Neighbourhoods

Moments felt globally, experienced locally

Around the world people are watching the Zimbabwean election. At local level in that country, families and friends must be discussing issues in buoyant excitement mixed perhaps with trepidation at the prospect of change, dreading fierce confrontation.

In Florida a few years ago, with surely the best available technology at their disposal, a tragi-comedy played out. In Zimbabwe now, just to illustrate the contrasts, it seems that votes were counted by candlelight in some areas due to a lack of electricity.

If democracy wasn't the pinpoint of global-local meaning, you wouldn't even know what I'm on about.

Citizenship as credo

So former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has called for children to pledge an oath of allegiance to the queen, as part of a review of citizenship carried out at the request of the Prime Minister.

And he gets a well-earned round of derision. Simon Jenkins, for instance, points out that the man's paternalism

has nothing whatsoever to do with the civic space in which ordinary Britons live, breathe and conduct their politics, which is based on neighbourhood, community, village, town and city.

There's no need to rehearse the critique here - hopefully this folly will drown quickly and silently.

But there's another question to be asked, which is why a lord of the realm (is that the way to refer to them?) was invited by a Labour prime minister to carry out such an exercise? Why not a panel for example, including several citizens and those who work among citizens? It might have saved some embarassment, but the likelihood that it probably didn't occur to anyone close to the PM is as scary as what Goldsmith came up with.

Public libraries and multicultural relationships

Helen Carpenter, who managed the Welcome to Your Library project, has just published a very readable report about her international study tour on the role of public libraries in multicultural relationships.

She considers the relationships in terms of:

• how public libraries connect as institutions with all relevant stakeholders
• how they plan and deliver services that reflect, support and promote diversity
• how they enable inter-cultural dialogue and encourage active citizenship in a rapidly changing environment.

Helen visisted Canada, the USA, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium, and the report offers numerous little snapshots of good practice with professional reflections. More insights on her travel blog.

Community cohesion: stimulating more interaction

The government's response to the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, published today, anounces new actions including guidance for local authorities to consider how funding can better be used to support greater interaction between people from different backgrounds.

The proposed actions are:

* Specialist cohesion teams to be established by central government to provide advice on conflict resolution, mediation, leadership and on the steps that local leaders might take when new people arrive in their area.

* Local authority twinning - between areas of the country experiencing similar issues in order to share ideas and solutions to inspire innovation to respond to these challenges.

* New guidance for local authorities on developing Information Packs for migrants.

* Consultation on cohesion guidance for funders - to encourage local authorities to consider how funding can better be used to support greater interaction, and reducing funding for single groups.

* All local authorities will have access to an impact assessment tool to assess whether the activities they are planning will have a positive impact on cohesion in their neighbourhoods.

Press release.

Local Links - let's hear it for informal networks

Last night saw the launch of the Local Links report, following a joint Common Purpose / JRF project run by Susie Hay. The project worked in four areas of West Yorkshire, stimulating active networks with the aim of uniting people and energising them 'to make networks more productive, worthwhile and sustainable.'

The project injected a lot of energy into local networks over a relatively short period, based on the assumptions that (i) there is often insufficient connection between existing active networks in a locality, and (ii) informal ineraction can make a massive difference to people's perceptions, confidence and contribution.

It's an important project but a difficult one to describe because it examines the benefit of informal networking at local level -

'meeting other people who are active and involved in the area, knowing what they do, talking and working together and forging stronger links.'

All credit to JRF and Common Purpose for making the case for what too many funders would see as 'talk shops,' too wishy-washy to justify resources.

To me, Local Links is an important contribution to the growing pressure to assert informality and the value of conversations in local life. This is not just about saying 'conversations around community action are a good thing' (ho-hum) but saying that culturally we should place more emphasis and value on them as indicators of engagement, participation and a healthy democracy. Thanks Susie.

Report.
Evaluation report by Icarus Collective.
Findings summary.

Older refugees

The Refugee Council and Age Concern England today ran a conference about their work with older refugees, which has included a set of interviews and three regional 'listening days.'

Key points I got from the presentations I heard:

• Older refugees define integration in terms of their labour market experiences and their local social interactions.
• Many refugees feel isolated and this is related to the sense that neighbours are seldom welcoming.
• Service providers tend to assume that older refugees are invariably cared for by their extended families, which is often not the case.
• There are intergenerational aspects to integration - being accepted by people of different ages is important, and having all generations of one's family accepted is important.
• The lack of (unconditional) respect shown to older people in the UK is very offputting to many people from other cultures and can seem a barrier to integration. (There's a nicety here, which I tried to bring out in Respect in the neighbourhood, about distinguishing between respect for others as a default value of human relations, and unconditional respect for an office or status, such as being a teacher or being old. It may be that we have lamentably low levels of both kinds in the UK, but seeking to re-establish the latter may not be the way forward...)

