The CLAAR Project - Seeding Our Future

COMMUNITY LED ADAPTATION AND RESILIENCE

The climate crisis and related impacts are worsening fast. National responses are inadequate, and this looks unlikely to change soon. Responses at community level may be the best option currently, and even though many communities don’t have the critical mass for significant action, there are some infrastructure actions which would enable this when conditions worsen and more people want to take action.

At present, CLAAR is an emerging project, with a number of organisations informally involved. Currently the two main areas of exploration are:

1. Resource Toolkit: This could be a website, searchable on multiple dimensions, and progressively expanded and updated. We are not aware that anything suitable exists for the UK, and the North American counterparts we’ve seen focus on disaster response (e.g. wildfires) rather than systemic failures (e.g. food supplies, IT systems).

Alan Heeks first saw the need for this in 2012, when he commissioned an action research project by Reos Partners on how to raise community resilience. This research showed that for most issues, a few good role models were up and running, and the problem was reproducibility. One way to help this would be to document successful projects to show others how to emulate them. For a summary of the Facing the 2020s report, click here.

In 2023, Seeding our Future commissioned desk research from Schumacher Institute exploring the major challenges likely to hit communities in the UK over the next 10 years. This gives a useful indication of the scope for a Toolkit: see report here, or summary here.

2. Connecting and enabling network: At present, the number of individuals or groups ready to engage practically with these issues seems small and scattered. One aim of CLAAR is to connect up those already involved in these issues, and to make it easier to access resources and mutual support as more individuals and groups move into a desire for practical action. We aim to gather a list of those already actively involved, and to explore whether there is an existing organisation who could provide a point of connection.

Through collaboration with one of our informal partners, some members of Network for Social Change have provided funding for a study on the following brief, to understand the current situation and future needs in the community resilience sector.

COMMUNITY RESILIENCE SCOPING STUDY BRIEF

1. Overview:

The climate crisis and related issues are worsening fast, and community-level responses may be the best practical option in the limited time ahead. The UK has large numbers of local projects, several networks, and some information resources, which may be relevant. The aim of this study is to get an overview of what’s out there currently, to help our stakeholders identify needs and gaps, and decide how to respond to them.

2. The Specific Brief:

Our area of exploration is resilience and adaptation capacity, primarily for local, i.e. place-based, communities in the UK. The threats we want to help them address are particularly these:

the climate crisis in general, and extreme weather events (heat, drought, storm, etc.) in particular;
food shortages and severe price inflation;
failures in electricity and energy supply;
breakdown of internet and mobile networks;
breakdown in social cohesion;
mental, emotional and spiritual impacts of rising disruption and future outlook.

The two specific issues we want to scope out are:

2A. Information Resources:

We want to know what specific advice, models, toolkits are available for UK community groups wanting to raise their resilience and adaptation capacity, especially for the six issues above, and whether there is an unmet need for resources to be available in a more accessible form, in one single location such as a wiki site. In particular, resources which would be of easy practical use to a community group, rather than primarily political or philosophical approaches. These resources should include the use of local assemblies. We would also like to know whether most local community groups are addressing both ‘inner and outer’ issues (i.e. emotional/spiritual and logistical), or focus only on one of these aspects.

2B. Connecting and enabling networks:

Whilst there are some networks already active in this sector, they generally seem to be relatively small, and focussed on one specific issue, rather than the various aspects of community resilience listed above. Exploration so far suggests that many local community groups operate largely on their own, and that there may be a need for an overarching network enabling sharing of resources and mutual support for groups engaged with the big issues listed earlier.

We want this scoping study to provide an overview of what networks are already out there, including any which may currently be small but whose aims and organisation might enable them to grow into a larger connecting and enabling role. We suspect that one of the potential roles for such a network is to act as a catalyst and coach for local groups, helping them to increase their capabilities, motivation, and participation from their local community.

3. Outputs and timing:

Research is already under way, undertaken by Roman Paluch and Sean Irving, who are both part of Cooperation Hull. We envisage the output as a 20–30-page written report, with extensive use of web links to websites for resources, networks, etc. Our target timing for a first issue of the report is the end of March 2024.

4. Stakeholders:

There are several organisations exploring this issue, who will use this study:

Network for Social Change: a group of around 100 individuals who provide funding for a range of projects, and whose members are funding this study .
Seeding our Future: a project led by Alan Heeks, focussed on resilience and adaptation for communities, individuals and NHS staff. See website here.
Schumacher Institute: a registered charity and environmental think tank, website here.
XR – Being the Change: Gail Bradbrook is part of a team guiding this XR follow-on project. Community resilience in the UK and internationally is one of their priorities, and they are working with a number of UK projects on it. Website here.

Next steps: The report on the scoping study will be made available online free of charge in April. If you would like to be involved or kept informed about the project, please contact Alan Heeks: .

