Within our Theory of Change are a range of portfolios, programmes, activities, scales and granularities of work we aim to focus on. It doesn’t necessarily cover the wider societal factors that influence these layers and which it interacts with, but seeks to be specific to CIVIC SQUARE’s work. It recognises these layers as pathways to working alongside a wider ecosystem, focused on the other layers of deep transitional change whilst playing a key focused role in that.
A Theory of Change is essentially a comprehensive visualisation of how and why a desired change is expected to happen in a given context. It is inherently never enough, but often gives us a ‘big picture’, perhaps a roadmap, or scaffolding for the work ahead. For us it is driven by continuous iteration, evolutionary learning, and many adjacent possibilities, not a fixed idealised tool to lock us in. It would be accompanied by a range of pathways, tools, and ways of working to build out and create. One such example would be logic models. Whilst the Theory of Change tends to work at a strategic level, logic models work at the programme or activity level to illustrate and map out a change, learning and innovation process. It zooms in at a microscopic level to pathways within the Theory of Change. This is supported by many things at the same time, organisational leadership, wider context, new leverage points, constructions of portfolios and more. This sits alongside wider vision and bold ambitions of CIVIC SQUARE.
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CIVIC SQUARE’s v2.0 Theory of Change is formed by bringing together a full stack into a purposeful whole to create a meaningful, multi-layered strategy for building long-term civic and social infrastructure. This sets us up to enable a systemic shift of outcomes at the scale of the neighbourhood through a range of mutually supportive work, unfolding over time. Each layer is expressed clearly and simply, with a range of activity, yet deeply recognises interdependence and involvement of complex, interconnected, overlapping matters that can only be addressed by looking at the issues in context, rather than in isolation.
Deeper Dive Into Our Theory Of Change:
1 / Convivial Anchor for the Neighbourhood
2 / Neighbourhood Regenerative Economics Lab
3 / Creative + Participatory Ecosystem
This latest iteration of our Theory of Change also expresses and emphasises means to give form to these layers and put our principles and intentions into practice in how we design them together, something that can be discovered in full in the next ‣ Section.
Together**,** these approaches builds a living proof case, showing how a combination of connected, thoughtful, embedded approaches at the neighbourhood scale can make an impact, build resilience and new pathways through the challenges ahead. They build on and contribute to a growing global movement, and shifts discourse, debate, and practice on what could be possible, when we work and build at multiple layers, embracing complexity and our deep challenges.
Design matters is, therefore, another lens through which to express our Theory of Change: the labour of the transition at a neighbourhood level is working with the ordinary matter, in an everyday extraordinary way through the dream matter of the imagination and futures, as well as the dark matter systemic interventions to make change and giving it form; the regular, material designing of things that effect everyday practice change, as well as the deeper and bolder layers.
This is beautifully described in Sitting With Illegibility:
"These attempts to make the illegible legible is not surprising — complex challenges are, by their nature, uncomfortable. However, what governments tend to do when confronted by complex challenges is to deny their complexity, and attempt to make them legible", James C Scott explains.
“No administrative system is capable of representing any existing social community except through a heroic and greatly schematised process of abstraction and simplification. It is not simply a question of capacity, although, like a forest, a human community is surely far too complicated and variable to easily yield its secrets to bureaucratic formulae.”
The (il)logic of legibility: why governments should stop simplifying complex systems
Following through with such an ambitious, long-term systems change initiative places extraordinary demands on the quality of the social space, relationships and team within which this work happens.
Trust amongst individuals, communities, partners, and the wider ecosystem, a shared consciousness of what we are trying to achieve, being comfortable with fundamental uncertainty, the embrace of emergence, a genuinely distributed leadership model, and a public - benefit approach to IP ownership (through a creative commons licensing approach) are important ingredients, as is well-orchestrated learning and sense-making. This is the core of where leadership is required in this work. You can read more about the core ingredients in the early stages of this work in ‣.
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