How ‘The Power to Convene’ can transform Transition
I had seen it in lots of different places. I’d seen it in the 30 people who turned out to plant nut trees on a grey Sunday morning in Totnes. I’d seen it in Liege in Belgium, where representatives of many local organisations had come to an event to discuss creating a ‘Food Belt’ around the city. I’d seen it at the launch of the Brixton Pound, in a hall packed with local traders. What I didn’t have was a name for it.
It was in a small sideroom at the Resilience Hub in Portland, Maine, that I first heard the term ‘The Power to Convene’. It fascinated me, and finally gave me a name for this thing I’d been seeing for years. I was doing an interview with Chuck Collins of the fantastic Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition (JPNET) group. “One thing we have”, he told me, “is the ‘Power to Convene’”. He continued:
“Somebody comes and has a great idea, such as “I really want to start a bicycle taxi business”, and young people who are graduates of a local bike mechanic programme say “we know how to take care of bikes, we’d like to start a business.
So we pulled together a community event, and got 70 people there who were interested, and we got a whole bunch of new stakeholders and allies, and now they have a working group and are working on setting up that business. I think we just keep doing that in every area where there is both a problem and people who want to do something about it. We can get a crowd together, help identify resources and spark them”.
‘The Power to Convene’ put a beautiful, succinct term to something you will no doubt recognise. We’ve noticed more and more groups working in this way and exploring the potential of their own, place-based, ‘Power to Convene’. We see it in different forms:
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