Time for a brighter outlook?

I wasn’t surprised by the findings of SCVO’s Scotland’s Future survey undertaken this summer – they echo my experience of the lack of inspirational debate and poor engagement with the changes our decision next year could open up. I’ve remained very much on the periphery of these discussions, having long ago grown disillusioned with the petty point scoring of party politics which feels wasteful and has little impact on the massive ‘wicked issues’ we could be addressing. I sincerely hope the conversation around our future doesn’t suffer from the same, but unfortunately so far it feels like it has. While it’s important that we aren’t naive or don’t deny the very powerful factions involved in this debate, it is my intense hope we can think beyond these limited perspectives, and the associated squabbles, and explore what we want. What I long for is to use this historical opportunity to fully consider Scotland’s future.

• As a country, what’s important to us?
• What is our vision?
• How can we get there?
• What needs to be in place?
• What needs to change?

These are huge, exciting questions to me, which I don’t think we need to feel intimidated by. There are many clues to the potential answers already. It’s a matter of joining them up. Here are a few examples:

• As a country we have historically consistently rejected Conservative policy and social injustice.
• The Postcards From Scotland series published by Argyll Publishing and the Centre for Confidence and Well-being was designed to stimulate and communicate new thinking and new ways of living. Let’s use these potentially powerful materials to help us explore our vision.
• The launch of The Common Weal and its intention to become an online speaker’s corner to explore our priorities and publish papers on the key areas it is important we explore.
• An assets-based approach is much talked about. How about using this approach of valuing positive capacities, skills, knowledge and connections to build our future?
• Scotland’s Poverty Truth Commission offers up some powerful challenges to us on how we could tackle poverty together. Their motto ‘Nothing about us without us is for us’ provides a baseline from which our exploration needs to be happening if it’s to be meaningful.

I believe that as a sector it’s important we support engagement with this historic opportunity. For me, claims of neutrality are passive acceptance of the status quo. Yes it can be challenging to engage folk when they may have disengaged, not felt valued when they have engaged or never felt engaged. There are lots of tools out there, and with some time, people and resources we could get folk imaging their vision of Scotland’s future through the use of things like ‘wish webs’. Let’s share what our hopes for ourselves, our families, our communities and our country are. Then let’s see how best we can deliver.