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PART I:
SEEING OUR POTENTIAL
The absolute precondition for the Citizen Story is belief in ourselves and in human nature as creative, capable, and caring, rather than lazy, self-interested, and competitive within a zero-sum framework. Any attempt to redesign our institutions will fail if we haven’t embraced this fundamental belief.
There’s a moment that occurs often in the work of the New Citizenship Project, when a veil drops. It’s the moment in which a client sees for the first time how the idea of the Consumer infuses their everyday life, at work and at home, how in so many ways they live and breathe and embody the Consumer Story; and at the same time recognise it doesn’t have to be that way. That they could just as easily step into a bigger idea of themselves and those around them – colleagues, customers, suppliers, friends and family, everyone – as Citizens. Because despite the dominance of the Consumer, all the ingredients for Citizenship are right there, innate, waiting for activation. This is who we all are, intrinsically.
40This moment comes as a revelation, a word I use despite or perhaps in part because of its religious associations. A revelation heralds more than new knowledge or evidence, more than just a realisation of what is not yet known. When we experience a revelation, our whole perspective shifts; everything changes, because we change. We see with new eyes.
To embrace the Citizen is in some ways a simple shift. When the veil drops, when the scales fall from the eyes, they fall in a moment; the world changes in an instant. Yet acknowledging the Citizen in ourselves is often easier said than done. It bucks the prevailing wisdom that would have us believe that humans are lazy, greedy, self-centred, and apathetic; that we can’t be trusted to do anything but mess things up further. It risks being judged naïve or unrealistic. And once embraced, the Citizen also mandates that we become active instead of passive, that we commit rather than complain, that we expand empathy rather than sink into apathy.
To see and believe in our power, our agency, doesn’t mean we are anarchists or libertarians who disregard the role of government and other institutions; nor do we hold ourselves to be masters of the universe or knights in shining armour. It is to acknowledge the inherent worth and potential and power of every one of us to contribute what we each uniquely have to offer, just as all the lifeforms in an ecosystem have a vital role to play. To accept that all of us are always smarter than any one of us. To trust ourselves and each other.
In this section I introduce Immy, Bianca, Kennedy, Reen, and Billy as five emblematic Citizens. At first glance they will seem 41like ordinary, normal people. Nothing special. Indeed, that is the point. While each is doing exceptional work in their communities, their societies, even in the world, they are far from the exception. Every day millions upon millions of small acts of generosity and humanity and art take place all over the world, proving that a different story of ourselves is not just possible, it’s most definitely here. When we open our eyes to the number of Citizens who are working to reimagine and rebuild the world, we start to see what’s possible, and who we are capable of being.
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1. CITIZENS EVERYWHERE
IMMY
Birmingham, England
I don’t have to know Imandeep ‘Immy’ Kaur for long before I become ‘bab,’ a local term of endearment that translates best somewhere between ‘love’ and ‘mate.’ It’s not a superficial expression. Immy really cares – for the work she does, and for the people with and for whom she does it – and is not afraid to show it. This might make her uncool, when cool is measured by the telltale shrug of the shoulders and not giving a shit about anyone or anything. Immy’s brand of cool is being on fire to help others. She makes me (everyone) care too; her attitude and sheer depth of feeling is seriously infectious.
It’s all the more impressive when I consider her environs. We might expect this generosity of spirit in a small town, but Birmingham is a big city, Britain’s second biggest by population, the 43only one other than London with over a million residents. It’s industrial, rough and gritty, prey to the same fate as industrial cities across much of the West: as British manufacturing declined in the 1970s and 80s, so did Birmingham. It was left unloved, and, following a classic ‘brain drain’ dynamic, its brightest talents tended to leave for better prospects in London or elsewhere. ‘You were raised to believe Birmingham was a bit shit and you were embarrassed to be from there,’ according to Immy.
Much of Immy’s commitment stems from her faith. As her turban and her name indicate (all female Sikhs take the name Kaur, meaning ‘princess,’ just as all male Sikhs bear the name Singh or ‘lion’), Immy is a Sikh. Sikhism has at its core the principle of Sarbat da Bhalla, uplifting and ensuring prosperity of all. It teaches rejection of egotism, a compulsion to share, and an obligation of service to others for the benefit of the community.
