tionDigging for ideas
I remember Charlie Leadbeater at Demos.
He’d drop in between his travels — from slums to boardrooms — always with a story about people innovating in places most of us never looked.
In his pamphlet Digging for the Future, he takes us back not to Silicon Valley, but to the 17th century. To the Diggers, long-lost cousins of the Levellers. People who, in the middle of crisis, called not for tinkering but transformation.
They took unused land into common ownership, planting and tending crops so communities could feed and sustain themselves. It was practical. It was political. It was about survival — and possibility.
What struck me most was the line:
“The chasm between our need to have a sense of purpose and our incapacity to muster the collective commitment to do so.”
That chasm still runs through our organisations today.
We speak the language of innovation, but we rarely empower people to practise it. Too often, ideas are stifled not because they’re bad, but because they might disrupt “the way it’s done around here.”
If we wait for the perfect moment, innovation never arrives. Seeds don’t plant themselves.
🌱 Learning from today’s “allotments”
- Incredible Edible, Todmorden
A town that turned spare plots into community gardens, teaching people how to grow food and share skills. What began as planting herbs in neglected corners grew into a global movement of edible towns. - The People’s Supermarket, London
A cooperative where members work in the shop in exchange for affordable food. It didn’t just sell produce; it created a place where people swapped recipes, shared struggles, and built solidarity. - CoLab Dudley
A civic lab where people come together not to be “consulted,” but to co-create. Like an allotment, it thrives because people return regularly — to share, test, and grow ideas together.
Innovation is not just about the seeds.
It’s about the soil.
The watering. The gossip over the garden fence.
The protection from the first frost.
What makes allotments thrive is that they’re communal. People join because they care, they learn from one another, and they celebrate the harvest together.
Our institutions could learn from that. Less like umpires marking rules. More like gardeners tending growth.
✨ Calls to action for our teams
🌱 Plant the small seeds — encourage people to bring tiny experiments, even if they’re rough. Don’t wait for the “big idea.”
💧 Nourish the soil — create rhythms (learning circles, cross-team check-ins) where ideas can be fed and not forgotten.
🌍 Make it communal — share experiments openly, invite others to try them, and celebrate progress together, however small.
🌤 Protect against the frost — when new ideas are fragile, shield them from the immediate pressure of “business as usual” so they have space to take root.
The Diggers knew that survival wasn’t enough.
They wanted land — and the future — in common.
Maybe innovation is not about waiting for the right conditions.
Maybe it’s about committing to tend the soil together, even when the frost is biting.
