Few would dispute that in the years ahead government will be able to do less, and society will have to do more. The Big Society has been promoted by government as a framework for thinking about how this might happen. As an idea it has been much criticised both for vagueness and for diverting attention from spending cuts.

A new report to be published next week by the Young Foundation sets out how it could be made more tangible and useful. The ten point plan draws on dozens of practical examples that the Young Foundation and others have developed in fields ranging from community organising to jobs, social enterprise to data management.

In advance of publication the Young Foundation's director Geoff Mulgan has written in The Sunday Times on the subject of "The Big Society - We're already doing it"*

The full publication will be available on Tuesday 7 September 2010, for further information please contact Alison Harvie.

*This article is subscription only but the text can be accessed below:

The Big Society - We're already doing it

The Sunday Times - 30 August 2010

Some expected that the term "big society" wouldn't survive the coalition's first 100 days. The idea was ridiculed as vacuous; damned as a cynical cover for public spending cuts and disparaged by Tory MPs as a disaster on the doorstep.

Yet, for all that, the big society looks set to stay. It's close to David Cameron's heart.

For Nick Clegg it is an expression of what most Liberal Democrats think they're all about. And so far the government has no other candidates to provide a guiding philosophy.

It should be a timely idea. All over the world, civil society has become more confident, more eager to take responsibility and show what it can do. People like the idea of self-government, and massive cuts in public spending make shifts in power unavoidable. They want government to show it trusts the public, rather than relying on ID cards and Criminal Records Bureau checks.

But if we are to look back in five years' time and see the big society as a success, the government will need to be more precise about what it means. Everyone knows that, in the years ahead, government will be able to do less and society will need to do more. The urgent question now is how to make the big society more than hot air.

I work for the Young Foundation, an organisation with a track record of success in helping people to take control over their lives. Michael Young was probably the world's most successful social entrepreneur and helped create dozens of organisations, from the Open University to the Consumers' Association, publisher of Which?. Today we're involved in more than 40 ventures, and they show both the potential of the big society and the choices that need to be made if it's going to be serious.

For us, a good starting point is new rights. Societies become strong by exercising powers, not by having things done to them. We've advocated a range of rights that could make a difference. They include rights for communities to take over unused land and buildings, something that is now part of the coalition agreement and about to be tested in several areas.

We've also argued for stronger rights for neighbourhoods to set up their own governance structures - with some powers to raise taxes or to use "community pledgebanks", where people commit a sum of money so long as a fixed number of others do as well. And through a project called Mydex, this autumn pilots will begin that show how the people, rather than big government and big business, could retake control over their personal data.

Another building block is tools to help people organise themselves. Hundreds of "timebanks" already allow people to exchange services such as childcare, cooking or plumbing. We've worked with an organisation called Spice, which has put these into schools and housing organisations. In the Welsh former pit village of Blaengarw a third of people are signed up.

The School of Everything is a project that connects people who want to learn and potential teachers, in anything from Arabic to flamenco. There are already 25,000 teachers on the site, which also supports learning circles, where people come together to learn about things such as beekeeping or mechanics.

For most people, society is ultimately about there being others around to help when we need it
Tyze is a parallel innovation in health, using social network technology to bring together friends, family, doctors and social workers around vulnerable older people so they can co-ordinate their visits. Like Spice and the School of Everything, it's a simple idea - and vastly cheaper than the big IT projects of the past - but effective at mobilising social connections and support.

Informal support of this kind needs to be matched by new jobs and new enterprises. We were delighted when the Conservative party announced a commitment to create an extra 100,000 apprenticeships each year based on a model pioneered by Working Rite, a social enterprise we support that's based in Scotland.

Founded by Sandy Campbell, a former trade unionist, it provides a modern rite of passage for teenagers, linking them as apprentices to a sole trader, builder or carpenter.

Studio schools are another example of the potential of new social ventures, providing a new approach to learning for 14- to 19-year-olds, with most of the curriculum covered through practical projects instead of traditional classroom tuition. The first open this autumn in Huddersfield and Luton, with a dozen others in the pipeline.

In healthcare, we've developed many new ventures that can deliver better results at lower cost, such as NeuroResponse, designed by a remarkable nurse called Bernadette Porter to provide care for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). NeuroResponse provides support over the phone, by email and through video clinics. Shaped with input from MS sufferers, the early pilots suggest it could cut costs by as much as 50% and improve patients' experience.

Sometimes politicians talk as if government and society were in a zero sum game: more government necessarily means less society, and less government means more society. This was a fashionable view among Reaganites and Thatcherites in the 1980s.

Unfortunately, in places as varied as Russia and US inner cities, it was tested and proved wrong. When government retreats, it's as likely that crime and gangs will fill the space, with less trust not more.

Many of the nations with the strongest civil societies also have active governments. The lesson is simple: the state can strengthen society.

Part of the battle is to encourage support for small, community-based ventures and to resist the tendency of big government to ally with big business (a tendency that could undermine Cameron's Big Society Bank, which according to rumours is set to be given over to bankers, hardly the best guarantors of social responsibility).

But there are promising innovations under way that could greatly help the public sector make the most of civil society. One is the "social entrepreneur in residence". The first of these, Eleanor Cappell, was appointed in Birmingham a year ago and charged with finding and nurturing the most promising social ventures, such as the Saheli gym, started by Asian women to help with health and fitness.

The long-term survival of projects of this kind will ultimately depend on the quality of leaders in positions of power, and this government has signalled a refreshing interest in backing community organisers. For the past three years we've run a programme across east London called UpRising - with both David Cameron and Nick Clegg as patrons - which is training 18- to 25-year-olds from all kinds of background to become effective leaders. As part of the course they have to run a community campaign. But they also have to learn how to make power work, how to bridge divides, and how to ensure that when they get power they're not corrupted by it.

These are a few examples of the big society in practice. We're only a small part of a dynamic field of social enterprise and civic action. Like others, we know how big the barriers are. Good ideas struggle to find support. Government remains averse to risk, and philanthropy is tiny. As departments and agencies plan cuts of 15%-20% in their own budgets, they're planning cuts of 40%-50% in funding for civil society.

To counter these risks, there needs to be a clearer commitment to protecting civil society's share of public spending. And there needs to be a sharper way of judging whether the big society programme really is working. For most people, society is ultimately about there being others around to help when we need it. Research we did last year showed 7m people feel severely disconnected from society and 1m have no one to turn to. A commitment to measuring social wealth in this sense - the wealth that comes from having people around us to help, to love, to care or to have fun with - could give a clearer meaning to what will otherwise remain a nebulous concept.

Geoff Mulgan