Copies of reports are available via Age Concern on this page.

Ask them what they want

Last night I ran another workshop with local people in Manningham, designing a consultation plan for their new library.

Participants worked on eight themes - such as access, governance, stock, the garden, décor and furniture etc - and in each case looked at who should be consulted, how they should be consulted, what need there was for 'expert' or professional advice to consultation groups, and so on. They used the pink boxes to keep their notes and ideas in place, and it certainly gave a sense of accumulating achievement which you don't quite get from a pile of flipchart sheets. Using small slips of paper probably helps to get contributions from the less forthright or confident; and the boxes will be shared with others groups in the coming weeks to generate more input.

By the end of this third session I was struck by the clarity and immediacy with which people were deciding, for instance, whether or not it was appropriate to consult everybody or just a core group; when (eg with regard to décor or the garden) they thought it appropriate to let a design team come up with options first or after a brief from residents; whether or not to consult on a short list of options or to use open questions; what face-to-face or remote methods were appropriate, and so on.

There were none of those naïve claims that everybody has to have a say, or that professionals shouldn't move a finger without local people's approval. More a mature recognition that there are various ways of soliciting people's views, based on a mix of methods, a stimulated culture of involvement and a flow of information. And that consultation does not remove the responsibility for decision-making, rather it clarifies the requirement for those affected by decisions to be given the time, information and opportunity to contribute views, and that those views be taken into consideration.

It's not difficult: so why is it not commonplace?

'Strong safe and prosperous communities'

It's near christmas, and here's a glimpse of the government's scintillating choice of wrapping paper for the draft guidance on 'creating strong safe and prosperous communities.'

OK calm down, I'll be Santa and give you the link now, the way you'll have a topic of lively conversation to liven up parties the next few weeks. If someone else gives it to you on christmas day, appear thrilled and try not to look as if you've seen it before.

The closing date for responses is 12 February 2008, and yes, it is important stuff for neighbourhoods in England.

It covers for example the new 'duty to involve,' what is meant by 'representatives of local persons,' the role of information provision in consultation and involvement, establishing the 'distinctive vision and ambition' of an area, what is meant mean by a 'sustainable community strategy,' and how everything (especially local area agreements) relates to everything else.

Discovering local democracy: local people design their own consultation plan

Last night I ran a workshop with residents in Manningham, Bradford, to help them design a public consultation process.

Bradford Libraries have won funding to refurbish and extend Manningham library; and to their great credit, rather than specify how the consultation process would be run, the authority wanted to help local people to design it. A key starting point was for us all to appreciate that what we were doing wasn't about the new library, it was about designing a local democratic process. Once we'd worked through a couple of warm-up exercises to help us clarify this, I was struck by two things: the sense of fresh excitement that people brought to the process, having never before had the chance to participate in a public issue in such a way; and the sense that it's not at all straightforward.

I had asked that recruitment for the group did not result in domination by people who are particularly experienced in community activity, and we had a refreshing bunch of folk with an age range from 19 to 86 years, none of them bruised or made cynical by over-exposure to community and civic politics. And once you start talking to people about their general experience of democracy it can be surprising how strange the notion seems to them, while at the same time seeming to be perfectly natural if only they could get some of it.

Of course we tried to make sure we had a bit of fun, which included using children's bricks to design a 'public building' while simultaneously inventing a character who has to visit and use the place. I'm not sure how come these young women decided they would create a night club (the other group showed less imagination by coming up with, oh dear, a library), but we used the process to tease out some decision-making issues and areas of potential conflict.

The hard work hits next week, when the group starts filling in a matrix of themes and consultation issues. No-one said democracy is easy: perhaps we'll find out at the end of the process whether they think it's worthwhile.

Citizens' day framework

The Citizenship Foundation has published guidance for local authorities and community sector partners on how to set up citizens days.

The booklet offers a range of advice and examples to explore how projects can help bring together people from different backgrounds.

Online game about being a refugee

UNHCR has just launched the English language version of an online game created to increase students' awareness and knowledge about refugee situations, by putting them in the position of a refugee.

In Against all odds, the player is interrogated, hears the sound of guards' footsteps approaching, and senses the urgency in finding safety while racing against the clock.

Press release. Via Welcome to Your Library digest.

Interwoven freedom

One of the most striking features in the long anti-slavery campaign was the role of women and the degree to which this involved local networks and highly organised community action (Adam Hochschild, Bury the chains). Local responses to global issues are nothing new.

Now here's an attractive exhibition put together by English Heritage and the Sparkbrook African and Caribbean Women’s Development Initiative (SCAWDI) in the west Midlands.

