A report exploring how local leaders influence the interaction of civil society to generate action toward inclusion and sustainability.
Authors: John O'Brien and David Towell
With support from the Barrow Cadbury Trust in 2009, the authors were able to test straightforward methods of fostering productive local conversations about sustainability and inclusion in two English Counties. The authors had local assistance in bringing a cross-section of citizens together to share their perceptions and ideas about community and they had the opportunity to help some of these participants and local government officials identify possibilities for grounded action.
The authors were also able to bring local participants together with national policy leaders to extend these conversations and draw out some implications for central/local efforts to build community.
This initiative is modest in its scale but this report offers ideas on promising ways of generating conversations which matter and reports insights about building better communities. Most importantly, this paper forms an invitation to other local leaders to extend these conversations and start new ones to strengthen our capacity as citizens working together to address the profound challenges for people and the planet in the years to come.
The publisher is the Centre for Inclusive Futures.
An invitation - Conversations about building sustainable & inclusive communities © John O'Brien and David Towell 2010.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this paper may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher except for the quotation of brief passages in reviews.
