Speaking to a packed house Nesta’s then Chief Executive Jonathan Kestenbaum and Executive Director of the Public Servcies Lab Phillip Colligan launched our Neighbourhood Challenge programme.

Minister for Civil Society Nick Hurd welcomed this programme and argued for the importance of a truly radical shift towards a devolved notion of delivering public services. He said that the notion of the Big Society had captured the zeitgeist and, whilst its appeal was not yet, universal it had really caught the country’s attention.

He made the point that unleashing the real power of innovative of communities to come together and tackle the UK’s social issues was going to require a combination of inspiration, courage to do things differently and Government learning when and where it is truly needed and when it needs to get out of the way and free people to act. He said that he was looking to forward to seeing what could be learned from Nesta’s new programme.

Lynne Berry, Chief Executive of WRVS said that in terms of the Big Society the UK was at the start of a journey. She highlighted two practical campaigns that were beginning to show the power of community mobilisation – safer streets and Dementia survivors . She highlighted the important interface between communication (talking to the right people) and action.

Alan Rosenblatt, Associate Director for Online Advocacy at the Center for American Progress gave a fascinating insight into how social media can be used to leverage community action and advocacy. He argued that not only did new forms of media offer an array of ways of engaging a wider audience but they offered campaigners the opportunity to move beyond the local, to the national and global. He also pointed out that the utilisation of social media platforms was not an end in itself but there had to be a call to action and an exchange between the online and offline worlds.

Peter Wanless, Chief Executive of Big Lottery Fund outlined how his organisation had to set its ambitions extremely high - having both mass appeal and relevance. As a mainstream funder he said BIG were often looking to organisations like Nesta - who were one step removed from a more bureaucratic model of funding - to trial some of the most radical approaches in some of the hardest to reach areas. He talked about the power of competition in devising new ideas to social innovation but also how it was vital that access to funds were available to those areas of low social capital.

This interesting discussion gave rise to a thoughtful and thought provoking debate.