45˚ Change shows the way

In response to Neal Lawson’s recent 45˚ Change: Transforming Society from Below and Above, Jon Edwards, in Rethinking Poverty, argues that 45˚ change methodology offers a “timely contribution to discussions and debates on which we can all build”.

As Edwards puts it “wherever you look in the world, systems are broken” but in response to this people are finding new ways of ‘deciding and doing’, that are more creative, innovative, productive, participatory, and more socially and environmentally aware.

The problem is that these emerging organisations are often fragile and lack the capacity to scale-up. To deliver the kind of transformative change society needs, these forces in civil society need to engage with the forces of vertical power. 

The intersection between emerging horizontal bottom-up change and the more vertical state – the diagonal fault line through which a new society can and must be born – is not the final word, but it does, as Edwards suggests, describes the moment, sets the context and elaborates the challenges. 

Read his blog on Rethinking Poverty here

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