Reading a research paper on social identities during crises: Facilitating Collective Psychosocial Resilience.
It makes interesting point about Active Bystanders. People who are present in the place and the time and activated to take action either because they perceive how their capacities become communal capabilities then or because they are asked to help by other people or institutions.
The role of Community Connectors came up in Design Council work on design in the Climate Crisis and the role of Useful Outsiders in Royal Academy of Engineering workshops. Both of these ideas are well described in the book The Connected Community by Cormac Russell and John McKnight.
The Active Bystander idea is interesting as it relates to Rutger Bregman’s latest book ‘Moral Ambition’ and how change can be made by asking people to help. That change is recognised in both understanding how people have needs and respecting how they have capacities.
Community change is both in asking to help and offering capabilities and in asking for help and seeking capacities. That we need, as institutions and communities, to be both powerful (in stating we have capabilities and position to ask if people need assistance) and vulnerable (in showing that any organisation is built from the skills and knowledge of people who have been asked to come together for a purpose).