Current Events

Men’s Elderhood Retreat | May 10-12

Our venue: Trwyn Tal in the Llanthony Valley, Wales A men’s peer group This weekend offers a shared space to explore as a peer group how we harvest the fruits, enjoy the blessings and adjust to the downsides of getting older: a chance to look afresh and consider the future we’d like to help create. How can we serve as elders in these troubled times, and be good ancestors to those who come after us? What’s the balance, in later life, between inner contemplation and outer action? This retreat is intended as a supportive circle for questions like these, or whatever we choose as a group. Dates: May 10-12 Location: Llanthony Valley, Black Mountains, Wales Bookings: For more info or bookings, please contact Simon Chinnery: .

Featured Blog

How can we raise community resilience?

The Facing the 2020s report As the pressures on all of us keep rising, we can see mounting discord about best priorities and solutions. One of the few topics on which almost everyone agrees is that increasing the resilience of local communities is getting ever more vital. This has been a focus of my work since 2012, so I’m offering an overview of some of my insights. As part of a project called Facing the 2020s, in 2012 I commissioned a substantial piece of action research on UK community resilience by Reos Partners, which included over thirty diagnostic interviews, extensive desk research, and exploratory workshops in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff with potential stakeholders, including national and local government, NGOs and community organisations. This blog is a summary of the insights I gained from this research. The terms community and resilience are so heavily used that a short explanation of what I mean by community resilience may be wise: the collective capacity of a group of people to handle and grow through crises and challenges. I’ve set out below some of the main aspects of resilience in this context: part of this capacity could come from organisations, including local authority, public services and non-profit groups. Material: some capacity to respond locally to interruptions in food, energy supplies, especially for elderly and vulnerable people. Environmental: response to ecosystem damage, eg habitat loss, pollution and to extreme weather, eg floods, droughts.Wellbeing: for everyone’s emotional needs, especially those who have mental health or isolation issues.Inspirational: maintaining and renewing a sense of vision, cohesion and purpose in the community in the face of a crisis.Connective: good communication within the group, including the skills of hearing, voicing, reconciling strong differences in opinions and values. The main insights from the Facing the 2020s research are these: Reproducibility: On most aspects of community resilience, there are successful exemplar projects somewhere in the UK. For a concise, inspiring range of examples, see the book The New Road, by Alf and Ewan Young. Why have these not been widely reproduced? One reason is that many good community resilience initiatives have depended on a few superhuman people, who just kept going against impossible difficulties. How can such interventions be systematised so that regular humans could implement them in a bigger number of communities? Recording what was done in an accessible toolkit form would help a lot. Sustainable funding: Many good initiatives have also depended on funding that was not reproducible, e.g. a slab of one-off grant funding as part of a pilot programme by an NGO. Sustainable funding sources could include raising capital from local communities themselves, (eg crowdfunding), or a social enterprise model, or a couple of larger foundations offering a grant scheme plus support to use it. Professional services: Many community initiatives struggle to find professional support geared to their particular needs, in finance, legal, property, HR and other areas. The emergence of specialists for this sector would greatly assist reproductivity. Systemic catalysts: In my dream of raising UK community resilience, a focal role would be played by trained advocate-facilitators, who would go into a community to understand its needs and dynamics, help gather support and a project team and could provide access to reproducible role models, sustainable funding, professional services and more. Working with minority groups and communities of identity: Some communities will be more vulnerable to shocks than others, and history tells us that unresolved social tensions bubble up at times of stress. Resilient societies and communities rely heavily on social cohesion. The benefits of working on community resilience now include the opportunity to pre-empt more severe ruptures to social cohesion which are likely to arise from the major stresses ahead. It is important to involve minority communities in the resilience journey, and communities of identity such as LGBT, instead of focussing solely on geographic communities. Wider participation: Many places don’t have a strong sense of community, and in most of those that do, only a tiny percentage of people participate actively in community matters. How could larger numbers of communities, and larger numbers of people, have a motivation to participate in community resilience, including ethnic and low-income communities? This is a crucial issue, which will become more acute amid the pressures ahead: it would be great to see a couple of enlightened large NGOs fund pilot projects and gathering of best practice to move this forward. Engaging local authorities: As funding for services has moved from central government to local authorities, many local authorities have worked to further devolve decision-making and budgetary decisions to local communities. This means that in some parts of the country, local communities are strongly engaged with the local authority, and structures exist to support these partnerships. This move towards greater local control highlights the exciting potential to tackle many priorities (environmental, public service reform, etc.) by adopting a resilience approach and involving local people in community action and resilience building. In recent years, some local authorities have become real innovators in new forms of service delivery, partnership working and more. The replication issue applies here too. Is there currently an easy way to access best practice and role models in this area? Building national resilience: Most approaches towards community resilience take place at a geographic community level. However, examples from UK history and from other countries indicate real benefits in national-level approaches towards resilience. Some of the countries that are considered the most resilient, such as Japan, Norway, Sweden and Denmark, have a strong national resilience policy. If the UK had this too, it would make local initiatives more effective. Online resilience services: A massive opportunity for innovation! If I continue to dream, I imagine social entrepreneurs and progressive NGOs helping to create new apps and web services, alongside businesses.