Neighbourhoods

Avoiding Mrs Jellyby: on involvement and coercion

If you work in community participation and engagement, you can get quite sensitive to questions about exploitative or coercive practices. Me, if I get the chance to have my coercion-ometer tested or recalibrated, I'm gonna take it.

And that happened unexpectedly today when I had the privilege to chair the first trustees meeting for Friends Out There. We have some way to go as a new charity, but I found myself among friends with energy, ideas, vision and practical nous, so I'm hoping we'll be able to convert the goodwill and excitement of our launch into some meaningful change.

We met in someone's house and several of the trustees had children with them. Some of the youngsters took the initiative to set up their own Friends Out There 'club'. We're talking roughly 8-12 year-olds. So they got on with their own meeting, in the kitchen - prepared an agenda, took notes, designed posters, listed ideas, and agreed to rotate roles at future meetings.

While this was exciting and to be welcomed, I'm of the view that on a sunny spring sunday afternoon, kids should have the chance to be outside messing around, making a noise and possibly causing a limited amount of trouble. So it forced us to examine the hidden sources of coercion. What had any of us said or done that brought the children to think they should be, or wanted to be doing this?

Maybe I seem a little over-sensitive here, but given the association of our charity with a village in Nigeria, I took no comfort whatever in recollecting the image of the philanthropic Mrs Jellyby in Bleak House. Dickens at his most devastating. Mrs Jellyby is devoted to the welfare of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger, neglecting the interests of those around her. Her daughter Caddy comes to resent her exploitation by her mother.

I'm glad to say we all felt that the youngsters had taken their own path and in fact, before the meeting, one had complained to her mother that she wasn't being involved.

Still there we were in the back room, us adults, busy with Grown-Up Stuff, sigh. We invited the children to come into our meeting when they were ready and share with us what they'd done. How right-on of us.

Well, I suppose we think we understand involvement and we think we appreciate our young people, but they near blew us away with the creative directness of their ideas and approach. We now have the hefty challenge of working out how to support the stuff they want to see happen. The suspicion is growing that they might just be coercing us.

Learning from the local: engagement and cohesion

A quick note about yesterday's Learning from the Local conference organised by the Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths.

The main purpose was to report on a recent local project, the Newtown Neighbourhood Project (report will be linked here when I'm told it is available). This material was well contextualised with other presentations, including an update from Marj Mayo on a current JRF project on community engagement, governance and ethnic diversity - 'fluid communities, solid structures'; and a session on researching and working with gypsy-traveller groups.

The Newtown Neighbourhood Project worked in a predominantly white area with a sizeable proportion of residents of gypsy/traveller origin. The partnership (a housing association, a community engagement consultant, and CUCR, with Housing Corporation funding) seems to have worked really well, so that participative research was possible and small specific actions followed from consultative exercises.

The event got me thinking about the ways in which the community engagement agenda may be merging with (or coming into collision with) the community cohesion agenda.

My take on it at the moment, FWIW, is that the two agendas come from different drivers but just because there are tensions between them - for example, there are practices of engagement which might seem to contribute to segregation; and at the same time, as Michael Keith pointed out in response to a question, there's a politics of cohesion which is fairly reactionary - I don't see why there should not be a natural combining process here.

I'd like to live in a society where people incontestably have the right to informed participation in decision-making processes that affect them, and where at the same time people from different backgrounds get on well together. Doesn't sound too much to ask.

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.

Citizen participation is not community engagement

I've been advising a few public library authorities on their community engagement plans under the Community Libraries Programme, and been struck in one example by the way citizen participation can come to disguise a lack of community engagement.

The proposal involves engaging a number of volunteers who will serve, with officers, on 'community management groups' (note the term) and in other activities; and the groups will take decisions throughout the life of the project. Because it's possible to point to the participation of local residents in decision-making processes, it seems to be legitimate under the conditions of the scheme for the authority to describe this as community engagement.

