There's been a debate sparked about how PR responds to the post-truth environment. The issue of social capital - the glue that keeps communities ticking over - has arisen.
by Andy Green
There’s a warning of a hidden crisis for our society from an old black-and-white photograph, taken in the early 1970’s of my late father-in-law’s ‘Early Birds’ skittle team in Barry.
This crisis affects the very heartbeat of our communities.
It was evidenced by the BREXIT and Trump election victories, revealing a world divided into two tribes, who increasingly have less to do with each other.
Fewer people devote themselves to the communal good. Less of us are getting involved in doing things, running things or just hanging around with each other - how we help each other to help each other.
It affects our capacity to connect, co-operate and collaborate on our common cause. It is not just a nice thing to have but critical to how well we live and work together.
It’s called social capital - and we need to do something about its decline. (I define it as ‘how we help each other, to help each other’).
Looking closely at the ‘Early Birds’ skittles team photo shows a group of men of great diversity: their ages ranging from 20 to 70, their social status evidently spanning different classes. It’s a photo of a disappearing phenomenon of people hanging around with people different to yourself. Yes, online connects you with more people: but they tend to be people like you.
The guru of social capital, Robert Putnam identified in his seminal book ‘Bowling Alone’ how bowling alley attendances in the United States are rising yet bowling alley leagues have dramatically declined - hence we’re increasingly ‘bowling alone’: a metaphor for a decline mirrored in every aspect of communal and civic life.
The Barry equivalent book title could be ‘Skittling No More’: over the last 20 years for example, half the skittle alleys in Barry have closed.
Yes, this reflects changing social habits, the decline in numbers of local pubs, and also the changing nature of employment, evoked by the names of many of the alleys that have closed such as the ‘Dockers’ and ‘Railwaymen’.
People however, like the ‘Early Birds’ team, have not replaced this activity with another that nudges them to get out of their homes more, mix with people they may not normally have social contact with, or collectively work to a common goal. As a result we have a social capital deficit.
The core assets for existing social capital, the hubs for communal activity are being destroyed or are in significant decline - whether it is a skittle alley closing, declining local newspaper circulations, the local record shop or other community retail closing, or fewer milk deliveries - anything where we help each other, to help each other.
This is not about restoring or trying to keep alive what may be commercially or socially unviable or unsustainable, but rather recognising the social capital consequences of these trends. We need to invest and create new activities to offset the deficit.
Yes, there are those who argue that we are not witnessing a social capital decline but more of a social capital transformation; we may be playing skittles less, but many of us are now, for example, doing park runs or taking part in online forums.
Yet, despite these changes in social engagement, the broad expert consensus is of social capital’s underlying decline.
We live in an age where local public service providers and community groups need to tap into the untapped potential within our communities. Where community groups have to cope with a Tsunami of demands, yet community stalwarts, the do-ers and people who want to change their community, still work in isolated pockets.
We need to create new ways of bringing change makers, activists and anyone wanting to contribute together.
While technology creates tools that encourage greater social isolation, engagement, they also offer the potential to encourage greater connectivity, collaboration and co-creation.
There is new thinking in how off-line networks operate. How narrative and values underpin change. There is greater understanding of how we can harness emergence and emotional engagement for change. These can all work to address the decline of social capital and work to rekindle and nurture its growth.
Yet there are significant shortcomings with our current thinking around ‘social capital’: how can it be measured? Do we need a national scale, a social capital quotient to identify shortfalls or gaps? What new tools and processes can we establish as a better way of doing ‘social capital’?
Even the very brand of ‘social capital needs to be addressed.
The thinking within Puttnam’s ‘Bowling Alone’ was quickly adopted by political advisers like Steve Hilton, using it to frame the launch of the Conservative Party-led ‘Big Society’.
Soon ‘social capital’ became tarred with being a smokescreen for politically-led public services retrenchment and austerity. The nascent social capital’s potential and momentum for change quickly dissipated.
Yet, is all lost for the cause of social capital?
Working with the support of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) I have discovered I am not alone in taking up the challenge to do something. We need actions not just words - a new agenda for change.
A range of pioneering projects developed in Wales for example show a way ahead for building new social capital from encouraging greater creativity, or enabling communities to come together more to boost their well-being or promoting civic engagement.
These projects, such as the creative citizenship initiative harnessing digital media, or the ‘Our Place’ young mother’s group in Pontypridd harnessing social capital to create better well-being, or my own project, the ‘Barry IdeasBank’ transforming the way community ideas banks can bring communities together, or the Cardiff Citizen Tech Pioneers - all show how we can now find new ways to harness and strengthen the power within communities, rather than viewing them as a bundle of needs.
Using a combination of ‘blended’ offline and online activities they reveal new ways to build their connectivity, capability and confidence in our communities.
They champion how relationships have a value. Through working with communities this value can be grown by connecting people to one another to build, strengthen networks of social relationships create a renaissance in our civic and communal life.
Declining social capital is not inevitable.
Like the ‘Early Birds skittles team we need to come together to achieve a common goal. We need to tackle the growing social capital deficit in our communities. We can all do something to boost the social capital - but first we need to be aware of its hidden crisis and start taking action - before its too late.
Andy Green runs his own brand story consultancy Story Starts Here and social enterprise the Flexible Thinking Forum which runs the Barry IdeasBank project.
