The Citizen Story: a webinar with Jon Alexander POSTPONED

POSTPONED!

Unfortunately Jon Alexander has fallen ill, so is not able to participate in this webinar tomorrow as planned. We'll postpone it until another time. Apologies for any inconvenience!


WHAT IF WE SAW PEOPLE AS CITIZENS, NOT JUST CONSUMERS, VOTERS OR TAXPAYERS?

Join us for a free 1 hour live webinar with Jon Alexander to learn about the critical need to move from the Consumer Story to the Citizen Story.

Jon is author of CITIZENS: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us - a book that seeks to reframe the moment in time we're living in as one of huge civic opportunity, not just crisis and challenges.

Find about more about Jon's work at the New Citizen Project on this link.

Learn more about Town Team Movement and why we want to inspire, support and promote active citizenship on this link. Citizenship is not just a legal status. It is the chance to make a difference to the place where you are. Active citizenship is taking that chance.

WHEN: Thursday 17 October 2024

TIME: 6.00pm AEDT / 3.00pm WA / 8.00pm New Zealand 

3.00pm Singapore / 12.30pm Mumbai / 12pm Islamabad

8.00am United Kingdom / 9.00am Central European Time

RSVPs are essential. Book your FREE tickets now!

BACKGROUND

#Placemaking can help to 🔦 reawaken the #citizen inside of all of us. Community members are sometimes #customers, but are mostly #citizens. The art for governments is knowing when they are customers and when they are citizens, says Ed Everett, former city manager of Redwood City, California.

How did the public come to see themselves as customers? The private sector was the first to realize that providing high-quality customer service was a good approach. When people are treated like customers, whether by business or by governments, they become customers. This mindset has caused them to lose their sense of being responsible citizens, who are part of a community.

Jon Alexander's brilliant article entitled 'This is a Crisis of Story'' neatly dissects the stories we tell ourselves of who we are and our roles in society. Here are a few points:

"The story we live by today — the story we are trapped in — is the Consumer Story. The Consumer Story holds that our role as individuals is to pursue self interest, choosing the best option for us from those that are offered. It holds that the corresponding role of organisations and leaders is to channel that self interest and make it add up to the collective interest."

"But in fact, it is the Consumer Story that is the problem, not human nature. The story has given rise to all the great challenges of our time, and it will not be possible to face them from within its logic."

"We can’t solve the crises of loneliness and mental ill health from within a story that tells us we are narrowly defined, isolated individuals, because the story created the crisis."

"We can’t solve multiple #ecological crises from within a story that we are separate from nature, and that happiness is to be found in ever increasing material standards of living, because the story created the crisis."

"(In contrast) The Citizen Story holds that all of us are smarter than any of us. It holds that we the people should neither do as we are told nor pursue our individual self interest, but instead contribute our ideas, energy and resources to the pursuit of the best outcomes for society as a whole."

As David Engwicht says, we have the power to change the stories that silently shape us.