January. Traditionally a time for looking back on the year just past and looking forward to what might await us. But it is worth dwelling in the present, just for a moment.
The Young Foundation has a vision for a better-connected and fairer society. We focus on how we can build a less individualistic, more participatory way of thinking, organising and working to achieve that vision. Centring the needs, aspirations, priorities and concerns of communities at the heart of all we do. My overwhelming feeling is there has never has there been a more important time for this kind of work.
The increased attraction to authoritarian, chaotic, disruptive leaders that we see in the US and other democracies across the world, is partly driven by a deep dissatisfaction with where we find ourselves.
Same old story?
In some ways, we have been here before. The fascism we see and the anti-immigrant, racist and transphobic rhetoric (and now crushingly brought into force through presidential executive orders) are not new. The presence of extreme views and ideologues has always been with us. But the conflagration of these extreme views with big tech oligarchies capable of amplifying that rhetoric to insane proportions is new. At a geo-political level, the danger is very real. At a neighbourhood and community level, the danger is real -and has already taken shape and moved to action in many places.
But deep dissatisfaction with our many crises and challenges does not have to result in one, destructive ideology. Thinking and acting radically for change does not have to manifest in this way. Nor, as some historians tell us, is it inevitable. Radical change can be felt and enacted positively. It can mean choosing to work in fundamentally different ways; working more deeply with communities, enabling distinctive, more grass-roots innovations that resonate with people’s real lives and circumstances to seed and thrive. It means being bold in presenting new ideas that disrupt, but do not destruct. That embody the universal values of what it means to be a human being.
In the UK, and across the world, there is an ineffective approach to developing this new story for change. There is an impoverished narrative; seemingly tied to the belief that the political levers and policies at hand are sufficient for the scale of the danger and challenge we face.
Hard times
Here in the UK, we have a Chancellor with the grim task of negotiating increased borrowing, tax rises or spending cuts through a period of economic malaise. UK gilt prices have tumbled to 2008 levels, but those who remember may agree that this feels more like the 1970’s than the 2008 financial crisis. Despite the rallying cry of AI to drive public sector productivity, it is difficult to see how further cuts to the public sector would do anything more than entrench our many health and societal – and indeed economic – challenges.
We have some UK politicians, and ex-politicians, stoking discontent and dangerous rhetoric in ways that are more aligned to the populist trends we see in Austria, Hungary and the US. Across the world, there are democracies and state institutions that are being either deliberately dismantled or eroded through disinformation, conspiracy and promises of redemption and renewal through ‘non policies’ designed to capitalise on the search for an enemy in times of want, poverty and disadvantage.
Connect and create
The Young Foundation is not a party-political organisation. Working to connect and co-create policies, addressing community needs, and amplifying the challenges and opportunities in UK places, we spend most of our time with real people across the UK. People who are active in trying to make their neighbourhood or town a better place. People of all political stripes (and no stripes). People who are living, working and leading local efforts to build places, communities and local economies that point to a different way of navigating highly complex crises. Crises that hit the poorest, hardest; hit those already at a deep disadvantage, hardest.
The upswing in extreme, divisive rhetoric impacts them deeply. Impacts us all. Across the board, it breeds perniciously on fear and scarcity in more minds than we care to believe. Where deeply abnormal behaviour and rhetoric becomes normalised.
A call for care, respect and collective action
The tinder box is primed to ignite. As politicians talk of “alien cultures” – some hear an unspoken permission to take the law into their own hands to seek ‘retribution’ of some kind. This is where we find ourselves at the end of January 2025. Everything – from the UK’s health service to the economy, education system, living environment, and our society – is already experiencing huge challenges. And we face environmental crises that will likely dwarf any of this.
If we silently succumb to the efforts of those who work to increase distrust, stoke division and racism, then the scene is not only set, the ending is written.
But although fear and scarcity (of money, natural resources, jobs, opportunity, security) are real, the answer is not to locate an enemy who are themselves experiencing those same things – and often worse. The answer is found in things that are universally available. Care, respect, community and collective action.
‘Better together’
That is why The Young Foundation expends its efforts bringing people with different views, from different sectors, with different levers for change, together, to trial new ways of organising and innovating. It’s why we spend our time centring the voices and experiences of people who are at the sharpest end of the stick. It builds understanding, empathy, and action in others who would otherwise completely insulated. We are better together. Solutions and policies are better when they include more voices and experiences.
Across the UK, we do have different experiences, perspectives, backgrounds. There are disagreements, conflicting views, prejudices and biases in every community. There is both good and bad in every corner. And the work to devise policies and practices that navigate our many challenges is hard.
We can only effectively reconcile those things and build a different kind of future by coming together, not falling apart; where there is participation of more people, communities and institutional actors in collective problem-solving and collective action.
I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal, painting pictures of rainbows and unicorns (as I was once accused of on stage). But I know what side of the fence I sit on when it divides people who have a sense of care, respect and community as pillars of a functioning society and political economy – and those who don’t.
In 2025, The Young Foundation will steadfastly continue its work, apolitically, to build community and sector-spanning participation to tackle local and national challenges.
And we’ll do that together. Better to light a candle, than curse the darkness.
Climate change Community Community needs & priorities Economic precarity Local government & public services Places Posted on: 29 January 2025 Authors: Helen Goulden OBE,