7. Citizenship and Community Capacity Building

7.1 The notion of an active civil society is deeply rooted in this country, manifesting itself in a profusion of voluntary, community and charitable organisations. In turn they have often been explicitly involved in initiatives aimed at widening opportunities for learning, demonstrating that positive tradition of creative self-help identified by the Secretary of State in The Learning Age.(23)

7.2 In the past, this was evident in such diverse instances as the remarkable achievements of generations of self-taught working people, in the popular movement to establish public and workers' libraries, and in the growth of study at workers' institutes. It was also central to the instigation of public lectures, correspondence courses and to the establishment of programmes of educational extension mounted by the universities, voluntary organisations, women's groups and, especially, the Workers' Education Association. The tradition of fostering active citizenship and self-organised initiative, both at work and in the community, has also long featured as one aspect of trade unions' determination to improve the lot and life chances of their members through learning.

7.3 Today, active citizenship is manifest in the contribution being made by local communities towards their own social and economic regeneration, often in circumstances of radical economic and social change.(24) Local engagement includes people defining their own needs and identifying their own priorities, providing community based access to learning and training, often in collaboration with educational providers. This is mostly accomplished by working through networks of voluntary groups and community-based organisations. Increasingly, these bodies are operating in partnership with statutory authorities, funders and the private sector.

7.4 Research and scholarship in this country and abroad has recently recognised the critical importance of intermediate networks of voluntary and community activity for the promotion of prosperity, well-being and educational success.(25) The development and maintenance of high trust relations and of 'spontaneous sociability' have been variously demonstrated as being essential for the establishment and renewal of social capital, crucial to people's capacity to adapt to social change and fundamental to the continued involvement of citizens in the civic and political life of communities, as well as their economic success.

7.5 This country is rich in its patterns of such sociability. For example, it is argued that almost as many people take part in some form of voluntary activity in this country every year as there are members of the workforce. They not only value their voluntary work highly, gaining some of their greatest satisfactions from it, but also thereby directly benefit the lives of others and local communities.(26) The DfEE's own National Adult Learning Survey underlined the demand for learning linked to community and voluntary activity, especially amongst those people over the age of forty.(27) Many who feel themselves otherwise disfranchised or excluded from the wider political sphere gain their first stake in political or civic engagement through involvement in a tenants group, by joining an ethnic association or through participation in a single-issue group or campaign.

7.6 Such activity connects with people's own priorities, builds up their confidence and self-esteem and gives them a very practical sense of achievement. In many instances, such self-evident benefits are further supported and reinforced through learning with a range of bodies including the WEA, community education, residential colleges, adult learning programmes and various outreach projects. They increasingly figure in the provision of responsive further education institutions. Such valuable learning does not always lead to recognisable academic awards; nor should it.

7.7 This is exactly the contribution to citizenship and social cohesion through learning which The Learning Age envisaged. The next steps in the development of the government's lifelong learning strategy should draw from and build upon democratic traditions of individual and collective self-help. It should support them through accessible funding regimes which can help to embed them, at the same time as avoiding the temptation to colonise activity and stifle enterprise. To some extent, this will require experiment and risk-taking. This should be reflected in the strategic use made of the Adult and Community Learning Fund and in the frameworks of evaluation established to assess its impact, not always measuring effectiveness by means of the usual output indicators alone. The Fund's currently limited resources could not begin to fund the range of learning already in train in voluntary and community organisations (even when eventually greatly reinforced by the resources allocated to the New Opportunities Fund), and so additional resources will also be required.

