In the past couple of weeks we have been royally entertained with the spectacle of power. On the one hand, the fate of the British entry in the European Song Contest (clue: nul points). On the other the British government being put on trial by a spin doctor, recently deposed. We are talking about them in the same breath because both directly relate to soft power rather than hard.

In the first case, Britain’s failure to impress European listeners musically is unimportant in terms of our absolute status. Our ability to continue coercing other countries through financial or military means – hard power – remains the same.

But the Eurovision flop may have dealt a blow to Britain’s sense of swagger in Europe and even internationally. Less because of our lyrical and melodic ability, more because it is clear we are not as beloved as we once were. And in soft power terms – meaning British attraction and influence – this might be an indicator of tougher economic times to come.

Since this decline has been in motion for several years, it’s not easy to see how much worse it got this year. New rules were put in place to try and protect any country from the ignominy of no points at all but we managed to fall foul of even those measures. It’s not unlike the failure of the Northern Ireland protocol to protect the Irish border – it’s not supposed to happen! Twitter was alive with political conspiracy theory, never too far from a tale of Brexit revenge.

One of the more interesting theories came from the evidence that all of the top ten this year were sung in a minor key and our offering was in a major key. The tune was too jolly for some – again, another familiar critique of the current Prime Minister but also a soft power lesson. As Simon Anholt, founder of the Good Country Index is always emphasizing, putting on a positive show belying the grim reality doesn’t work: it’s what you do that changes opinion. This governments long standing “Britain is Great’ advertising campaign has not done the job of helping Britain thrive internationally.

On the other hand, watching Dominic Cummings give evidence to the commons inquiry about the government’s handling of the pandemic was a soft power masterclass. What could so easily have resulted in a few terse quotes from a man highly discredited by his own behaviour and only recently dumped by his close political partner turned out to be a political blockbuster. With help from his immaculate white shirt and the beautiful woman posing in the upper-left corner of the screen, Dominic Cummings had many ‘much-too-busy-to-see-you’ people in his trance for up to seven hours.

In case you missed it, Cummings didn’t deliver an animated or angry testimony against his former boss and cronies. It had more the tone of a reliable teacher, patiently explaining actions taken and not taken, the wider context and the consequences for the public. Although his figures of those who lost their lives specifically because of these actions were quite rough – “tens of thousands” – the coherence and arc of his narrative was carefully crafted.

By the end of his submission we were no longer thinking of Michael Gove or Rishi Sunak (or Cummings himself), but only Matt Hancock and Boris Johnson. We had lost sight of the pre-Covid condition of the National Health Service -with the lowest number of beds per head in the whole of Europe – and only thinking of herd strategy. A member of the public who had lost a relative through Covid in the care home, described his feelings of relief as he “finally heard the details of what happened”.

The next day every single newspaper, bar The Star – who understand the power of imagery better than most – had one or more pictures of the perfectly pitched upper body of Dominic Cummings on their front page. With almost no exception, the commentary fell neatly into for or against his analysis. That is the power of framing: the future inquiry will not find it easy to put that away when it finally meets. This is the man credited with Brexit, not as a result of brilliant argument, but as the outcome of his superlative soft power skills.

When faced with these stories on the front pages of our papers, do we despair of ever making change happen? How easily even the best of us fall into the trance of the skilled manipulators. Can we ever escape long enough to invest our attention sufficiently to really cause an alternative political system to float?

Here at The Daily Alternative we know very well that it’s not enough to write about good things happening elsewhere. You have to choose the right image and set a compelling tone to get the sustained attention of readers.

On weeks like these it’s very helpful to witness those that have been patiently, step by step, creating the conditions for transformational change to happen and to acknowledge what it takes. Much more than just incremental improvement of the current system, transformation means full state change: the system you were working in should become unrecognizable.

This can never be achieved by a solo actor in control of the design, as transformation depends upon key parts of the old system transforming themselves at the same time.