Interwoven Freedom enabled a group of women to explore slavery and abolition in Birmingham. They visited archives, exhibitions and historic sites with links to slavery and worked with creative writer Ava Ming and textile artist Karina Thompson. Taking inspiration from Birmingham’s abolitionist women and Black enslaved women who campaigned for the end of slavery – they have interwoven their own personal response with the story of freedom.

Drawing on the tradition of abolitionist women who created and distributed workbags filled with anti-slavery manifestos, the participants have written their own manifestos which mix historical facts with vivid fictional stories and powerful poems. They have made workbags from fair trade cotton and African cloth. Woven into their bags are integrated references from their past and personal histories, images of slave ships, photographs and Jamaican and Ghanaian flags.

Various locations in the west Midlands until 19 May 2008.

Disrespecting childhoods

Plenty in the news this morning about the Community soundings report, which describes high anxiety among 7-11 year olds concerning exams, friendships, and the world they're growing into. It refers to a 'loss of childhood.'

Many expressed concern about climate change, global warming and pollution, the gulf between rich and poor, and terrorism.

"Some were also worried by the gloomy tenor of 'what you hear on the news' or by a generalised fear of strangers, burglars and street violence," the report said.

Are we surprised? As Hugh Cunningham notes in the BBC report, 'unequal societies have the most stressed children.'

And on the theme of pupil tests, a nicely understated remark by the report's author could serve very well as an epitaph for New Labour: "Standards may have been too readily equated with quality."

Guardian. Times.

Cohesion and civic participation

Communities and Local Government last week published some headline findings from the first quarter of the 2007-08 Citizenship Survey, covering April-June 2007.

From which I note:

• As in the last survey (2003), 81% of people agreed that their local area is a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together.
• Among those aged 16-24, the proportion of people who agree that people from different backgrounds get on well together in their area has increased from 73% to 82% since 2003.
• In April-June 2007, 77% of people felt that they 'strongly belonged to their neighbourhood.' Figures were higher among some ethnic groups - Pakistani (85%), Bangladeshi (83%) and Indian (83%).
• In April-June 2007, 37% of people in England agreed that they could influence decisions in their local area. In 2001 the proportion was 44%.

Remember public space?

The thinking I've done recently on third places got me revisiting issues around the confusion of private and public space, usually illustrated by reference to shopping malls.

I first bumped into this issue when I visited a new central library in Dundee ten or fifteen years ago. Unusually for the time, it was located in a small closed mall, surrounded by the usual big-name stores. I was always used to the prospect of homeless people using libraries and I thought at the time this was a particularly thorough way of severing that relationship.

Of course, in some ways malls have attracted some unfair press. I seem to recall Jennifer Light making the point (and if she didn't I'd like to make it anyway, with apologies if need be) that malls play a significant communal role. It's worth stating that 'commercial' does not necessarily contradict 'public'; and that it's often difficult to disentangle class from arguments about 'authenticity' (of architecture or the built environment generally).

Also, it's hardly unusual to observe young people gathering in malls just to hang out - indeed it's one of the few places where they regularly occupy the same space as other age groups at the same time. (Although that says more about the poverty of other public spaces available to them than it does about the malls, I suspect).

So what are the problems with malls? I'm not writing an essay here, just braindumping, but how's this for starters:

(i) homogenised detachment from the local geography/topography

(ii) promotion of use of cars: going shopping is a habit which justifies driving; and consequent effect on local trading economies

(iii) inability to reconcile commercial culture with recreative culture (most of those attempts one sees to give appearance to some form of cultural experience, even Santa's grotto, are embarassingly doomed: the best ones, like the giant chess sets for example, leave as much as possible to the actions of visitors)

(iv) abuse by the private leaseholders in repackaging the area as an exclusionary space: enter the security guard and his or her often ill-defined understanding of rights...

Oh, and on an emotional level, allow me to add: the wretched bloody antiseptic feel of the places.

I got to pondering all this because half an hour ago I came upon this sweet example of confusion over a shopping street (not a mall) posted by Bill Adler on Now public:

"This past Tuesday I went to downtown Silver Spring, had lunch, and then took out my camera and standing on Ellsworth [Drive], I began taking shots of the buildings with the blue sky and clouds as a backdrop. Almost immediately, a security guard approached and told me 'there was no picture taking allowed in Downtown Silver Spring.' 'What do you mean?' I said, 'I am on a city street, in a public place -- taking pictures is a right that I have protected by the first amendment.' The guard told me to report to the management office.

"There, Stacy Horan informed me that Downtown Silver Spring including Ellsworth [Drive] is private property, not a public place, and subject to the rules of the Peterson Companies.  They have a no photography policy to 'protect them from people who might want to use the photographs as part of a story in which they could write bad things about us.'  And she told me that many of the chain stores in Downtown Silver Spring don't what their 'concepts' to be photographed for security reasons."