But the decisions to be made are in this case part of the library service agenda, not an agenda decided by local people. There seems to have been no attempt to engage with the interests of community groups and explore how the library service can support and contribute to those. What's interesting here is that the funding system appears to allow this kind of blurring. (The library authority is aware of my misgivings and sought to reassure me that they will crack on with genuine CE once they've got the oppressive bureaucracy out of the way).

Beyond all this there is a troubling sense of flakiness around community engagement generally. With the track record of the regeneration industry on CE increasingly under question, it's unfair to pick on the library sector. If there is a little lack of clarity about what the community libraries programme is trying to achieve, I think it's definitely tweakable. Ben Taylor notes in a recent MLA baseline report for the programme:

'there is a lack of fully shared agreement about what community engagement entails – a critical part  of the vision. This includes a few respondents who still believe that community engagement is simply based on library use and issue numbers, rather than changing the relationship with libraries and empowering communities and individuals. While many have a more developed approach, the question remains unanswered: Are we trying to get people involved in libraries, or in their community?'

To put it another way: is this about local people being involved in library services; or about libraries playing a role, along with others, in promoting community cohesion and empowering people to get involved in local life on their own terms?

Things are not critical here, not least because one can envisage a progression: lots of libraries already work with local reps and volunteers to manage, deliver and perhaps develop their existing services. This gets them into a position where they play a supportive role in whatever local groups decide they want to do; and hopefully into being consistently a proactive, deliberate stimulus for local social interaction.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, we'll see) it comes at a time when the practice of community engagement is under critical examination.

A JRF report on Communities First in Wales notes that:

'There was little evidence of community influence over statutory members of Communities First partnerships and no evidence of significant mainstream 'programme bending' where statutory agencies prioritised actions and expenditure in the Communities First partnership area.'

Earlier this month Regen & renewal reported on Graham Gardner's (questionable) fault-finding over the government's community empowerment policies.

And here's New Start magazine reporting on a New Economics Foundation report which suggests that regeneration programmes are failing to reduce inequalities because they are good at measuring things that make no difference to the lives of local people, and poor at measuring things that do. (Covered here by Regen.net).

According to New Start, the report (which I haven't got to yet, sorry) shows how government measures focus on objectives that are either unrealistic or totally miss the point.

What I think we have here is the growing sense of a miserable mismatch where the fussing pedantic slob known as New Labour Managerialism (groan) somehow shacked up with naive and seductive young Principles of Community Governance (gasp). In the romantic history of social policy, were there ever two concepts so lamentably unsuited to one another?

Control over communities

See if you think your understanding of the politics of empowerment would be enhanced by this event, publicised with this image and described in the email blurb I just received as follows:

"The Empowerment Action Plan: Making Empowerment a Reality in Every Community" takes place on Wednesday June 18th 2008 and will examine how authorities will be given increasingly greater control over their communities.

I don't care about the grammar, I'm upset to learn that people 'inside government' hold this understanding of empowerment.

Empowerment and civic participation

A long conversation this afternoon with my old buddy Gabriel Chanan in which we touched on the puzzle of whether policy on 'empowerment' is starting to get elided with job creation (see Unlocking the talent of our communities). If we're going to have disempowerment confused with worklessness, it will just serve to further marginalise older people, most of whom are outside the labour market and quite disempowered enough already thanks.

In the national indicator set, the key indicator for empowerment is NI4:

'The proportion of the adult population who agree that they feel able to influence decisions affecting their local area.'

More description and explanation here.

I think the indicators in themselves look very progressive. Of course, there's always concern about how they will be used, and we'll all take some convincing that they won't be turned into irritating and counter-productive league tables. And there are other questions.

The way the indicators will work, as I understand it, is that local authorities and their partners will establish a baseline and seek (be expected) to improve by 4 per cent subsequently.

