An eclectic update

Over the past weeks, internet activity on the theme of resilience has begun to hot up. I have a 'google alert' set to tell me every time someone writes a blog, or creates a web entry, which mentions the term. I also track some relevant blog feeds - such as World Changing and Resillience Alliance - as well as relying on many good friends who are helping to develop thinking on genuinely integrative approaches to cultivating resilience, from local community actions through to state and international level work. This process of sensing the field has also accelerated for me in the last couple of months now I am travelling widely across the UK and Rep. Ireland, connecting with many intersecting networks as I do so.

This entry is really just a list of bullet points of useful resources/ideas that you might find helpful to share:
- The Resillience Alliance held a gathering in April and has many talks up on the net. The presenters are, by and large, thinkers who have been in the field a long while. It would be exciting to find ways to connect this wisdom with the fiery energy of social change/community activist/organisational change folk. [thanks Anna for the link to the WorldChanging blog]

- Christine King has published a research paper on community resilience ... reconnecting people and food, and people with people in Systems Research and Behavioural Science 25, 11-124 (208) [thanks Tony for the paper!]

- Hazel Blears (writing in a Local Government Association report, 2007), Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, affirms that

All my life I've been a firm believer in local activism. My whole political
approach, fashioned on the streets and estates of Salford, is anchored in
localism and devolution. I've seen how genuine empowerment can bring
positive change and build the resilience necessary to prevent problems such
as anti-social behaviour, which left unchallenged will blight communities. I
believe that the best experts, advocates and leaders for local communities
are people within local communities themselves. It's they who know most
about community problems, and they who are best able to provide common sense
solutions.

Although this analysis falls short of a deeper understanding of the implications of resilience thinking for community development, it's a healthy sign that doors are open to the conversations we all need to be having [thanks Alastair for the quote]

- WWF UK have recently published a report which tackles behaviour change issues in building a resilient society. Essentially, I read this report as advocating opening deliberative spaces where people are able (as Erich Fromm observed so many years ago) to evolve beyond consumerist identities of 'having' toward 'being'... an awakening into care, compassion and insight into the interconnectedness of the web of life and the necessary to respond to the challenge of climate change by complementing the behaviour change tools of the dominant paradigm (social marketing etc.) with the cultivation of 'communities of meaning' and practice such as those that I and many others are involved in facilitating. The report stops short of calling for community development programmes which encourage people to 'unpack' the dynamics of economic growth and consumerism (or perhaps they have yet to adequately connect with this rich tradition?), alongside experiential work (in nature, using meditation, as well as the more hard-headed strategic planning of using power tools to create community ownership of resilience responses...). It does call for increased 'self determination' which I see as exactly the positive, resilience-based commuity of practice agenda we need to be collectively on the road towards.

Over the next months, I'm working on a synthesis paper pulling together the many strands I've begun to track in this blog. In the meantime, look out for new links and update posts like this.