MAKING & MAKER'S COMMUNITY OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST

 

All too often a Community of Ownership and Interest's (COI) shared ownerships and interests are down played and may even be denied –particularly when contentious or complex issues are involved. However, recognising that in regard to 'making' and MAKINGplaces there are layerings of makers and MAKINGplaces, each with their own layerings of ownerships and interests that ideally overlap and interface.

In the social cum cultural dynamics involved, when it comes to strategically including  a COI in planning process knowing who they are, where they are and why they are who they are, in turn can offer a way forward that otherwise might be ignored. It is especially so in dispute resolution plus 'the knowledge'  will enable better, and more inclusive, understandings of 'place and placedness'.

If we listed makers' places that had a COI we would include people and locations that had a COI such things as resources, people with skill sets, an institution/organisation, a STORYplace, a structure, an event/festival, a musingplace, a gathering place, a workshop, a material supply, a ritual etc are to be found. So, clearly such lists are as endless as the kinds of attachments people have for places, making skills, things and events. 

To be blithely unaware of them would be a folly.To attempt to initiate a plan to make anything or structure a 'place' to facilitate making and makers without paying attention to the COI factor would be a folly albeit that it is a common mistake if you like. Nevertheless, if mistakes are not being made nothing of significance is being attempted.

Research is all about making mistakes and learning from them. Searching for and gathering up evidence - AKA Hunting & Gathering – of this or that might well offer a more intense knowledge base to build upon. However MISTAKEmaking typically leads to better and new understandings and quite often to new knowledge systems.

While knowing who the "stakeholders'" are, and them alone, planning processes are ever likely to be ONEdimensional and as likely as not best serve to maintain the status quo. When the status quo has been deemed to be unsustainable that is problematic. The point that is missed when thinking about and planning with 'stakeholders' front of mind is that they are but one layer in the layering that makes up the Community of Ownership and Interest that actually sustains a cultural entity – its the audience and more still.

Here it is worth quoting Ronald Reagan who is reported as saying ... " the status quo you know is simply Latin for the mess we are in.". All too often 'the mess' that is not recognised and that a COI is there and that it surround everything, all the time and all at once.

The speculative MINDmap for a STURTentity POSTreview might well look like IF the WWSgovernors deem that a STURTentity might have a place as a standalone 'place'.

That is a place within the corporatised and fundamentally 'singular' FRENSHAMentity

Up to now clearly the WWSgovernors did not imagine that there was anything like a STURTentity with a COI that existed and where what they imagined as 'stakeholders' constituted a layer in COI's multidimensional layering. Prudent 'planning and marketing' ideally should include an audit of who it is and why it is that they make up a COI. 

Sadly, in 'governance' generally where the 'status quo' defines management's processes there tends to be an antithetic attitude towards the concept of there being a COI given that it challenges the 'rankism' that is all too often invested in corporatised managerialism.

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COMMUNITY OF OWNERSHIP & INTEREST

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