Workshops on the Common Good

This is the workshop section. What you will find are a few ideas to get folk going if they need them. This content can be used, adapted, to lots of ideas and topics as well as the common good, which in itself covers a lot of ground.

There is as many different approaches to doing things and finding things out as there are people – and the beautiful thing is – no one knows it all. So we are all teachers and students here.

These small project links on the left are about ways of thinking – if you are not used to research work or asking the right kind of questions, writing, talking to officialdom, organising groups of people, how to plan and how to find things out – which just about covers most of us.

Use it or lose it
We are so fortunate in what we have, yet we seem so reluctant to use it. Why is this? These are the questions that need to be dealt with. We need to start to look at the possibilities while we have the options. The job will get a hundred times harder if we wait until we lose our public assets.

These snippets of ideas will be used to build workshops and help people to find there way around things – spark off a few ideas – and share other folks experiences of different situations.

A video and audio section will be added to show and encourage community journalism, story telling, visual instructions and project progress.

The most important thing is if folk want to get involved in any way there is a place for them – to do what they do – want to do – and learn new things.

As we have a policy of not “reinventing the wheel” we will try as much to link with projects that do their job well in helping understanding – and the ones we do not know others can tell us about hopefully. Use this material any way you want, change it, improve on it – but share the result with us – or link to the site.

This part of the site is aimed towards attracting new people. We do not want to burden folk with new work – What we do want is the work already done to be reusable to others. (recycled knowledge)

Become the expert

When researching the common good, remember you may be breaking new ground. Much of this information, laws, and geographical locations may be unknown even to the people who are in charge of the upkeep of our common good.

What the CGAP hope to achieve:

1. A general knowledge of what the Common Good means and what it consists of and its history.
2. How the Common Good – its assets, philosophy and ethos can be connected to social problems – poverty, race, gender, equal opportunities, economics, and ways of organising a fairer society.
3. How to research the Common Good – What information is available – who is doing this type of work. What work needs done, ways to get involved and how to start.
4. How to build networks of contacts; on-going campaigns and how to start new ones. Getting information out to people, how to engage people using the internet, photography, recording and community surveys.
5. Why it is important to understand, protect and spread knowledge of these valuable assets and their educational value in building community vision and power for ordinary people.

6. An idea of how we start to use these resources using economics, planning and decision making that is accountable and serves a public purpose.
7. Ideas of reawakening the concept of Common Good further afield and in the global context.
8. The eventual setting up of an International Common Good constituted group and network.

This section will be updated as ideas evolve