Well let's see now, if you've got a given percentage of people in your area who have not said that they feel able to influence decisions, who do you target in order to increase the proportion by 4 per cent?

You're going to start with people who are indifferent but relatively empowered, and maybe persuade them so that they do feel they can influence things. You're less likely to start with people who are relatively disempowered and certainly not with the most profoundly disempowered. So what are we trying to do here - to equalise empowerment or just come up with an acceptable proportion of people who can influence processes?

Well, there's plenty in the empowerment action plan to bring about change, and hopefully a lot of that funding will be used for community development to promote lasting, collective empowerment where most needed. Meanwhile, in a post on the Guardian blog, Richard Wilson observes:

We have seen the emergence of an empowerment gap. Since 1997, the subjectively empowered have become yet more empowered and those with the least personal empowerment more disempowered.

Much to be done.

Platform 2: VSO meets community action

I think this looks like a really good scheme. It's partly about community cohesion, partly social inclusion, partly good old-fashioned volunteering:

A new Government-backed global volunteering scheme is being launched for 18 to 25 year-olds. 'Platform2' will offer young adults from less advantaged backgrounds the opportunity to live, work and learn about life in poorer countries while making a real difference to peoples lives.

Volunteers will spend 10 weeks overseas. On return to UK they will go on weekends away to prepare personal activity plans of how they want to raise awareness in the UK.

This scheme aims to give young British adults who wouldn't normally have an opportunity the chance to make a valuable contribution to the lives of people overseas who are blighted by poverty.

By living and working with people from very different backgrounds, facing very different challenges, they will learn new skills and help unlock the potential within them to become better global citizens. And on return they'll be applying what they've learned to activities in their own local communities.

BBC coverage.

DFID news page.

Post offices, informality, and participation

And so the threatened closure of too many post offices brews a storm, and the issues seem to get more complex. Today I was at an Involve workshop about community cohesion and participation, which might have had nothing to do with post offices had not another participant mentioned them to make a point, sparking a clarification for me.

It seems that everybody (presumably including MPs who voted for the closures but want to defend those in their constituencies) believes that post offices play a social role - variously described as being 'at the heart of' or constituting 'the hub of their communities' and a 'lifeline' especially for older residents.

There's no reason why there should necessarily be only one such heart or hub - indeed a mix of third places (broadly defined) is surely desirable. Pubs, cafes, libraries, parks, community centres and other venues claim this status from time to time.

But when the threat is made to post offices on economic grounds, as I've noted before, we don't have the methodology to defend them because we don't know how to quantify their value in terms that The Accountants Who Run Things would understand or accept. (Incidentally, the threat to post offices is commonly described as a rural issue, but closures in urban areas could also be devastating and there's a lot of concern in London).

My point is this: the reason we don't have the methodology to demonstrate the social value of such amenities is because no political value is placed on human processes that are informal and organic. Which also presumably partly explains why we don't get much research on social networks (eg on home zones).

To return to the Involve workshop, which was thoroughly absorbing, not least because I met some very experienced and articulate folk. I found myself banging the drum for informality because of the tendency (better expressed by others who, under Chatham House rules, I may not name) to discuss participation within a context of formal structures and strategic (service delivery) processes.

The point was made painstakingly by other participants that this is an unsatisfactory approach. We need to prize, stimulate and protect the values and knowledge that local people bring to their shared experiences in their neighbourhoods, for its own sake. To do that we need to ensure that there are more occasions for encounters, more conversations between different groups of people, more recognition - before oganised participation can be expected to have a role to play in promoting cohesion.

To put it another way: we need a healthy ecology of conversations and encounters and recognition and relationships, and places to bump into people or to sit and gaze or go for a natter or just hang out, before we can have meaningful 'participation' that in turn serves to strengthen cohesion. I guess you could say that this blurs into some forms of civil participation - being part of stuff that goes on in the neighbourhood.

