By Richard McKeever
Today Community Links hosted a visit from Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne MP along with Professor Amitai Etzioni. The renowned sociologist famed for his work on Communitarianism
Last night professor Etzioni addresses a meeting at the RSA and had dinner at No.10. Today he travelled to Canning Town for meetings with Community Links frontline staff and a small group of our friends from community organisations, business and local government. We discussed community participation; the role of community in relation to public services and the impact of globalisation.
For such a diverse group there was wide agreement amongst those present from across the different sectors that the things needed for most effective engagement are trust and confidence.
You can view photographs of the meeting here and watch a short video of the concluding remarks here.
Richard – thanks to you and all at Community Links for such a useful get-together. What I picked up was Liam saying what we all know – there won’t be money around for public services at the same levels as the last few years. Then – it’s not just about shuffling a smaller budget around existing players and ways of doing things, but doing it differently. But who is going to face up to that, tell the story honestly, broker some new ideas? Community Links and Chain Reaction is well placed.