This is a CTP of initiative: Spice (UK)
This CTP concerns the establishment and early development of Spice as one of the legacies of the Wales Institute for Community Currencies (WICC). WICC was a temporary project funded by the European Regional Development Fund over a five year period. The project ran from 2003 to 2008. Over the course of that time, WICC had experimented successfully with using time banking in both purist form and in forms adapted to local conditions and contexts. In the course of experiments with time banking at the Time Centre Blaengarw, a new model of time exchange had emerged addressed to the specifics of local socio-economic relationships. The adapted form had been successfully used to help strengthen community cohesion and as a mechanism for communities to meet their needs using community resources in the context of social and economic deprivation and decline in the aftermath of mining closures.
When the WICC project came to the end of its funding term two new organisations were created to carry on the work it had begun. Time Banking Wales and Spice. The success in Blaengarw and the learning achieved from it motivated those involved to test and demonstrate the potential of the new model in other places. Initially, the intent was to test the model in other locations in Wales and to establish whether the experience of Blaengarw depended more on local (context-specific) factors or whether the success could be replicated elsewhere and the main elements of the model generalised and transferred to other localities. There was also an interest in potentially applying the model in the context of international development projects, but that interest was set aside. The internal decision was initially made to stay in Wales. Following initial successes in Wales and opportunities that emerged in England, however, a decision was taken later to also expand operations to England.
Both of the new (post WICC) organisations favoured and promoted the new person to organisation/agency model, but they were distinct organizations. “Essentially, in the very early days, both Spice and TBW were deploying the same model. Originally, the difference between them was around geographical aspiration and thematic areas of focus, with Spice seeking to take the new model outside Wales and address challenges in addition to those of community revitalisation. This distinction became blurred quite rapidly. A divergence began to emerge [nevertheless] when Spice began to concentrate increasingly on developing its spend network, something that TBW did not invest in.”
Those at Spice started to think systematically about “how to scale, how to grow, and how to persuade.” At the outset, “the core of Spice was fairly typical – a fluffy third sector organization with not a great deal of understanding of how you might make it more business-like in its ability to sustain itself.” But the founders of Spice began to think systematically about their target commissioner groups, their points of focus and how to implement their model in different ways. They used the Time Centre Blaengarw as their show case to present their ideas to decision makers and to demonstrate the potential of Spice as a mechanism to incentivise volunteering and get more people active in their communities.
Spice as a mechanism was well aligned with then-current policy developments. At the time, the emerging new political agenda for community development was based around the Big Society. “Much of that was ideologically wrapped around the desire to reduce demand on public services by getting people to do more [by and for] themselves. I think that the way that Spice promoted itself as an organization which weaves itself into public services, and enables public services to do things differently may have resonated [with public policy] very strongly and to a stronger degree [than other organizations] at that time.”
The political environment in terms of local and regional governments in Wales as well as in England also contributed significantly to enabling Spice to expand and professionalise its operations. Soon after it was established, Spice achieved several cooperation agreements and partnerships.
The three key actors in the development of the new model and its being taken up, further developed and promoted through Spice were Geoff Thomas, Becky Booth and Tris Dyson. All three contributed under the aegis of WICC. Becky Booth became one of the founders of Spice and together with Tris Dyson led in the expansion and professionalization of the organization. Tris Dyson, joined Spice as its CEO.
Each of these had specific sets of skills that contributed significantly to the development of a new time exchange mechanism and Spice as an organization to promote it, but what also mattered was the complementarity of the individuals and their skill sets. Together they worked effectively to develop and promote the ideas, convince policy makers, organise and implement initiatives on the ground, and develop business models to provide sustainability and continuity. In the process they were able also to expand the network of organisational partners and the Spice infrastructure.
Geoff Thomas had been involved in the early days at WICC. “He was the ideologue. He was great at selling the concept and values of time credits, attaching it to place and to history. He significantly shaped and developed the Spice model… Whereas Becky Booth had begun to think in broader terms, how to scale up Spice and particularly how to grow the emerging spend network. She started to approach several organizations and businesses. Her strength was to ‘get out there, get going and get doing’ rather than theoretical framing. Becky would get out there, ‘press the flesh’, meet the people and start to operationalize it. I don't necessarily think that Geoff would have been able to operationalize it in quite the way that Becky was able to. That’s a particular skill set of Becky and she certainly has huge talent in engaging and connecting with people. It was a beautiful marriage as they say.”