So maybe the question, both for understanding the contribution of participation to cohesion and for appreciating the social role of third places, is perhaps something like 'how do we get our policy makers to place more value on organic development, informality and local social interaction?'

Answers on a postcard please.

Previously:

The local post office: a brand in jeopardy.

Post offices and social value.

Please serve yourself: rural post offices.

Talking about consultation

I was in Bradford the other day with my colleague Martin Dudley, talking to people about the consultation process for Manningham library. Although turnout for the event was disappointing, it was good to have a combination of local residents, professionals from the library services and regeneration, plus a councillor. In working on consultation and engagement, this is the kind of mix we're after.

Uncertain attendance is one of the hard-truths of consultation and community engagement. But what's struck me most about the process we went through in this little exercise has been the ease with which local people, given the chance, appreciate the limitations of consultation (especially in terms of referring to expert advice) and the way it fits into a mix of democratic processes.

I did my best to pass on this message to the library staff and managers because so often, misunderstandings of what 'consultation' means confound people's readiness to get stuck in. There are widespread assumptions in public agencies that inviting people to give their views is inviting chaos and mistakes, and that consultation trumps other processes. Sometimes this is based on the misleading idea that consultation leads directly to inescapable consensus, like referenda. Of course it's usually neither consensus nor inescapable, and if you start from the right angle - processes, not decisions - such assumptions just seem strange.

Image (c) Martin Dudley.

Pssst, heard what they're saying about rumour?

Word of mouth doesn't have to take months. I was talking to a couple of residents a while ago about rumour and misinformation in an area of intense regeneration activity, and we touched on the value as well as the problematic nature of rumour. The following anecdote was offered with the conviction of truth of someone reading a log book.

A community activist was busy organising a meeting about an issue they perceived to be important, but too few people promised to come. Tactics adopted included getting on a local bus with a colleague, and using a loud whisper, convincingly foretelling a negative development which would have an unhappy effect on everyone locally. According to the story, this did the trick: the meeting was very well attended.

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.

Video, stream

Nick Booth over on Podnosh has done a set of short videos about neighbourhood action in various urban areas, for a recent international conference.

I liked this story of how residents in Bordesley Green, Birmingham, dealt with a stinking stream running through their neighbourhood. It turned out that some dubious plumbers working on housing extensions had been connecting the sewerage into the surface water drainage. Reps from the Neighbourhood Forum went with the water company to explain the issues to the homeowners, and got it sorted.

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.

Consulting older people

On the question of consultation with older people, to paraphrase Gandhi, I think it would be a good idea. I've just found out about some interesting work that Urban Buzz funded in the London Borough of Lewisham as part of the Thames gateway development, which resulted in the publication of a toolkit and guidelines for consultation with older people, prepared by The Centre for Urban and Community Research at Goldsmiths.

It's a thorough and welcome document and appears to try and cover everything about the process they went through, which included field trips and mental maps of the neighbourhoods. It's important because the sense that many older people remain inexcusably excluded from consultative processes is widespread. But some of the tone leaves me a wee bit bothered. Like this:

'It is important that you present your project in a way that makes it relevant to them.'

Radical stuff eh? There's more.

'Incorporate older people’s knowledge in the planning process, by consulting them if an area is going to be changed. Make use of their old photos, listen to them talk about the history about the spaces.'

'Free lunches and refreshments should be provided to offer something for their time and effort.'

So long as the points get made, what am I bothered about? Well, I'm uncomfortable thinking that I live in a society where it's really necessary to make such points. It implies that there are people charged with 'consultation' for whom such things are not fundamentally obvious. But maybe the authors are right, maybe it does have to be pointed out. Many people are emerging from an embedded non-consultative authoritative culture and this is strange stuff for them. <Shudder>

If I were being picky, and it's not unheard-of, I'd have added a section suggesting that people doing consultation didn't feel the need constantly to refer to one another as Dr, Professor, 'professional' or 'expert.' The entire document is suffused with a sense of the implied superior status of such people, and of councillors, over older residents. It reinforces my desire to keep pushing for a neighbourhood-mapping process designed by older people themselves.