So is there really a crisis of public space, or is it just an evolution that we don't yet grasp? It seems to me there really is a crisis, but there are subtleties which we need to explore and understand. Bundled into all this is a discussion to be had about the differences between third places and public space - an issue I've touched on recently in relation to public libraries.

A full analysis (at least of the UK context) would require an understanding of the economics and politics of property development in the public realm (is there really a decline of public funding for the public realm: I suspect so), and the relation of public space to (you knew it was coming) democracy...

All in good time: this post has gone on long enough.

Integration and Cohesion: the report

The report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion is published today, with a strong emphasis on improving cohesion through local action. If you work in or around community development in the UK, you won't be able to escape the significance of this document and I hope you wouldn't want to. If you are outside the UK but interested in cohesion issues, I think this could still be an important document for you.

'Some of the key influences on poor cohesion are low satisfaction with an area as a place to live, high perceptions of levels of anti-social behaviour and a high level of deprivation – all issues which can be addressed locally, or be tackled by local institutions. Our analysis also found that there was no simple link between poor cohesion and any of these factors; or good cohesion and the reverse. Local history, trends or events are also important... Improving cohesion in the long term is about local action: local areas have the expert knowledge about particular local circumstances; and local actions are what will result in integration and cohesion.'

Here's my first, undeniably positive reaction from a quick skim, as I won't have much time to deal with this in the next few days.

The report is structured around four principles:

• shared futures - this is about 'an emphasis on articulating what binds communities together – rather than the differences that might divide them – and is about prioritising a shared future over divided legacies';
• strengthened rights and responsibilities;
• mutual respect and civility, also referred to as 'an ethics of hospitality';
• visible social justice.

The chapter on respect and civility is of particular interest to me and I may post about it separately in due course. I picked out the following:

There is a call for government to take integration and cohesion seriously in relation to youth services provision, but I get the impression that the role of intergenerational work in promoting community cohesion is not given nearly enough momentum in this report.

The Commission proposes a nationally sponsored Community Week (I suppose continued abuse of the C word is inevitable) 'with a focus on celebrating all communities and inter-community engagement'.

The Commission has also acknowledged the dearth of evidence on the most effective ways of stimulating meaningful interaction and building cross-cultural friendships, and it calls for a programme of research, hurrah, 'to explore more closely what works' (in this respect) 'in different neighbourhoods and why.'

There's a healthy emphasis on education and citizenship and the promised and needed support for ESOL classes (English for Speakers of Other Languages) is there, plus an interesting recommendation that authorities should reduce the amount of language translation they do: 'translation should be reduced except where it builds integration and cohesion.' There also seems to be a sensible detachment from media over-excitement about notions of 'Britishness'.

Annex B looks like a very useful categorisation of what seems to work well and less well in five types of area (unhelpfully called 'family groups'). They are: changing, less affluent rural areas; stable less affluent urban areas with manufacturing decline; stable less affluent urban areas without manufacturing decline; changing, less affluent urban areas; and areas with tensions arising from a single issue.

Article by Madeleine Bunting in yesterday's Guardian. More in today's Guardian including comments by Ed Cox on the point that cohesion needs to be considered everywhere, not just in urban areas with a visible ethnic mix: 'cohesion tensions in the future are more likely to be experienced in unexpected places where 'diversity' is new.'

'As local diversity becomes more complex, we think mutual respect and civility should underpin the way we as communities navigate a shared course through different understandings of what is acceptable or normal.'

Third places, libraries and the public realm

I've uploaded a short summary of the presentation I gave last week at the Third Place Forum in Caloundra.

Following comments I received afterwards, I think the key issue is to explore more deeply the differences and interplay between 'community' places or 'community-based' locations, and the public realm. It seemed to me that in Australia the distinction may be more blurred than it is in the UK, which is probably a good thing. But it's surely still true to say that while they overlap there are differences, and that therefore there are questions about how third places in either case are co-produced and styled. Reflecting on this relationship helps us explore the role of public libraries, and vice versa.

Projects don't always work

Proboscis have published a report written by Giles Lane and myself about some work we carried out with a residents' organisation in Southall, west London, in 2006.

In the Conversations and Connections project we set out to explore how some of Proboscis' public authoring tools can be harnessed by a community organisation to stimulate connections between residents and thereby increase levels of participation at local level.

The report describes what we attempted and explores the reasons why the project did not succeed fully. The main reasons were the lack of consistent community development support on the estate, and the weakness of connections between the core group members and the majority of residents. This project illustrates the old principle that sorting the people issues can be harder than sorting technological issues.

The report refers back to the Common knowledge essay which I wrote about community development on the estate.

The project was funded by the Department for Constitutional Affairs, now the Ministry of Justice.

Oi you!

