The Rise of Localism
Place matters. The place where you live is becoming increasingly more important. A recent article in Yes! Magazine explored the importance of localism, a growing trend in the US and Canada.
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Place matters. The place where you live is becoming increasingly more important. A recent article in Yes! Magazine explored the importance of localism, a growing trend in the US and Canada.
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One of my roles as ‘curator’ of the Tamarack Institute’s Evaluating Community Impact work is to track and share ideas and methodologies that community changemakers might find useful in their work.
Over the next six months, I will focus on evaluating systems change and social change. Innovators all over the world are focused on reforming or transforming systems, whether they be related to energy, child protection, ecological education, economic, social systems, or (more likely) a mix of all them.
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Systems change work is about understanding all of the actors in the system and the dynamic flow of power, relationships, and mindsets that exists between them. John Kania, Mark Kramer and Peter Senge, in their recently released paper, The Water of System Change use the metaphor of water to describe systems. The water is the environment through which fish and other life exists but it is also a flowing, moving and changing entity.
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St. Catharines Ontario is championing a movement to make their city one where all residents have an opportunity – and responsibility – to make their community vibrant, prosperous and compassionate.
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Inspiring Communities is a New Zealand capacity building leader and partner of the Tamarack Institute. For the past 10 years, the leaders of Inspiring Communities have been working across the country to build local leadership and inspire community-led development and have documented their work in a series of resources called Learning by Doing. Inspiring Communities has the vision that all communities will flourish.
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The international Association of Community Development (IACD) is a global network of community change leaders who are seeking to build the capacity of communities to realize greater social and economic equality, environmental protection and political democracy. Over its 15-year history, Tamarack has both contributed to and been influenced by the ideas of IACD thought leaders including Peter Drucker, John McKnight, and Cormac Russell.
In the most recent edition of the IACD Practice Insights, Tamarack contributed two articles which illustrate both the challenge and the opportunity of deep community engagement in co-creating change. Lisa Attygalle’s article on The Context Experts describes the value of citizens in sharing their expertise about navigating community systems. Context experts are people with lived experience of the situation, including children and youth. They are the people who experientially know about the issue and can share their expertise in how the issue impacts them and their livelihoods. Authentic community engagement purposefully including context experts in co-creating solutions.