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%.

Localism. Worth fighting for?

Over in the Demos greenhouse, Simon Parker suggests that 'the war for localism is won, sort of.' Given that his post is titled 'Fighting for the soul of localism,' you're going to wonder about the metaphor of belligerence.

Was it really just public school boys scrapping in the Westminster playground? Another, perhaps more historical perspective, might see localism as a near-inevitable consequence of a number of other forces. While waiting for that to become clearer (and let's see if localism works shall we?) - I don't recall anything worthy of being called even a sleeves-rolled-up skirmish; but I do recall lots of misgivings about the impact on local people of some of the measures (eg).

Well ok, if the 'soul of localism' wasn't really fought for by the infantry of residents' groups and tenants associations and so on, would they fight to defend it if it was threatened?

Community engagement

'No-one wants to be ‘community engaged’ but many want to make their street a better place to live.'

Comment at a recent workshop I ran with street reps, Shipley, West Yorks.

Housing associations and neighbourhood governance

The Young Foundation and the Housing Corporation have just published Good neighbours, their report on the role of housing associations in neighbourhood governance.

The report argues that housing associations succeed in pushing forward neighbourhood governance when they:

• combine neighbourhood level partnerships and strategic involvement with the local stretagic partnership
• invest their own resources in neighbourhood governance
• value both formal and informal resident involvement.

This last is of interest to me, as another little example of the accumulating attention being paid to informal social relations at local level; and because I've been having one or two conversations lately about the overlap (or lack of) between community activists and people who are neighbourly. We don't know much about this - it seems to be assumed in policy that people who participate in local civic life tend also to be 'good (informal) neighbours,' and vice versa, but personally I don't think there's a particularly strong overlap. However, neighbourhood governance through residents' associations and similar groups could well be one arena where we see more of it emerging, if we're watching (by which I mean, if someone recognises it as a research opportunity, please).

The report also points to the need to ensure synergy between housing associations’ neighbourhood working and LSP strategies.

There's a sensitive attempt to develop a typology of HAs along four dimenions of neighbourhood working, considering the extent to which they involve local people; the extent to which the local authority dominates their perspective and actions; how broadly they view their constituency; and the degree of emphasis placed on formal partnership.

Neighbourhood governance isn't suddenly going to dissolve, and nor (unless 'the new homes agency' comes up with some radical surprises) are housing associations. So there is probably still a need for some research looking at why some HAs either don't see the value of community engagement and neighbourhood working, or struggle to overcome the barriers that they confront in attempting it.

Resident involvement

The Housing Corporation has just published a policy document on resident involvement for housing associations. People first: delivering change through involvement includes the requirement for housing associations to work with residents to develop and produce Involvement Statements.

Housing associations are also encouraged to explore the options for providing a 'community call to action' mechanism, such as is required of local authorities, as a response when services fall below an agreed level.

The following 'building blocks' of involvement are suggested:

• Ensure that people have equal opportunities to take part in involvement and take active steps to engage with under-represented and vulnerable groups.
• Associations should develop a profile of residents in their homes and make positive effort to develop ‘market intelligence’ on their needs and aspirations.
• Associations should provide accessible information and feedback and take an open approach to providing information that is requested.
• Develop a range of methods of involvement, with active residents, and/or communities, that allow people to be involved on their terms.
• Negotiate with residents, and/or communities, the terms of reference for involvement activities (e.g. constitutional requirements for funded community groups, timescales for consultation).
• Enable involvement by providing properly resourced capacity building and training for residents, staff, and where appropriate, communities.
• Develop and sustain mechanisms, with residents and/or communities, which enable influence over investment in and the design of affordable homes, and where relevant, wider neighbourhood priorities.
• Consider with residents and/or communities the value for money of involvement activities, including the added value that involvement creates.
• Develop with residents and/or communities appropriate neighbourhood level targets and scrutiny where they want this, and it is relevant.