A recent Women's Design Service survey report includes this comment:

Public spaces are improved by design, by encouraging more people to enter them and use them, and providing the facilities for them to do so in a responsible way. This includes reducing traffic, providing easy sustainable access, lighting, shops that people want to use, safe crossings, facilities and leisure, and giving them back to people.

It's not exactly an outburst is it? More like a tired list of odd jobs for the weekend. So why does it take new labour's talking surveillance cameras to elicit such simple sensible advice to government?

Be patient and wait for the next development - school competitions are to be organised so that selected children's voices can be used for these disembodied street reprimands. (There's an official somewhere in Whitehall thinking, 'Yup, that should do it.') No wonder they want everyone in the country to be able to understand english.

I'm hoping I'll get the chance to test these devices out - (can they detect negative thoughts yet, do you think?) -  and if I find their syntax or grammar at fault I hope I have the presence of mind to launch into the most caustic philippic I can muster. No wait, better still, we should have a smart-mob organised mass confrontation, with loud speakers and children's pre-recorded protestations of innocence...

But do they understand mockery?

Cohesion, immigration, and policy

Immigration minister Liam Byrne got headlines yesterday for his proposed new "managed migration" points system, and says that when one junior school in his constituency saw its population of children with English as a second language rise from 5% to 20% within a year, 'the task of boosting standards in some of the poorest communities gets harder.'

And so the practicalities of promoting cohesion, when diversity implies low social capital and instability, bring a keen focus to immigration policy. Byrne points to the speed of population change in some localities and notes:

'Here are a set of changes that have made Britain richer but which have deeply unsettled the country.'

Well good, at least we have some acknowledgement that diversity brings richness. But the notion of diversity in neighbourhoods seems to be readily equated with 'problem'. How can that be? Apparently 'laissez-faire migration' runs the risk of damaging communities. (Not half as much as laissez faire consumerism, I'm thinking).

Being surrounded with a mix of people from different backgrounds creates tensions at local level apparently. (Er, excuse me, not necessarily it doesn't). So we must only admit to our country the people who will make an identifiable economic contribution. (Er, there may be a bit missing from the sequence of this argument). If they say it often enough, to some people it will begin to sound true. To many it probably already does.

It's just possible that there could be other causes of tensions in neighbourhoods. Byrne's approach suggests another clash of government policies, with CLG in various ways (including through the Commission) rightly and consistently stimulating ways in which 'people from different backgrounds can get on well together,' through community cohesion measures, 'liveability' policies, civil renewal, community engagement, local governance and so on. Why would immigration policy makers claim to have the answer without reference to other measures where people are working collectively on these issues? Unless there's an election coming up and some right-wing votes to be lost.

Meanwhile, in what looks like a premeditated subversion of Byrne's theme, from last friday's Guardian comes Robina Qureshi's tale of how 'the arrival of asylum seekers in Glasgow's most deprived areas has given back a sense of community in a way no government initiative has ever done.' How so? Well, as most community workers know, nothing succeeds like adversity:

'Immigration snatch squads, escorted by police, have conducted a series of dawn raids on Scottish asylum families over the past few years. Finally, last October, local people gathered alongside asylum seekers early one morning in Kingsway in peaceful protest at the raids. At around 6.30am an immigration snatch squad turned up to take another family. Over 150 members of the community linked arms and demanded the squad cease immediately. After a 40-minute standoff, the chief of police announced there would be no raid. To this day, the community has been on constant vigil in the hours before dawn.'

And finally, on this theme, a huge round of applause for the Welcome to Your Library project, which 'connects public libraries with refugee communities,' and has won this year's 'Libraries Change Lives' Award. I've been a fan from the start and as a former judge for this award I know how well deserved it is.

Individualism, responsibility, and listening

I've been puzzled at how reluctant commentators have been to finger Thatcherite individualism in seeking to understand contemporary problems of anti-social behaviour. Just now, most of us are sufficiently detached from the present flashes of gun and knife violence glinting on our news-screens, and probably don't know what to make of it. These are local experiences for which broader cultural explanations are sought.

So thanks are due to Josh Freedman Berthoud who in a Guardian article this evening exposes the lasting twisted effects of individualism. He points out that these attacks can be - are sometimes meant to be - indiscriminate and unmotivated:

a chilling indication of the kind of society that many city-dwelling British youths now inhabit - a rampantly individualistic society, in which each boy does everything he can to prove that he has no sense of morals or attachment to the society around him.

We are finally beginning to gain focus on one of the central social policy issues of our age, in which notions of collective association or responsibility can readily be shrugged off, and behaviour that discounts the humanness of others has swollen grotesquely in the vacuum. Give them credit, government and agencies have spotted the connection here - hence the Respect agenda, among other things - but there's another message less well-grasped: a message about how to hear messages.

