Five weeks ago, having been inspired by the Whidbey Island Facebook Community, a Shropshire mum started a Facebook group called Shropshire Rocks. The group founder hoped to encourage people to paint rocks and stones and then hide them across the county for other people to find. Within days, photos of hundreds of colourful rocks were posted in the Shropshire Rocks Facebook group and just over one month after it was set up, the Shropshire painted rock community now boasts 21,362 members. Hundreds of children have been enjoying decorating and hiding the rocks with their parents during the summer holiday period. Parents are posting messages of thanks to the group founder – one parent commenting that the activity motivated one of their children who doesn’t like to leave the house to get out into the sunshine.
The Shropshire Rocks activities seem to have lots of potential positive outcomes including; encouraging young people to be creative, encouraging young people away from screens, increasing footfall to local beauty spots, providing opportunity for parents and children to play together, helping children develop curiosity and encouraging children to share – giving someone a gift that they don’t even know. Over the past few weeks, we’ve also enjoyed decorating, hiding and searching for rocks with our children, and it got me thinking – Why don’t the public sector knock down the door of the Shropshire Rocks founder to learn more about how she has managed to pull it off?
The default position for the public sector is to look at things through a public sector lens – focusing on risks to citizens and potential nuisance that groups might cause – painting rocks with the wrong type of paint or leaving rocks in inappropriate places. Of course, these are valid considerations, but I can’t help feeling that it rather misses the point.
The public sector is currently facing a range of tricky social challenges against a backdrop of greatly reduced budgets. Now is the time to break down the walls that separate organisations and engage with citizen change-makers and citizen activists in order to create networks for social change that transcend sectors and bring creative solutions to tricky social challenges such as childhood obesity, diabetes and reliance on food banks.
Social media platforms allow activists to find their important first follower and rapidly grow a cohesive group. Movements like #RiotCleanup and more recently the #HelpGrenfell campaign prove that citizens are able to mobilize themselves without the paternalistic influence of the public sector and are doing so more frequently and more effectively than ever before. Often, the causes they support and champion improve social outcomes and health outcomes and are undoubtedly beneficial to society as a whole.
There is a lot of really great work being done by dedicated people working across the public sector, but it could be made easier. The public sector can learn from these types of social movement; not by trying to control them, take them over or shut them down, but working with them and supporting them (both directly and indirectly). I would suggest that mobilising over 20,000 followers to improve the health of children in just five weeks is something that local authorities and local health trusts can only dream about – so why wouldn’t they want to learn from the experts?
Simon Penny 