Young people as community centre inspectors

I don't follow the youth work press but from time to time I hear of good things happening in Sunderland, so wasn't surprised to learn they've been running a project in which young people are trained to inspect community centres.

Once they have been selected, the candidates, who are all volunteers, go on a two-day course that prepares them for their future task. On the agenda: role playing, communication workshops, feedback exercises… teaching them how to observe, listen, put together reports and work as a team. Once they have been awarded their "certificate of proficiency", they are ready to pay a visit to one of the city’s 42 Community Centres...

The experience conducted in Sunderland has not only considerably improved and maintained the quality of the city’s Community Centres, but it has also won over the local youngsters. Each year, fifteen future inspectors are recruited.

More here on the URBACT site.

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.

"You can come back mate" - workshops with street reps

Running exploratory workshops with local residents tends to be less predictable than it usually is working with professionals, and it can be risky. But it's what I enjoy most and find most rewarding. I've just been in Shipley with my colleague Sarah Clow (pic, R) running one focus group on neighbourliness with older people, and two workshops for a new 'Street Reps' initiative. In a few hours of listening you can get a pretty thorough immersion in local issues in a low income area, and we did.

The basic idea of street reps (sometimes called street champions) is usually to give services keen and willing pairs of eyes and ears in the neighbourhoods, to alert them to issues that need attention. Much of the language is classically top-down (as in 'we will appoint you; you will do this' - one example begins talking almost straight away about 'professional standards') and suggests that some authorities have not done much thinking about it and start from their own preoccupations rather than the residents'.

It fascinates me, because the task is really to work out, for each individual and more generally for each network of reps, a role definition which is sufficiently formal for the authorities but sufficiently informal and flexible to make sense in the everyday life of the neighbourhood. (Since it's essential that the reps are volunteers, we can expect that some authorities will have to give weight on this particular see-saw. And in the grander scheme of things, this is exactly the kind of initiative which, in forcing the responsibilisation of citizens, will in turn, necessarily, reduce the public services obsession with performance measurement and thus could presage the demise of New Labour Managerialism. So that's a pretty good reason for getting on with it).

Our work is being funded by a grant from Bradford's Neighbourhood Management Team. To their great credit, they are not necessarily happy just waiting for local people to volunteer for a pre-defined role which saves them money while helping to meet service delivery targets. They've asked us to work with residents to define the role in their own terms (not as easy as it sounds). Additionally, without denying the role of street reps as 'Disorder Alarms', we're looking to emphasise the development and support of local social networks through neighbourliness; and for reps to promote positive initiatives like street parties or planting, not just passing on complaints or bad news. We'll also be looking, softly softly, for opportunities to introduce and exploit mobile online technologies.

Having served a modest, intermittent apprenticeship with games maestro Drew Mackie and participation guvnor David Wilcox over the years (see Useful Games) I know enough to know I needed to fictionalise things in order to get discussion away from the immediate gripes. What we came up with was more of a workshop exercise than a game - working in groups to invent and explore issues requiring attention for spring, summer, autumn and winter, identifying immediate and longer term actions, working out responsibilities, resource and support needs and so on - but for several people the experience seems to have been totally novel and refreshing.

At the end one of the participants said that if she'd been told beforehand that she'd be doing this - meaning, having to think things up herself and writing ideas down on a flip-chart - she would never have come. But she'd had a good time and enthused: "You can come back mate." Which, in the understated vernacular of community action, I think constitutes emphatic endorsement. And that gives us a buzz, cos there's plenty still to do.

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.

Not defining community engagement

The Home Office has published a guidance document on community engagement, based on a pilot project with community safety groups (CSGs) in the east midlands, 2004-2005.