Certain messages that government sends out - if you do not consume, you have failed as a citizen; you are either with us or against us, so compete or be defeated, and so on - are hard to miss. I'm not sure that messages coming from citizens (or discarded citizens) by contrast, are being processed where government is.

A year or two back I heard a government minister refer to the community sector back in 1997, in the early days of 'the New Labour Project' (his words, worthy of capitals on the grounds of pomposity) as not getting the message and being 'somewhere else'. What a hollow irony. Given the inescapabale compulsion towards responsibilisation of the citizen, the possibility that others' views might be genuinely valid and not just there for the purposes of spurious consultation, may finally be unavoidable. Could it be time to stop telling people, from a position of moral bankruptcy, how to behave, and start listening to how they react to one another's behaviour and attitudes?

How about this at the simplest level, for example: I've often heard older people, in  discussion about kids causing trouble on their estates or in their neighbourhoods, make the point that there's nothing for them to do. It's not unusual to hear older people call for youth clubs and youth work: of course they are frightened by the hoodied clusters on the street corners but they also tend to look for understanding and solutions. So nothing happens for a bit, and then we get ASBOs.

It would be nice to think that we could clinch this notion of a conversational democracy, a style of government that listens and doesn't seek relentlessly just to regulate on its miserable moral basis. The idea continues to gather momentum and is echoed in another Guardian item, in today's published, by Lucy Ward.

Ward notes that when Gordon Brown recently met parents, they favoured 'an independent information and discussion forum separate from government.' She detects a need for 'some way of eavesdropping on a wider range of voices' and finds that what is crucial is not what parents say to the government, but what they say to each other.

Collective behaviour and climate change: why would anybody bother?

Twice recently at events, I've raised the possibility that responses to climate change represent a potential sea-change in collectively-oriented behaviour. More and more people, I suspect, are taking everyday life and lifestyle decisions less on the totally individualistic basis of our Thatcherite inheritance, and more in recognition that there are others around us and to follow, who might be affected by those decisions.

And now I'm just catching up with a recent study by CDX and the Centre for Sustainable Energy
on Mobilising individual behavioural change through community initiatives. The study investigated 'what kinds of local and community initiatives are most effective at influencing changes in behaviour and at what levels, and whether any lessons learned from these are transferable to the issue of climate change.'

The report provokes thinking about important issues. The key message seems to be that what is lacking is 'a realistic sense of agency,' and this is the problem to be solved. Part of the argument is that people are not motivated to take action (jointly or individually) on an issue which is not local, where their action has no immediate impact (or indeed any significant impact), and where the scale of any action taken is dwarfed by the impact of the inaction of others.

And yet, and yet. We know there is evidence of changes of attitude, and local councils have had relatively little difficulty imposing regimes of recycling which have transfomed attitudes. The media too have played a hugely significant role in the subtle shifting of attitudes.

I suspect that because this is an (apparently hurried) report to government, the assessment remains implacably hard-nosed (indeed, in an odd sentence towards the foot of p7 the authors suggest that, in the absence of evidence that community-based environmental initiatives influence behaviour, the challenge for policy-makers and funders is to justify supporting them - the report thereby seems to defy its own existence).

There have been numerous local projects over the years that have engaged people in reducing their negative impact on the environment and changed people's attitudes to the ways in which it is managed.

Surely it's time for better evaluation, not time to abandon evaluation and pass the buck back to policy-makers? I think this is an issue where the notion that there is no such thing as altruism has become a blinding presumption, to the extent that we do not recognise the possibility that people will change their behaviour for any reason other than immediate personal interest.

But some people will do, have done so, are doing so, and, crucially, are now living in a social context which encourages them more than it did in the past to engage with others and persuade others to do so. Perhaps the notion of a renaissance of collective behaviour is not so far-fetched.

Where my naive optimism springs from I'm afraid I cannot say, since earlier this evening I felt physically sick at the televised image from our House of Commons, where elected members had committed this act of inexplicable collective folly. Perhaps it's the lasting influence of Dickens and his famous declaration of political creed:

My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the People governed is, on the whole, illimitable.

A future of participation?

Seems you can't move these days for articles pondering how erstwhile Labour voters feel seduced by the commonsense emanating from Tories, contrasted with the miserable folly of some of our leader's all-too-lasting policies.

And so to an Involve participation seminar this evening, which included a speech from Oliver Letwin on 'a conservative vision of citizenship,' buttressed by Bill Wiggin MP, with some apparently harmless waves of reality from Mary Ann Sieghart allowed to lap gently some way below their lofty outlook.

They were all preceded by Mori's Ben Page who neatly and unceremoniously packed all the real issues into about five minutes, only to find they too were mostly overlooked by the subsequent speakers.

