{"id":87314,"key":"Citizens_Action_Network_handbook","title":"Citizens Action Network handbook","latest":{"id":1273828,"timestamp":"2026-09-16T15:08:06Z"},"content_model":"wikitext","license":{"url":"https://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Copyrights","title":"CC-BY-SA-4.0"},"source":"[[File:Street Party Table.jpg|thumb]]\n\n'''Welcome to CANwiki. CANs, Community Agency Networks, or Citizens action networks''' is a concept developed by The [https://www.thealternative.org.uk/ Alternative Global] through their work with local communities since 2017. ''A [[Citizens Action Network handbook#From Virtual to Actual|navigation box]] is included towards the end of each CANwiki page to other pages in CANwiki.''\n\n== CAN news ==\n\n{{Card|text={{Newslist|keyword=CANs|limit=3}}\n\n{{Read more|CAN news}}}}\n\n== CANs as a generic term ==\n\nCAN is a generic term for new forms that are appearing everywhere. CANs have '''[[Citizens Action Network handbook#Autonomy|autonomy]]''' and their development can be described as '''[[Citizens Action Network handbook#Fractal growth|fractal]]'''. The mnemonic has become flexible. C can mean citizen, community, creative. A can indicate action, agency or simply \"and\". N tends to mean network but has also meant neighbourhood or even nest!<ref>[[Citizen Action Networks near you#2021]]</ref> CANs as a generic term might include, for example Climate action networks or groups, or Communities and Neighbours groups.\n\n\"Obvious questions first. Is a CAN more than community organising? Is it more than Transition Towns, or than a co-operative – all of which are vital elements in the success of any new construct? The answer to this must be yes. What they have succeeded in doing to date, is responding to the multiple crises with those that share their values. '''A CAN has the ambition of reaching those that might not.'''\"\n\n== What is a Citizens Action Network? ==\n\n{| class=\"wikitable\"\n|- valign=\"top\" style=\"background:lightgreen\"\n!\n! <big>'''A Citizen Action Network is...'''</big>\n|- valign=\"top\" style=\"background:lightgreen\"\n| <big>'''i'''</big>\n| Where any person – ''regardless of their perceived values'' – can go to, in their local community, to participate in the solutions to the multiple crises we face. And in so doing '''find belonging, meaning and agency'''.\n|- valign=\"top\" style=\"background:lightgreen\"\n| <big>'''we'''</big>\n| Where local civil society organizations can collaborate with local, national and global organizations to provide real, creative and effective solutions. While '''prototyping a new democracy'''.\n|- valign=\"top\" style=\"background:lightgreen\"\n| <big>'''world'''</big>\n| Where we can contribute to the process of '''getting the UK to carbon neutral by 2025''' without waiting for Westminster to agree. And in so doing, pattern-match with others around the globe to reach critical mass.\n|}\n\n== What happens in a CAN? ==\n\nA CAN is designed to connect complex human beings to each other and in turn to the resources available to enable social innovation and well being.\n\nThe activities of a CAN articulate the needs of the community while they bring their possible future into the present. A CAN both captures the culture needed for sustaining that community and provides a container within which to land it.\n\nA CAN might include spaces to meet, learning clubs, crowd-funding hubs, and much more. It will likely have its own currency, attaching a different kind of value to its activities. And – when the time is right – a digital network, specifically designed to amplify the network of relationships built amongst the people. When all this is achieved, the CAN becomes a concrete unit of a new, broader system, with a new political and active culture, capable of responding to the multiple crises we now face.\n\nMore and more people look for something to get stuck into, a way to make a difference in the face of the powerlessness they experience at the hands of current party politics. Taking action in your local community – from volunteering, to community organising or the full-on building of citizen action networks – provides focus, agency, attraction. And a growing story about a new era of people's politics.<ref>Alternative Editorial: Mastering Overwhelm, Sep 1, 2019 [https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/9/1/alternative-editorial-facing-overwhelm thealternative.org.uk]</ref>''\n\nA distinct quality of a CAN is that \"It's where local civil society organizations can collaborate with local, national and global organizations to provide real, creative and effective solutions. While [[CAN handbook, Glossary|prototyping]] a new democracy.\" \"It's where any person – regardless of their perceived values – can go to, in their local community, to participate in the solutions to the multiple crises we face. And in so doing find belonging, meaning and agency.\"<ref>Alternative Editorial: How To Make the 20s A Decade Of Transformation (via Citizens' Action Networks), Jul 7, 2019 [https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/7/8/alternative-editorial-yes-we-can-can thealternative.org.uk]</ref>\n\nArising out of the activities of CANs one of the common themes is the importance of a combination of education, deliberation and media services to be provided by CANs.