#10: Creating new operating models for cities with Jenni Lloyd Here Right Now

Cities are ‘serendipity engines’ and ‘social super colliders’ as well as vital places that we live, according to our expert guest Jenni Lloyd - but are the operating models used to deliver our city services and governance fit for a world of continued social change and austerity in public spending? Instead, how can we build better communities and places?
"Austerity has dictated that there's scarcity, but actually there's almost an infinite abundance within communities, and the local authorities that have realized that have taken a very different approach"
In her work recently at the innovation foundation NESTA, thinker, advisor and strategist Jenni and her team published the six part New Operating Models for Local Government. Behind the scenes they spoke with frontline innovators finding new interesting ways to deliver public services in cities, many in communities the North of England, who have been collaborating to develop new responses based on fundamental questions like “What is the contract between the city and the citizen?” and “What is a good place, what is a good life?”, linking together ‘anchor institutions’ like local hospitals, police and other social services in helpful new ways.
By the end of this conversation you’ll be looking at your own cities as serendipity engines, as networks, as a holistic system and above all as places changing, right now.
Links
* Jenni Lloyd - Twitter
* New Operating Models for Local Government - NESTA
* ShareTown - NESTA interactive visual map with real examples of city innovation
* Asset-based Community Development (ABCD) - short video
Credits
* Music by Lee Rosevere
Automated transcript
So Jenni, you have a great history. And it would be brilliant, if you could just share, not the hour, the hour long version, but the which you warned it could take which, but if you could give us a brief potted history of Jenni Lloyd maybe starting from the beginning,
Jenni Lloyd 2:26
at the very beginning, 1968, I did a fine art degree. And I went to art college, and primarily to leave home and spent three years making things and with varying degrees of success. And then I left art college with a degree in fine art, which isn't a particularly saleable commodity. And I found my way to Brighton kind of randomly, because I wanted to not go home to where my parents live, because it's very boring. And I didn't want to stay where it was, because it's boring. So I came to Brighton, and I'm still in Brighton. So Brighton is important to me. But um, I think my first job out of college was cleaning toilets on the pier. And, and so I had no idea what I wanted to do, I had no idea what was available to me. And looking back at it. And I had had some stupid ideas like this whole thing about truth to materials and how I wouldn't use computers. And bearing in mind, obviously, that this is almost kind of before the internet. But, um, that kind of fell by the wayside when I got involved in. Again, just kind of serendipitously, like, randomly, I started using computers, because I was working for the local newspaper to process images. And I realised that a lot of the kind of artwork that I was still making, which is all kind of collage II, based that I could actually do in Photoshop. And, and that led me into years worth of kind of digital design and production. And, and I think I've always thought that my works followed the, the, what's the word, evolution of the web? So initially, just about interfaces. So how do people use things? And how can I make them do the thing that we want them to do online? And then kind of it got more social? And that that was really interesting, because then we started thinking about well, how to how do these things that we're using digitally, and map into what we do collectively anyway, so how to communities work, and how can we provide online spaces where people can behave as communities, and what does that mean for businesses? So you were there for that? And s