Week Five Action: Spot the Story
To ease yourself in, you can start by just noticing.
Look around you. Every single day, we’re bombarded with messages that condition us to think of ourselves as consumers: independent and self-contained individuals rather than interdependent social beings. And we’re not just talking about adverts for the latest smartphone. When a local council has a “customer service hotline”, or a political campaign is only interested in harvesting clicks, it’s pushing us deeper into the “Consumer Story”. It’s sadly all too rare for organisations to speak to us like Citizens: people with something to offer beyond our money, votes or eyeballs.
By playing “Spot the Story”, you can tune into where the Citizen Story is emerging and where the Consumer Story is getting in the way of more lasting and substantial change.
If you read Ethos, there’s a good chance that you are already actively involved in making the world a better place. Perhaps you work at (or own!) an ethical business, or are involved in supporting a community project or campaign. Whatever your “good thing” is, take a fresh look at it and ask:
Is this “good thing” making positive change WITH people, or FOR people?
What kind of language does it use? Does that language speak to people as active citizens, or passive consumers?
How could this “good thing” become even better by involving more (and more diverse) people in more ways - speaking to them differently, and tapping into their skills, passion, empathy and ideas?
To understand more about what the “Citizen Story” looks like in practice, check out things like Better Reykjavik, where a city government treats citizens like collaborators and not just customers; Patagonia Action Works, where an ethical brand goes beyond selling and actually helps customers connect with environmental action groups; and Camerados, a movement that helps people manage tough times by getting together and looking out for each other, rather than trying to “fix” people.
And do get in touch with your own examples!
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A note from New Citizenship Project:
Taking small, positive actions in our individual lives is vital, but nothing beats joining forces with others, tapping into our collective power and being amazed at what we can achieve together. Indeed, the first step to truly changing the world is simply recognising that people really do want to - and can! - shape the things that matter to us for the better.
That’s not always the story we’re told, but it’s a story that’s growing in power, day by day. By having faith in humanity, locating where we personally have influence, finding other people who care about the same things, and figuring out with them how we’re going to get started, we can all step into our own “Citizen Story” and shake off the “Consumer Story” that holds us back.
To do this, however, we need to build up our “participatory muscle”. So, over the month of February, the team at New Citizenship Project is offering our own version of a “Couch to 5K" for active citizenship!