To be honest it's a bit disappointing with very few practice lessons that aren't scarily obvious. What's most scary of all is the classic civil service insistence on definition, and a crumpling failure to do so:

A clear definition is essential to assess the degree of community engagement that is to be achieved... Performance measures need to relate directly to the original definition.

In this project it was left to the consultants to explore with the CSGs the definition of ‘community engagement’. This resulted, however, in a lack of clarity among both the consultants and the individual CSGs about their guiding principles and remit.

Maybe we should leave the definition of community engagement for a bit and get on with stuff. FWIW, I think the key lesson should be this: in the same way that consultation is problematic without community engagement, so community engagement is problematic without an ongoing basic level of community activity. It's very unlikely that there isn't some community activity going on, in any neighbourhood, so that's where you start. If it's not sufficient, you might need some community development to generate more. Maybe we should just try and get that message across, loud and clear, for starters.

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.

Rural councillors

The Commission for Rural Communities has launched a national inquiry to explore the opportunities and challenges for rural councillors and what stands in the way of them doing more to help rural people have greater influence over local decisions.

Among the issues they're interested in:

• Examples where rural councillors are helping their community influence local decisions
• The barriers and constraints that stand in the way of rural councillors doing more
• Why people sometimes chose other routes, such as local charities or community groups, to influence local decisions
• What the role of councillors should be in the future and what is needed to unlock that potential.

Press release. Deadline is 18 May 2007.

Keep flawed consultation in the community!

An urban regeneration company is facing protests about inadequate consultation. I know what you're thinking - 'dog bites man, that's not news.'

The 1st East URC has set out regeneration proposals for Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft which include new parks, marinas, homes and offices, and they even propose moving Lowestoft railway station to create a new town centre. But not everyone's happy with the consultation process. Community groups? Nah, it's those rowdy left-wing agitators in the private sector trying to disrupt the rightful natural process of profitable development.

One chamber of commerce rep said: "Existing business in both towns is supportive of regeneration, but is becoming suspicious and alienated from it by the way it is being treated."

Tsk. Maybe bring in the community activists to mediate?

From Planning resource.

Please serve yourself: rural post offices

The Commission for Rural Communities has quick-published four case studies of the improvised provision of post office services in rural areas.

The document is uncontaminated by such things as an analytical summary to draw out the issues and put them in policy context, or an account of how they were compiled, but, ah, the CRC occupies .gov space, maybe that's the explanation. Anyway this is straightforward unglossed case study material. I was struck by this account:

The post office in Tealby closed some years ago but post office services had been maintained in private houses and then in the small entrance lobby to the village hall. With only a year to run on its permission to operate from the hall the threat of losing post office services was looming... A store-room adjacent to the village hall was re-built as a dedicated facility, with village shop, post office services and doctor’s surgery once a week. A number of postmasters have run the post office since its opening in June 2004. The Centre has a part-time employed manager who organises a rota of 22 volunteers to run the shop.

In private houses? Twenty-two volunteers? Tealby is in Lincolnshire, it's not a big place. Some small towns and large urban housing estates struggle to get that many volunteers together for worthy causes or in time of crisis, let alone on a regular basis. We're talking about an acute and demonstrable social need here, people are motivated about it.

In the light of that, the account doesn't exactly amount to a complimentary depiction of service provision in an advanced economy. It's an interesting example of collective effort, which raises familiar questions about how we prioritise investment in essential local services. All credit to the county, district and parish councils which all contributed funding. Now where's the sustainability?

My last post, to coin a phrase, on this theme was here.

Community engagement residential workshop

Trafford Hall and The Guild have organised a residential workshop on community engagement, developed with Community Development Foundation, to run 27-28 February 2007, Trafford Hall near Chester, UK.

This two day training course will cover:

• The practicalities and reality of community engagement
• Community development principles and how these can be used as good practice to support community engagement and work with your residents
• Measurements of community engagement and how to demonstrate community involvement.

Leaflet.