Presentation by Luiza Morris-Warren and Grace Kempster

1. What it means to be a catalyst
council – our journey so far
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Grace Kempster
Customer and Libraries Manager, Customers
and Communities
Luiza Morris-Warren
Strategic Planning Officer, Business
Improvement and Performance
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2. The model
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8 features;5 delineators;6 success factors
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3. CATALYST
• Climate setter
• Acuity
• Trust
• Alliance builder
• Letting go
• You
• Sustainability
• Tapering
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4. Climate setter
• Sets the conditions for facilitating
communities to help themselves and each
other
• Sets the expectation of self reliance and the
commonality of inventiveness and innovation
• Sets the ambition of targetted deliberate
intervention so the outcome is “they did it
themselves”
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5. Acuity
• “acuteness or clearness of vision”
• Using deep insight and understanding to
judge the required intervention
• Knowing how far and how fast to go
• Evidence based approach with clear
intervention and expectation of outcome
• Vital ingredient to retain close understanding
and clear sightedness of the county’s
communities
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6. Trust
• Trusting people to come up with their own
best solutions
• Underlying belief in and respect for others
• Faith in what people might become, their
resilience and goodness
• Trust as preferred organisational style
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7. • Brings together the right ingredients for
success
• Understand that all the elements in the right
quantity and timing are needed for the
chemical chain reaction to work
• Demonstrates a wider connectedness and
forges excellent and mature partnership
working
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Alliance builder
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8. Letting go
• Got to give up power to empower – and
empowerment has to be accepted
• Courage to see things as they could be not as
they are
• Underpinning long term view
• Replacing professional superiority with
creative insight and focussed intervention
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9. You
• All public service effort seen as with you not
done to you
• Whole effort is on success – for you, your
family, your community
• Focus on your resilience, your latent talent
• Involvement is a continuum that grows and
deepens
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10. Sustainability
• Builds in resilience and strength
• Strong principles of self regulation
• Timely intervention to re-start the reaction
• Understanding the principles of oscillation in
community life
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11. Tapering
• Support and investment with the end in mind
• Commitment to the tapering down of state
and tapering up of communiities
• Dealing with dependancy
• Stopping well
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12. A catalyst council is NOT
• Patronising
• Our world not yours: focussed on itself rather
than its impact
• Words only: delays and give lip service to
letting go in particular
• Effortless or easy : recognises the role is not
simplistic or naïve
• Risk averse: rather risk managed and launch
and learn approach
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13. IMPACT critical success factors
• Ingenuity – forges cunning alliances and
connections
• Moderator role is strong with deep listening and
insights the success of others
• Pace – excellence in the timing of interventions
• Action oriented
• Collaborative – ace at connections management
• Tough on those who won’t let go
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14. We have challenges
• Flexible working and creative thinking to meet
financial restrictions
• Ready to learn from others
• Evaluating what works and what needs
improving
• Valuing everyone’s contribution
• Putting our customers needs and aspirations
at the forefront of all we do
• Holding fast to the model
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15. Libraries and communities
What works?
The role of libraries in developing
social capital
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16. ‘Know your customers’ or ‘Know
your community’?
• A survey carried out by the Carnegie UK Trust shows that
while 47% of respondents in England find libraries essential or
very important to themselves, 74% consider them essential
or very important to the community
• How many people use the library and for what?
• What does our community values, needs, aspires to, expects
from a library service?
• Community = individuals + infrastructure + social capital
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17. Libraries and communities
• Community involvement in
libraries
• independent community
libraries
• community managed libraries
• community supported
libraries
• commissioned libraries
• volunteers running/
supporting libraries
• Libraries involvement in
the community
• provide the best possible
service to the local
community in an appropriate
way, which shows an in-depth
understanding of community
make up and needs
• different libraries for different
communities
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18. Libraries and social capital
• Social Capital = the totality of networks, social interactions and
opportunities for involvement which exist within a community,
based on reciprocity and an interest in mutual development, and
development of the socio-cultural and economic environment
• Different things to different people
• Takes different shapes in different communities
• Library use is significantly associated with community involvement
(University of Western Ontario, Canada)
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19. Why are libraries ideally
placed to develop social
capital?
-a safe and welcoming
environment
-trusted professionals
-a ‘neutral’ setting (people don’t
associate libraries with the local
authority in the way they might
do social services or highways
services)
-technological skills
-people from different socio-
economic backgrounds
-customers of all ages
-non-judgemental or
discriminatory environment
-wide range of information and
activities attracting a wide variety
of customers
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20. The role of libraries
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• affluent community, with high levels of social involvement and adequate
infrastructure in place
• the residents have the skills and time required to self-organise, identify
and meet need
• apt at organising themselves and putting in place the right measures to
develop and maintain social capital
Community
hub
• deprived communities, with high numbers of transient residents and low
levels of involvement in charitable and volunteering activities, usually
with inadequate or insufficiently exploited assets
• set the scene and provide the practical support
• heavily reliant on big organisations delivering services on behalf of the
local authority, with little input in terms of developing skills and resilience
Community
catalyst
• new and emerging communities
• emerging networks and relationships in the absence of existing
infrastructure, and significant opportunities for self-governance
• more innovative approaches to networking and addressing needs, and
they tend to take the shape of social media fora, created around need or
interest, rather than location alone
Community
facilitator
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21. The role of the librarian
• ‘I believe community involvement is as much a competency for the
library profession as literacy instruction or information retrieval’
• Become an active member –or even a leader– in your community
(e.i., your arts community)
• Long-term, being a leader in your arts community is the most
efficient, rewarding, and all-around beneficial way for a librarian to
position themselves to provide excellent programming services to
their community
(The ‘Library As Incubator Project’, USA -
http://www.libraryasincubatorproject.org)
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22. • village community
• group of youths
• intimidating, anti-social
behaviour
• reduced visits
• reduced activities
• circumstances change
naturally
• negative impact:
segregation
The library delivering change:
• small town community
• group of youths
• disruptive, unsafe
• risk of impact on visits and
activities
• Youth corner
• problem as opportunity
• positive impact: cohesion,
participation, inclusion
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The library affected by
change:
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“In times of change, it is the learners who will inherit
the earth, while the
learned will find themselves beautifully equipped for
a world that no longer exists.
Libraries are for learners.”
(Al Rogers – a pioneer of the use of computing in education,
quoted in Learning from experience: guiding principles for local
authorities, For Arts Council England and Local Government
Association, January 2013)
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