7.8 Some policy initiatives should be especially directed towards those who are less inclined to participate in voluntary and community groups, or less well-placed to take advantage of them by virtue of their personal circumstances or locality. There is evidence that, against a background of generally increasing participation, there are wide variations between different social groups, with engagement in civil society at its lowest amongst the long-term unemployed. Many older people, especially those living alone are afraid to leave their homes; many who are poor simply cannot afford the financial costs of joining in. Those in remote or rural areas and those unable or disinclined to leave their own homes because of illness or disability will need increasingly to be reached using learner-friendly communications and information technology.(28)

7.9 All of this not only restricts participation, it also denies such people a chance to be heard. Paradoxically, it also reduces such people's access to precisely some of the groups and opportunities which might be of most practical use to them. Without specially designed and sensitive schemes, the most disaffected, isolated and least 'clubbable' in our society will be at risk of continuing to figure centrally amongst the most excluded.

7.10 Much of this kind of work takes time to take root and become self-sustaining. Success depends upon establishing trust, creating self-confidence and a sense of self-esteem amongst individuals and communities and establishing a reputation for delivering tangible benefits. Learning can undoubtedly help greatly with those objectives, but it requires also that resource allocation be made on the basis of input as well as output measures. Funding processes here are about investment for the future, and need to encourage an identifiable element of experiment and local innovation. Some of it is inevitably and necessarily risky business. Those engaged professionally to support community development and capacity building should not so often be engaged on short-term contracts, be at the margins of the mainstream or be resourced only or largely through transient funding. Such an approach will neither embed the benefits nor represent an effective use of money.

KR6 We recommend that government regard initiatives to support long-term and self-sustaining capacity building and community development as main planks of its strategy to promote lifelong learning, combat social exclusion and strengthen democracy in this countr y. To reflect this, government should take steps to coordinate and promote such initiatives which would:

• recognise the contribution to the success of this strategy to be made from a number of different departments of state;
• identify other key partners critical to its success, especially locally;
• include provision for outreach, publicity, information and guidance; in such initiatives
• engage representatives of those people intended to be the principal beneficiaries in the planning, delivery and evaluation of initiatives;
• ensure that those sources of funding over which government and other key partners have some influence give priority to such initiatives;
• be a major priority for local strategic partnerships; and
• figure in the periodic overviews of progress in lifelong learning which we have recommended the Secretary of State should undertake and publish.

SR14 The distribution of public funding from the Adult and Community Learning Fund, New Opportunities Fund and other sources, intended to support community development and capacity building should be guided by four main principles:

• the objectives and targets of all projects seeking funding should demonstrate that they will make a difference to people's lives and how this will be achieved;
• funded projects should be designed to include a series of multiplier effects, stimulating other parallel and contributory efforts and should include the development of successful innovatory methods and approach, establish benchmarks for good practice and have wider application;
• the objectives and performance indicators attached to elements of funding, or to a selection of funded projects, should recognise the longer timescale necessary to achieve change and embed new practices; and
• funding allocations should recognise and celebrate the diversity and range of adult and community learning initiatives.

SR15 In establishing priorities for the use of public funds, precedence should be given to:

• those individual learning schemes which are seeking to promote and model learning provision for volunteers and local community leaders;
• those schemes which provide group or 'unit' learning for voluntary and community organisations to develop the skills, procedures and capacities to handle their own affairs efficiently and with equity; and
• schemes which already manifest, or which have the ambition of successfully developing, partnership activity and, where practicable, partnership funding.

SR16 In the longer term, steps should be taken to:

• measure more effectively the range and impact of investment in adult and community learning, building on best practice;
• provide more detailed systematic information on lifelong learning and the level and nature of social capital and community activity in the UK;
• extend the stimulation of democratic, active and responsible citizenship to all communities, linking such a strategy to other devolution initiatives and to the commitment to embracing citizenship within the schools' curriculum;
• reward especially those initiatives, organisations and partnerships which demonstrate an ability to reach out to those currently less able or willing to participate in community activity or learning, by virtue of where they live, their personal and domestic circumstances or their attitudes; and
• ensure that access to and ability to use and benefit from the new technologies of communication and information are broadened in educational institutions, libraries, museums, shopping centres, places of work, community centres and public places. This should be a principal task for the University for Industry and a central purpose of the developing National Grid for Learning.