Oliver Letwin offered a vision of citizenship as 'citizens taking responsibility for what goes on around them, not commenting on or responding to what goes on around them' (I think I jotted that down correctly...) His key message was that a Conservative government would press the participation button just as firmly as the current government does, but (mercifully) without the ridiculous over-emphasis on managerialism which has so thoroughly spoiled the best intentions of the past ten years.

Sadly, there was too much to be said and too many people trying to say it - just like real-time participation - for anyone to grab the issues and try to list them. FWIW, with the benefit of a train ride home, here's my personal two euro's-worth for starters:

• consultation without engagement is damaging and always has been. So -
• start community engagement at the most local level and take the lessons up a level at a time, cautiously (Ben Page made some potent points about scale)
• do not use the C word to imply consensus
• try to create a culture of genuine participation in all arenas of social life, including the family, school, and work environments: the habit of participation is precious and a society that neglects it is vulnerable
• understand that at the present rate, politicians will be following, not leading, this debate (possibly trailed only by the established broadcast media)
• try and celebrate the hits for participation that are independent of the availability of resources: there are still too many people baying for funding even though we have an unenviable tradition of wasting it because we don't know how to work collaboratively.

Localism, governance and the public realm

The Museums Libraries and Archives Council has just published a think-piece I wrote for them on localism, governance and the public realm.

Originally the idea was to explore how neighbourhood governance could impact on, and be influenced by, the local cultural sector; but as the broad scope of the local government white paper became apparent, including its coverage of community cohesion and engagement, so did the scope of the essay. I think the new localism presents an oustanding opportunity for local libraries, archives and museums to re-assert the public realm - not as it used to be, but updated to reflect 'engaged democracy' as it is emerging.

The moment is there for the sector to take a lead in developing a vision of the public realm in which people recognise the civic, contribute to it and value it; in which residents organise and participate in local events and associate around such events; where they have places over which they feel a sense of ownership and to which they can go. The case must be made for a public realm in which people feel informed, respected, able to influence the local processes that affect their lives, and supported in celebrating their sense of community.

Refugees and public libraries

I've long been a fan of the Welcome to Your Library project run by Helen Carpenter, and the news digest compiled by Helen with John Vincent. WTYL is a project connecting public libraries with refugees and asylum seekers. By extension, it aims to improve access to and quality of public library services for everyone. The project is working locally in Hillingdon, Leicester, Liverpool, Southwark and Tyne and Wear.

They've just launched the WTYL website which includes an events page, several case studies, and a link to the news digest.

The neighbourhood agenda and community development

Community Development Foundation have published a short policy statement on 'The neighbourhood agenda and community development'.

It includes the observation that 'community life has an existence and a value in its own right and not just as a conduit for engagement purposes.'

Take Part: learning and citizenship

I witter on occasionally about how policy needs to be stimulating rather than just enforcing citizenship, and I think the projects on active learning for active citizenship which the Home Office set up a couple of years ago probably fit the bill. Now they've pulled lessons and a framework together from that programme, and called it Take Part. The aim, it says here,

is to provide programmes of active learning that enable people to gain the skills, knowledge and confidence to become empowered citizens – citizens who are able to make an active contribution to their communities and influence public policies and services.

The manual, according to the press release,

'sets out the guiding principles and values for educating citizens to enable them to influence decision making and shape public services in their communities. It also provides practical advice on learning methods, and lots of examples of Take Part learning in action.'

There's a section in the framework about 'constructed (meaning facilitated) conversations' which starts to bring out the citizenship purpose of community development. It's a shame that there's still some unreflective use of the C word, but there's a lot of careful sifting of theoretical material gone on here and it's well worth absorbing.

There are regional events being held over the next month or so.

Everyday participation

From time to time I bang on about the 'habit of participation' and people nod and then carry on with what they were doing.

Here perhaps is a better term, in work developed by Liverpool Youth Services.

'A culture of participation can only develop if young people are able to experience participation as a part of their everyday life and not simply as a 'one-off' event... Developed in a series of workshops held with young people, Everyday Participation emphasizes the role of youth work as a seedbed in which young people can learn the basic skills and develop the attitudes needed to enable their participation in decision-making at multiple levels. Its working principles are:

• Participation is a dialogue between adults and young people as equal partners in a process where decision-making takes place and results in change.
• A culture of participation is a climate in which young people expect to be heard and involved, where participation is something that happens every day and not a separate event or activity.
• Everyday participation integrates the aims of participation into the daily running of a youth group, making it a guiding principle of every session and every aspect of group life, not the focus of a separate initiative.

This practice emphasises the use of everyday situations in all service settings as democratic moments where young people can make experiences through their negotiation of interests.

It still makes it sound a bit special, having to take place in the running of a youth group, whereas what I'm interested in is overcoming the problem that so many people go through family and school life with very little or no experience of being involved in decision-making processes that affect them. But whether or not the principles feed down into schools and parenting classes, it's still eminently sensible.

