The copy I read was an eARC from Studio Books and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is for:
- people actively involved in local politics,
- community aid, or
- local/regional non profit work.

This book is not for:
- individual contributors,
- people curious about community organisation, or
- national NPO or activists.

This title caught my eye as I am working on building a local community for queer afab and trans women. It was a great overall read, but not what I needed for my purposes - hence the 3 stars.

For the right people, this book will be a treasure trove of how to and thought provoking community organisation tools. The author has well laid out thoughts and the illustrations within help give visual aid to the concepts he covers. Short and sweet and very direct - it maybe took me a half hour to read. He discusses a real life example of how he and his institute use these principles to effect long term change (I really loved the “we’re not looking for repeat work”). It’s more about engaging the local populace to think about what they want their community to be, and helping guide and facilitate long term change that is intersectional.

Overall I would recommend this book to the people it is for. For those that aren’t already involved at a leadership level with community organisation, I would say this book is a skip.

The Little Field Guide for Sparking Community-Led Change is, as promised, a brief guide to engaging groups in positive and effective action. Harwood's guiding principles are great advice for those looking to begin making meaningful changes in their communities. I also enjoyed the drawings at the beginning of each section. It added to overall engagement with the piece, especially for myself as a visual learner. My main gripe with the text was that I wanted more of it. I found much of the text to be focused around what not to do rather than explaining exactly how to accomplish each of the suggestions that Harwood outlines. Similarly, the case study at the heart of this book (from Reading) could have been used more meaningfully to expand on the how-to's introduced in the guide. For that reason, I think this text could be well suited for someone that is just dipping their toe into the pool of initiating change in their community. For myself, it provided some great reminders, but fell short when it came to descriptions about how to execute specific goals.

A field guide is a good description for this- it's short and straight-forward. There was nothing ground-breaking in terms of tips, yet the insights were still relevant. I can tell the author wants you to use your creativity for his advice, but at times it feels too vague to work with. This could be helpful for a seasoned organizer to refer back to when they need a quick refresher on certain topics.

This book was so helpful to me as I contemplate how to make change in my community. It was fantastic and helpful.

This was a fantastic book! Especially in light of the politically climate in the United States this day and age, I would definitely recommend this book along with Mutual Aid for anyone who wants to build community change and mutual aid. A little repetitive, but ultimately well laid out and engaging with bolded/underlined text the author wants to emphasis and cartoons that engage the reader.

Thank you to Studio Books and NetGalley for the eARC! I think this book is a pretty good introduction into community-led, or grassroots, organizing for change. It is straightforward and easy to understand. I appreciate the intersectional lens the author aims to discuss organizing through and actually went beyond the book to read/listed to some other bodies of his work. This ultimately helped flush out some of the ideas presented in this book! I also enjoyed the format and the reiteration of ideas, sometimes that can be repetitive, but for this book I think it was more useful than anything. Specifically for the format: the inclusion of cartoon sketches, underlining throughout the chapters, and bolding the final takeaways from each really helped keep my interest — beyond just the content. Definitely a useful book that lays a framework out through “field notes” in order to most compassionately serve communities in growing, rebuilding, or simply just existing. Thank you again for this eARC!

Favorite Quote: pg. 39 - “Change spreads over time, like a positive contagion.”

I picked this one up as a quick non-fiction read and it caught my eye with the word 'community' - a couple of the books I've read this year and last year have involved aspects of community building so I was hoping for a look at the practical side of things.
This guy definitely knows what he's talking about, and I don't doubt the amazing work his organization has done, I would have however enjoyed some concrete examples to go along side his theoretical field notes. I am sure there are probably some difficulties there with not openly sharing specific case notes - but also he kept referring to "the work in Reading" but I feel like I have no idea what actually went on there.

I liked this book. It was a bit repetitive, but I did find it very insightful regarding both the processes for community-led change truly suggested by the connected Institute and differing methods used by other practitioners/funders outside of the organization; plus, the repetition helped make the main themes 'stick' and last. Not only did the author challenge these alternative methods with respect, but rationale/reasoning and suggestions for improvement were provided. The chapters, while fairly brief, provide a great amount of points and questions to ponder at different points in one's reading journey, if not between points of their civic discussions, as well. Good stuff.

Thank you to Studio Books for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.