Sikhism is a new religion, relatively speaking, that sprang up in the 1600s in the Indian state of Punjab out of frustration with the constant warfare between Muslims and Hindus, instead espousing tolerance and peace. On the celebration of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, Sikhs remember Bandi Chorr (‘prison release’), when in 1619 a Sikh guru was offered freedom from his imprisonment in the Mughal Emperor’s fort. The guru agreed, but only upon the condition that the other prisoners – all Hindus, all political prisoners/prisoners of conscience – be released as well. The lesson: we can accept and embrace our individual freedom only with the freedom of others, even when they consider themselves our enemies.
44Sikhism has often met with intolerance in India since its emergence. In the aftermath of crackdowns in the 1970s, economic deprivation led to a wave of migration. This brought Immy’s parents to Birmingham, where they met. Facing a new onslaught of intolerance as brown people in 20th Century Britain, they began to make a home, and Immy was born.
The quintessential offspring of South Asian immigrants, Immy worked hard and succeeded at school, and was doing the same at university when misfortune struck her family. Her masi – which we translate as aunt but literally means ‘like your mother’ – was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The family gathered at her bedside for the last weeks of her life. Immy’s grief was overwhelming: ‘It was the first time I felt real real grief, like you’ve been punched and you can’t breathe or think or be.’
Thrown by the loss, Immy deferred her studies for a year and travelled to the Punjab, becoming a volunteer aid worker. The experience of reconnecting with her roots – the rich heritage of growing food together, caring for and sharing with each other – started a change in her. Until this time, she had thought of her family’s intense connection and traditions as slightly shameful, something that made her odd. Now she began to see that these constituted, in her words, ‘a superpower.’ She enrolled in a new programme back in Britain: a Masters in International Development, with a major fieldwork component. She thought it would be the best of all worlds: a way to continue her community work in the Punjab while gaining a degree, splitting her time between immediate family and deeper roots.
During her studies, Immy was awarded a fellowship with the 45Tony Blair Faith Foundation in London. But her disillusionment with the field of international development was growing: for all the positives of the experience, the opportunities and the learning, what became unavoidably apparent to her was the underlying saviour complex, the perpetuation of the colonial dynamics between those who had exploited and those who were dealing with the impacts of that. Immy’s next job – working with a housing association in Birmingham that aimed to provide affordable housing – furthered her rude awakening. Again Immy came up against rigid structures that prioritised gains for the people at the top of the organisation’s hierarchy as opposed to truly solving the very real – brutally real – issues of rising rents, mercurial landlords, insufficient affordable housing, looming homelessness and constant insecurity. It was a traumatic realisation to understand that these organisations that were supposed to care often did not – could not – actually care.
‘People who really care are just not resourced at all,’ Immy observes. ‘The people close enough to act and really provide support aren’t given the opportunity to affect or even see the bigger systems they’re working in.’
Rather than give up, however, the embers inside her were stoked to a furious flame.
In 2011, Birmingham joined the ranks of cities worldwide offering a TEDx conference – the distributive model that allows volunteers to apply for a free licence to host a local offshoot of the famous platform for ‘ideas worth spreading.’ An ostensibly ‘Technology Entertainment Design’-focused conference might not seem like something an aid worker with a social justice focus 46would embrace, but after a chance meeting with Anneka Deva, the young activist who organised that first event, Immy was intrigued and signed up as a volunteer. Her pride and passion for Birmingham – Brum, as it’s affectionately termed, hence TEDxBrum – blossomed with the experience. ‘I learned for the first time,’ she reflects, ‘that you can just make what you want to see. That people can do that.’
Soon she would take over the role of Curator (still a volunteer position, if a hefty responsibility, which she accomplished alongside her day job at the housing association). The event was even luring home a handful of Brummie natives who’d left to chase the bright lights in London, a phenomenon elsewhere called ‘boomerangs’21 – and they joined the team too. The line-up she and the team put together in 2013 under the theme of ‘Marking the Map’ included a rich mix of spoken word artists, community organisers, educators, and designers.