Source: Toolkit for youth participation in urban policies, Urbact 2006.

Full practical guide here.

Inequalities at the root

Will principles of social justice and equality (meaning fairness) finally make it through to the top of global and local political agendas?

The news this morning brings at last a focus on the sense of injustice and inequality which facilitates the process of radicalising young muslims. It relates closely to my comment last week:

"Terrorism will only gain footholds and accumulate formidable momentum where people experience high levels of persistent inequality and injustice."

The chemistry of terrorism is not that difficult to understand and one of its essential ingredients is a sense of unfairness. Shahid Malik said: "where you forget about right and wrong, where you think two wrongs equals a right ... those events are diminishing my ability to put forward arguments against extremism."

The UK government stoutly insists there is no connection between acts of terrorism and its own policies - thereby both confirming my view that there is weak political understanding of this principle, and avoiding the question of the extent to which their policies have exacerbated inequalities. For many of us I suspect, the buoyant optimism of 1997-2001, when we had so many incisive and pioneering policy papers and measures, has sunk beneath the greedy centralisation of power and the 'exclusion of exclusion.'

It's becoming graphically clear that this is a global crisis. There's something here about ordinary people in their own neighbourhoods facing the consequences of confrontations between frightening forces that are far beyond their powers to influence, and getting pitifully inadequate and belated responses from authorities. Many people in Belfast must be looking on with a sense of long-haul resignation.

As if to accentuate that this is not just the Palestinian Territories, or Lebanon, or Birmingham or Walthamstow, here is an article in today's Guardian about the street violence in Sao Paulo:

"It is an unrecognised civil war - only they are not political groups involved. It is the poor person versus anybody who has something, and that something need not even be very much."

Celebrating prosocial neighbourhood action

On the 10 Downing Street website tonight:

A couple from Yorkshire met Tony Blair before being honoured for their bravery in taking action against nuisance neighbours.

Joe and Alison Bednall suffered three years of abuse from a neighbouring family that included threats of violence, dumping rubbish and spitting. The couple refused to be intimidated and helped secure anti-social behaviour orders against the family responsible.

Their actions were later recognised at the Respect "Taking a Stand" Awards in London, where other winners were also honoured.

Mr Blair gave the couple a guided tour of Number 10 Downing Street and praised them for their hard work in helping him bring "respect" back to Britain's communities.

"He just said congratulations and well done and carry on doing what you're doing," Mr Bednall said.

After visiting Mr Blair, the couple were named as one of four gold Respect Award winners to receive £6,000 for their community group. They established the group during the struggle with their own nuisance neighbours so residents could work together to improve the area.

Mr Bednall added: "Since the group started going people are more friendly. They want to get things done now. They want to make the area a nicer place to live in."

I think some people will be reading that and asking themselves why they are not quite at ease with it. Surely the action these people took is laudable, and should be celebrated? This is an example of ordinary people resisting intimidation and overcoming the fear of retaliation, to assert their right to respect in the neighbourhood.

But we're not at ease, not because of the action, but because we can't help suspecting the motives behind its celebration. That's politics I'm afraid, but we shouldn't let it diminish the significance of what we are hearing here. Under any previous government, we'd have been quite surprised at such a press release, at national publicity given to such a theme: today, it's almost routine and we're suspicious.

So I'm just pausing a moment and reflecting that I'm pleased for Joe and Alison.

Miliband on empowerment

Given what I wrote the other day about empowerment, these words from David Miliband at a recent Fabian Society event are of interest:

"it is clear to me that the central political debate in the years ahead will be about power, who holds it, how it is spread, how it [is] accountable. We have to show that we have the ideas to reform the state as an ally of aspiration...

"To persuade people about the efficacy of government we have to make them part of the action; the challenge is to spread the sense of power and autonomy citizens feel over their lifestyles and values to other parts of their life, notably their interactions with public services, markets, and the community." [Emphasis added].

Good stuff to hear from a leading politician. But what I've been trying to get at is the point that too many people don't have much sense of power or autonomy over their lifestyles in the first place; so for many, maybe it's not necessarily the right place to start.

The event was the launch of the Fabian Commission report on life chances, Narrowing the gap.

Community leaders, or representation? (updated)

Here I am reading a draft report from a meeting about neighbourhood governance, and the phrase 'community leaders' stops me, the way it always does. I have difficulty with the frequent and unreflective use of this term - not, I hope, just because of some wishy-washy resistance to hierarchical cultures, but more because I'm unconvinced that calling for more 'community leaders' is a solution to anything.

When I've said in the past that I don't know what or who they are, I wasn't being disingenuous. I read recently an article, published surprisingly enough in Urban studies, in which community leaders are des