The challenge for early adopters

I visited the Centre for Alternative Technology in Macynnleth today.

I first visited around ten years ago and I remember feeling inspired and excited by what I saw.

I enjoyed the visit today but it felt different. I'm ten years older. The world feels a very different place.

Where CAT felt visionary ten years ago, it felt of its time today. Their three key themes, climate change, biodiversity and social equity are nearly in the mainstream (even if there's a long way to go before we take them seriously enough).

But somehow today it felt a bit like it wasn't as sure-footed as it was back then. That's partly because to my eye it's lacking investment - too many tired exhibits. But I'm not wholly sure it knows it's place any more (as a visitor centre at least - its programme of courses is still fantastic).

Gone are the days when these things were only discussed by a radical few. CAT has been a brilliant beacon of (solar powered) light for more than thirty years, and it still points to (and lives, as a community) such a different way of life.

Yet I wonder if it needs to reinvent itself again if it's going to have the impact we need it to have in the future. All early adopters face that challenge once the mainstream starts to catch up.

Sent from my iPhone

Rob Greenland
Social Business Consulting
07905 800 710
rob@socialbusinessconsulting.co.uk

Comments

[Mark]

Hi Rob
you're right about this and the CAT in particular. I remember 20+ years ago sitting in a student house in Leeds with my mates who had just come from a very early visit. They were full of the ideas and it really struck a chord with me as did a lot of DIY culture in the Thatcher years (the Convoy, Teepee Valley, Food for Free, the Anarchists Cookbook, Poll Tax Riots ...)

What happened to CAT? I finally got to go a couple of years or so ago and as the EU funding pro I am the first thing I saw was the dread words "funded by Objective 1 ..." if anything was designed to kill an idea it's the dead right hand of EU funding bureaucracy not knowing that the dead left hand of state incorporation is also unknowingly at the neck of the senseless act of beauty and inadvertently strangling it.

It might not be true of CAT but, the time-limited injection of cash, the "required professionalism" of this kind of support must drain energy away from the enthusiasm and the belief in what you're doing. As ideas and practices become mainstreamed, radical certainty gets diluted by bean counting and risk management.

What's the goal? Having and winning the argument about sustainability or having and sustaining a visitor attraction in mid-Wales?* All things have to evolve and early adopters have to evolve faster, leave the game early with an unassailable lead and move on. In the vcs/ charity/ social enterprise sector we're hung up on not failing, and we're hung up on not closing things down that are no longer appropriate.

On the other hand if CAT's been there for 25 years, how many private businesses can say they've done as well? I really like CAT and I hope it has put enough people who've been inspired out there to do more earlier adopting.

* The answer is both, but there's a moment when they stop being the same thing.

[Rob Greenland]

Thanks for your comment Mark, and sorry for not replying sooner. Yes European funding has a lot to answer for - as does the cursory consideration that is given to "sustainability" (in a project sense) when funding is handed out. I'm still a big fan of CAT, but as you say, things change, the world changes - and early adopters need to continue to adapt if they're going to remain relevant.