This year we've been working on many place-based and local initiatives throughout Ireland. Late night drives through country roads offer much opportunity to think and reflect. On what is and what isn't; what could and couldn't be. Resources, opportunities and ambitions might differ from place to place; often substantially so. But the committment and drive for change seldom does.
But where does change have its beginning? What do we need to know to engage with in a process of change? Who has the relevant knowledge of a place? Who has the power of a place? Who engages or participates and what are their motives for doing or not doing? Who might win or who might lose?
All important questions worth asking. Their answers, if offered, reveal much.
"In order to do something big, to think globally and act globally, one starts with something small and starts where it counts. Practice, then, is about making the ordinary special and the special more widely accessible—expanding the boundaries of understanding and possibility with vision and common sense. It is about building densely interconnected networks, crafting linkages between unlikely partners and organizations, and making plans without the usual preponderance of planning. It is about getting it right for now and at the same time being tactical and strategic about later".
— NABEEL HAMDI, Professor Emeritus, Oxford Brookes University
More eminent good sense from Professor Hamdi here