Stories from communities across the United Kingdom where people are discovering the power of connection.
Review of: Friends and Purpose by Maff Potts and Victoria Herriman.
Reviewed by: Simon Duffy.
Maff Potts’ book is brilliant: moving, accessible and on the money - although life is not about the money - it’s about friends and purpose.
I always worry when I’m about to start reading something written by a friend that I might be a bit disappointed. But Maff’s book does something that I’d have thought impossible. He strikes a perfect balance between the human and the theoretical. He describes the ethos, principles and evolution of the Camerados movement in lovely short chapters, interwoven with chapters based on Maff’s visits, with his rolling Public Living Room, to different parts of the UK.
The writing about people is wonderful, although each chapter is lightly sketched, it offers a wonderful kaleidoscope of all the different folk who live in our cities, towns and villages. The characters jump off the page. Some of the people Maff describes might attract some of the heavier labels used by our service system. They may be people who are struggling with trauma, homelessness, racism, poverty or bereavement, but they are revealed as real human beings, not labels, not sob stories. People with gifts—seen and unseen. People with rich, complex lives. People, like us.
The title of the book contains two of its most important ideas.
People need people, friends, love, relationships, connections. We have many words and subtle distinctions we can make about the people in our lives, but what is fundamental is that we need each other. In Everyday Citizenship, Wendy Perez and I talk about Love as the 7th and final key to citizenship: the one that emerges from all the others, but also the one that precedes all the others. There’s a reason why it is at the top of my little Keys infographic.
People need purpose, meaning, a sense of direction, dreams, plans or a sense of peace. Again, there are many subtleties, but there is no doubt that purpose is central to our ability to live well. Wendy and I call it Meaning, and we put it right at the heart of our theory of citizenship, because if what lacks meaning, then it is empty and worthless. This is where the dark gets in.
However, the book is not a guide to getting Friends or Purpose for yourself, nor is it a guide to helping other people find Friends and Purpose; instead, the book asks us to rethink how we live together as human beings in the light of what really matters.
Given thousands of years of welfare, healthcare, charity and education, I think these principles are about as radical as you can imagine.
Of course, Maff is not claiming that these principles exhaust the ways we can show love to each other, but they reset our expectations in a way which seems to be beautifully humble, egalitarian and human. They restore to the relationships we have with each other a sense of ease, fun and simplicity. Hence the Public Living Room—a space where you can just be, alongside others—a space where you may catch a little wind in your sails and set off with some more hope and confidence.
One of the other things I love about Camerados is how beautifully designed it is as a social innovation. At one level, Maff and his team are almost like Performance Artists or clowns - challenging our expectations and offering us a different way to think about things. But at the same time, anyone can set up a Public Living Room, call it that or not, be part of the movement, or not. It is a generous way to inspire social change with no commodification, but a very nice badge.
It is no surprise that Maff’s work has been informed by many years of action in the system at different levels, including some very senior levels. Maff has peeked behind the curtain of the Wizard of Oz, he has even operated some of the machinery. He has a wide array of amazing friends and experiences to call upon and the courage to challenge what is broken in the system.
Many of us are getting very tired of all the poorly founded assumptions that sit behind the Charity System, the Foundations and the Poverty Industry. Given that the last 50 years have seen growing social injustice, inequality and deprivation, it is very hard to take seriously the sense of self-importance that the system exudes. But Maff, with great grace and humour, shows how things could be different.
This is a book for anyone doing the work of care or help. It is a book for anyone who is concerned with social justice. It is for anyone worried about the decline in the social fabric of the UK. It is a book full of hope and encouragement that asks us to turn up, in whatever we are doing, as a real human being, not in a job role, and to start by simply sitting down, having a cup of tea, a biscuit and a chat.
Discover more about Camerados, visit: https://camerados.org
Note: I am pleased to say I’ve managed to complete this whole review without mentioning the difficult question of whether a Fig Roll is or is not a biscuit. Although Maff disagrees, I'm certain it is.
The Publisher is Gometra. Friends and Purpose: © Maff Potts and Victoria Herriman
Review: Friends and Purpose © Simon Duffy 2025
community, faith & creativity, Need for Roots, Neighbourhood Care, politics, social justice, England, Books