However, it is possible to act as a catalyst – causing transformation to occur through making an intervention between groups of changing entities. As an example, take Professor Sandra Waddock and Steve Waddell, co-founders of the SDG Transformation Forum and now initiators at the Bounce Beyond (BB) ‘next economies’ project (which A/UK is also co-leading).

Sandra and Steve have written books and many papers on what it takes to be a ‘transformation catalyst’. Just recently Sandra published a summary of their work on the BB website which included the following insights:

Transformation catalysts are specifically designed to catalyze transformative action by connecting, cohering, and amplifying the efforts of existing initiatives in different types of contexts. In this way, transformative impacts can be achieved in target systems…

In chemistry, catalysts are substances that bring about a state change—a transformation—without necessarily changing themselves. In social contexts, catalysts are individuals, groups, or actions that precipitate, hasten, or stimulate that type of transformative action—often unpredictably and nonlinearly.

Transformation catalysts are a new way to organize that emphasizes not the direct doing of action but rather the processes involved in helping others evolve catalytic action for greater effectiveness.

What catalysis means here is helping actors in a system to see and understand—make sense of—their own system. Indeed, understanding it as a transformation system, one that can act coherently and cogently on the problem, issue, or place at hand.

The different sets of actions that have to occur – only sometimes linearly in a given place – are below, with good methods and tools mentioned:

1. Seeing – watching, listening and learning about what is already acting for change in the system and the context for transformation

o Systems Mapping: can be done informally through engaging in dialogue with system participants, or a bit more formally through a series of interviews that capsulize what and who they know are doing the transformational work.

2. Sensemaking - the process, literally, of making sense of what is in the system so that others can understand it. Sensemaking provides a narrative (or sometimes visual or graphic) understanding of the system that can be shared with others. The need for system change and how it can happen can also be expressed in many different forms of art, including stories and other narrative forms, poems, visual art of all sorts, films—whatever forms make sense in given contexts.

o Constellation work: interrogating the stories and lived experience of the dynamics of a given system and how it could be better

3. Connecting - is about purposefully linking people, ideas, actions, and initiatives to form powerful transformation systems. Connecting also means understanding that the real agency for transformation rests in actors who live and operate in the given context, not in the transformation catalyst. It means creating the connective tissue—infrastructure—that helps existing and emerging next economies link to each other. New infrastructure might include new ways of connecting with others, as with an online platform. Or it can encompass new approaches to doing business responsibly and in ways that harmonize with nature.

· Identifying microsolidarities, or developing citizen action networks (CANs)

4. Catalysing helps to make collaborating/cohering transformative actions happen, where initiatives can align and amplify their visions. It enables actors in a system to begin to put their collective resources behind key actions and initiatives that can really make a difference. Transformative action can involve creating synergies, addressing deep systems challenges collectively by (for example) creating new narratives, developing new capacities or financing approaches, and otherwise dealing with challenges and differences, as well as reducing unproductive duplication and competition

a. Prototyping and Experimenting

One of the best examples of a “transformation catalyst”, as outlined above, has to be the Real Ideas Organisation (RIO) in Plymouth with whom we have been collaborating for over three years.

In a recent series called The State of Us, RIO joined forces with the New Economics Foundation to convene a host of actors in and around Plymouth. The aim was to try to assess if, after COVID, there was an identifiable sense of transformative potential. The four events, each with four practitioners and plenty of participation from the audience, were:

· The State of Work

· The State of Places and Spaces

· The State of Resilience (Making and Production)

· The State of Plenary, with speakers from citizen action networks from around the world including Barcelona En Comu and Cooperation Jackson.

One of the questions hovering over the conference was: Is the work we are doing here best described as ‘municipalism’ (covered here)? As Ed Whitelaw, Head of Enterprise and Regeneration at RIO, responded in true transformational catalyst style – “we are and we aren’t: ultimately that’s not for us [as an organisation?] to say”.

In many ways that is another form of soft power. The core narrative about a place is not being actively shaped by those in charge, but arises from their listening and amplifying the voices of the people.

We’ll be running a more detailed report next week. It’s the perfect antidote to Dominic Cummings.

Alternative Editorial: Soft Power Battles