly relevant: https://thenextsystem.org/cooperative-commonwealth-partner-state
Josh Fairhead · Fri 30 Aug 2019 11:03AM
Ive recently heard of metabolic who might be a nice network to investigate.
As an aside, the city of rajneesh is an interesting case study too - they screwed up with but it started great, worth watching wild wild country to see what goes wrong and how a race to the bottom started