Tris Dyson who had been involved at WICC before the establishment of Spice was also a decisive influencer. “A very interesting character, very bright and very entrepreneurial, very confident in himself, in his ideas and very restless in terms of interrogating and developing ideas. And what I think Tris tried to bring to Spice quite early on was that slightly more hard-nosed acumen. […] He was the sort of pragmatist and the realist who would be bringing things back down to fundamental questions: how would we package this, how would we know what Commissioners would want to buy and why? So I think there was a useful conjunction there of particular skill sets.”
“So Tris is a founding legend in that sense. He had this two pager based on the work in Blaengarw and the potential of what we could do which he took to London and he toted it around the corridors of power. He had been to Dulwich College and had some helpful connections. He had some connections to Nat Wei who was one of the key movers behind the whole Big Society initiative. Nat Wei was brought into government in 2010. He introduced Tris to individuals at the Esmée Fairnbairn Foundation and the Tudor Trust.”
The establishment of the WICC in 2003 and the time credit project in Blaengarw paved the way for the founding of Spice in 2008. The success and progress at Blaengarw contributed to establishing the reputation and legitimacy for Spice and its operations and formed the basis for promotional material. Blaengarw was an existence proof that Spice could work. In 2010 the Big Society became a flagship policy of the UK Conservative Party general election manifesto.
Spice was able to play into that policy agenda as a natural partner in the Big Society Project, sharing motivations, aims and targets. Spice received increasing attention from policy makers in London and from foundations and trusts supporting the Big Society agenda across the UK, so this also paved the way for Spice to expand not only in Wales, but also in England. Spice was well received and positively appreciated by local authorities and service commissioners who were positively disposed to support trials and demonstrations that would also help connect organisations and build the infrastructure underpinning Spice operations. This led to several big contracts being awarded to Spice in 2012.
Some sceptics were doubtful that the success of the project in Blaengarw could be replicated in the context of larger urban communities. They pointed to the fact that Blaengarw was a relatively small community, effectively more a village than a town. It was expected that a replication of Blaengarw would not be possible particularly when the model was tried within a larger setting and on greater scale. Despite this scepticism Spice has won funding for further development work, trials, experiments and demonstration projects.
The establishment and subsequent expansion and professionalization of Spice were anticipated. These were all intentioned outcomes deliberately targeted by the concerned actors who were motivated and convinced that the Spice model could be rolled out in villages, towns and cities nationwide and, in the process, could be further developed to address community needs in different geographies and sectors. The efforts made by the co-founders were aimed at developing an organizational system that on the one hand sustains itself by partnering with other entities and on the other hand replicates, expands and extends the approach. Nevertheless, the rapid pace of the development of Spice came as a surprise. The speed of the developments was not anticipated
A professional approach on the part of the management of the organisation has been key to the development of Spice. In this, the key actors and the complementarity and coverage of their skills have been important. Together, the key actors were able to cover most of the bases from the start themselves, when the organisation was still small and there were no other human or financial resources to draw on.
They developed a clear strategy for the development of the organisation. There was a clear theory of change. This was able to be demonstrated through the Blaengarw case. There was a clear understanding of the need to relate the initiative to policy, funder and commissioner interests. This was achieved in part by developing a very short and slick policy brief and using it to lobby for Spice. The need to develop a business model that could sustain the operation was understood from the start and has been central to the overall Spice operation. Monitoring and evaluation have been integrated from the start into all Spice projects, so that evidence of impact is available. The importance and power of communication was recognised early on.
The location of Spice in Wales has been important, because Wales is a small country but has significant devolved powers. Access to government and to Ministers is easier to obtain in Wales than in England. This provided opportunities to Spice early on in its development to establish a strong foothold and base in Wales from where it could then extend into England having already established more successes on which to draw for evidence that its model can work.
Monitoring and evaluation have played important roles in communicating and promoting Spice. They have been important, also, for further developing the model.
An important early lesson was that it was found easier than anticipated to grow the network of partner organisations willing to donate spare capacities.
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