The latest attempt last month by David Cameron to put some wind in the sails of Big Society is worth another look. 

Big Society has now made it into mainstream medialand, cropping up in everything from This Morning to the Moral Maze, and providing a prop for endless column inches. As a result the public recognition factor has got bigger, for sure, even if it is still often with a rather dismissive laugh.  “Don’t know what it really means though”. 

Yet more people now express a second level opinion about it. They are engaging. “It’s just a cover for the cuts, isn’t it?” “It will never work because people won’t volunteer”. “Nothing new in it, we’ve already got it going on around us.”  More positively local examples are starting to surface, albeit a bit slow and thin on the ground.

But all this is a side show.  What has happened is much more important.  The central thrust of the Big Society is in truth now apolitical, by which I mean the name may be a Tory brand but the underlying ideas of local activism and mutual ways of doing things have got a firm foothold.  At last.  Is this the final real breakthrough?

Evidence of a shift may not yet be clearly visible in what is out, as most people have spent all their time and energy (still are) working through what a serious loss of money to them and their partners means. But the opportunities for local entrepreneurial activity, the opening up of dead bureaucracy, the space for blends of provision built around local needs are all there for the taking.  It may be that Big Society as a political concept is weak, but this could well be the age when services finally start to be built around local needs, with local people as active participants in their design and delivery. That is what Fontis is about – supporting the thinking and doing which makes this happen; brokering the partnerships and deals between individuals and organisations on which the future can, indeed must, be built. 

After the May elections the hope has to be that people lift their heads and get beyond the cash cuts and think the difference through. You know where we are if that sounds like something you want to do!