<ref>Alternative Editorial: The pandemic invites us to be bigger, Sep 20, 2020 [https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2020/9/20/alternative-editorial-the-pandemic thealternative.org.uk]</ref>\n\n'''Beliefs we hold:'''\nThe Alternative UK are holding to some beliefs about the nature of the social reality we're facing, which have emerged out of their work.<ref>Alternative Editorial: How To Make the 20s A Decade Of Transformation (via Citizens' Action Networks), Jul 7, 2019 [https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/7/8/alternative-editorial-yes-we-can-can thealternative.org.uk]</ref> These include '''Autonomy''' and '''Fractal growth''':\n\n== Autonomy ==\n\nCANs are not a lobbying or protest body, facing the government or local council. They are a way for citizens to take back not just responsibility, but their \"response abilities\" for the future. A Citizen Action Network sits below the divisions caused by political parties. The state can be a partner in the CAN, but not the leader. Members of a CAN might end up taking over the council, as in Flatpack Democracy. They are currently described as independents, eschewing the idea of political parties and, as such, are signs of a genuinely new politics.\n\n== Fractal growth ==\n\nThis new way of relationship-centred operating does not require \"scaling up\" by a central organiser. Its growth depends upon designing successful – and therefore attractive – prototypes that will be recognisable to others doing the same, with roughly the same tools, all over the world. The development could be described as fractal, because it begins with similar structures appearing in similar sets of conditions. The greatest accelerator is paying attention to those conditions - the human needs and desires being expressed.\n\n== Cosmolocal Agency Networks ==\n\nCAN can also stand for Cosmolocal Agency Network. Cosmo-localization describes the process of bringing together our globally distributed knowledge and design commons with the high-to-low tech capacity for localized production. It is based on the ethical premise, drawing from cosmopolitanism, that people and communities should be universally empowered with the heritage of human ingenuity that allow them to more effectively create livelihoods and solve problems in their local environments, and that, reciprocally, local production and innovation should support the wellbeing of our planetary commons.\n\n{{Read more|Cosmolocalism}}\n\n== People will own it ==\n\n\"Every kind of person lives in the communities we are pointing at. The skilled and unskilled; the self-starters and the group-workers. Everyone can play a part, if they step up – even partially – to develop and strengthen the place in which they live. All are connected by technology to the solutions that will get us to carbon neutral by 2025.\n\nImagine the UK with a majority of cities taking it upon themselves to reach that goal, in ways that gives everyone more well-being in the community. That changes everything at the national level from the examples they set. The very marketplace of ideas and energy – money as well as services – will begin to bend towards that expression of interest and commitment by the people. Political parties will see the votes in it. Business will see the profit in it. But people will own it.\"<ref>Alternative Editorial: How To Make the 20s A Decade Of Transformation (via Citizens' Action Networks), Jul 7,2019 [https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/7/8/alternative-editorial-yes-we-can-can]</ref>\n\n== Why now? ==\n\n'''While government sleeps, can we meet the climate window?'''\n\nThe spirit is autonomous: in the face of government failure to meet the crises – particularly the climate emergency –the people are adopt the hashtag #doingitanwyay.\n\nHow can we, the people, best use the next ten years? We need to be in action from 2020. We could have a decade of coming together and building a future we choose. For that, we need Citizen Action Networks.<ref>Alternative Editorial: How To Make the 20s A Decade Of Transformation (via Citizens' Action Networks), Jul 7,2019 [https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/7/8/alternative-editorial-yes-we-can-can]</ref>\n\n== From Virtual to Actual ==\n\nCitizens action networks or CANs are not A/UK's unique, branded [[CAN handbook, Glossary|prototypes]]: in many ways, CAN is a generic term for new forms that are appearing everywhere. But they only qualify as a CAN if they deliver what they promise. A place – both physical and virtual – that enables citizens to meet the [[CAN handbook, Glossary|eco-system]] of activities and services available in their city or region. And on the basis of this range of resources, take actions that directly address the crises we face.<ref>Alternative Editorial: From Virtual to Actual, Feb 17, 2019 [https://www.thealternative.org.uk/dailyalternative/2019/2/17/alternative-editorial-from-virtual-to-actual thealternative.org.uk]</ref>\n\n{{CANs near you footer}}\n\n{{CANwiki footer}}\n\n{{Back to top}}\n\n'''External links'''\n\n* [https://www.thealternative.org.uk/ The Alternative]\n\n'''References'''\n\n* How do you make a Citizens Action Network (CAN)? - The Alternative UK, [https://www.slideshare.net/theplayethic/how-do-you-make-a-citizens-action-network-can-the-alternative-uk slideshare.net/theplayethic]\n\n<references />\n\n{{Page data|description=What is the built environment? Appropedia explains how spaces are designed and how that affects community and the planet.}}\n\n[[Category:Community action project]]"}