One of those in the audience at TEDxBrum in 2013 was Indy Johar, a renegade architect and thinker, and fellow Sikh, 11 years Immy’s senior. Indy had founded an organisation called Dark Matter Labs as an architecture-practice-meets-think-tank- meets-innovation-consultancy (my summary) when he realised that the kind of housing projects he wanted to develop – projects that prized community and human connection – were virtually impossible within the framework of contemporary property rights. This is an example of the archetypal ‘dark matter’ that the organisation’s name invokes: the structures and assumptions which sit below the surface and shape what is possible; the need for architecture of human systems not just physical buildings.
47Indy saw that the organisers of TEDxBrum were onto something, and he made sure not to leave without finding Immy. They became instant friends. Soon after, in typically direct fashion, he confronted her. ‘“What are you wasting your time for, doing this job you don’t believe in, working within all those restrictions?” he said,’ Immy remembers. ‘He was telling me, like ordering me “You need to be doing this work full-time. This is what you’re here for, you know that.” He didn’t know what it meant, or have anything specific. I didn’t either.’
What she did know was that, as much as she was enjoying TEDxBrum, a one-day event wasn’t sufficient to revitalise and sustain her beloved city. ‘We soon realised that ideas weren’t enough, one day a year wasn’t enough, volunteering alone wasn’t enough, and not having a sustainable revenue generation through TEDx events, would eventually mean the energy would run out as other pressures were faced by the team…. It was then we realised it was crucial to build something more long term, a more permanent way to showcase possibility, build, create, prototype and scale solutions as we worked on the pressing challenges facing our city.’
Inspired by Indy, Immy set out on a new mission, to bring another kind of franchise to Birmingham, but this time one that would achieve a constant, ongoing presence: Impact Hub Birmingham. Impact Hubs, at a nuts-and-bolts level, are co-working spaces for social entrepreneurs. They pioneered the idea of hosting, where rather than simply offering that standard co-working benefit of ‘resource efficiency’ – sharing a receptionist, copy machine, and coffee machine – individuals 48and organisations using these spaces would be provided with opportunities to come together, socially and professionally, to learn from and spark off one another’s work. ‘Serendipity engines,’ per Immy and Indy. Not unlike TEDx conferences, the organisation runs on a distributed model whereby – after a peer review process – almost anyone can establish one.
Immy wanted the Hub not just to gather organisations that wanted to make the world a better place; she intended to convene those who would make it actually happen, right there in Birmingham, to change the city. This would be articulated to funders and supporters as Mission Birmingham; the founders and the community refer to it as #EpicBrum.
The team came together quickly, many of them the same crew that had delivered TEDxBrum and shared Immy’s desire to do more. Then came the space, and the crowdfunder. With no real indication they could fundraise the amount required, the team committed to a five year lease on a warehouse a ten minute walk from the city centre.
When I went to visit for the first time three years on, in the middle of 2018, the place was buzzing. A wall of mugs greeted me on entry, performing a dual function as an in/out board – if someone’s in the space, they take their mug, and when they go, they wash and hang it up. Coffee played a crucial role, with a barista-standard machine open for all to use, with regular training sessions to equip newcomers. It felt like something between a high school tech lab and an office, with self-made desks, a 3D printer, and graphic recordings of recent events all over the walls. Outside, too, I could sense the impact the Hub had made on the 49surrounding area. Cafes and bars were opening amidst the shells of bingo halls and weed-strewn car parks.
This do-it-yourself vibe clearly set the tone for the #EpicBrum work that took place in the space: among over a hundred individual members, each working on their own initiatives to better the city, were some real showstopping collaborations. Democratising Development, or #DemoDev, has won several major awards for opening up local authority data to help identify spaces for smallscale, citizen-led, decentralised housebuilding – rather than any development requiring big spaces and major companies. Birmingham is now something of an outlier in a country with a major housing shortage, a success to which #DemoDev has made a significant contribution. The Radical Childcare project, which was born out of the idea of one member to create a shared, on-site creche for the community, has grown into a parent-led and -developed policy campaign, and spawned similar experiments across the country.
Yet as the end of their five-year lease approached, the landlords, who had never really engaged with the mission, decided to...
