Saturday, 26 July 2008

Celebrate

Today the NDNs celebrate a golden wedding anniversary. I will potter along to the party later, in ignorance of how many years that amounts to but out of certain celebration for being Next Door Neighbours to them.

Regular readers of this blog will appreciate what I mean (eg) - but even today I had an instance.

I was fumbling with my ladder this morning, huffing puffing and shuffling it about for some painting round the crumbling edges of my house where access was tricky, and out comes the govnor - do I want a hand there?

And him with his back and heart that dodgy, I'd not ask him to help, but he was allus there with practical advice if I needed it, like when I laid the concrete base for the shed that time, and the missus with a cheery word and warm scones.

I invite you to join me for a moment in simply celebrating ordinary neighbourliness.

26 Jul 2008 19:49:40 | Neighbourhood relations, Vignettes

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Why is this a strange idea? More play areas designed for older people, which I first came across about three years ago, are reported here, one of them to be located in an area very familiar to me. The Watford Observer reports that The planned facilities will offer a range of gymnasium-type machines designed to promote gentle and soothing exercise to problem body parts like the legs, hips and back. Not sure if I feel relieved that none of my problem body parts is listed. The CEO of Age Concern Hertfordshire is reported as saying: 'It’s certainly a strange idea but strange ideas are often the best ideas. I think my members will quite welcome this. Obviously some will think it’s a bad idea but older people are not all the same.' Three Rivers District Council Leader Ann Shaw admitted many ratepayers would have their doubts. I'm not sure why. If there's anything strange to me, it's just that the opportunity to promote intergenerational play seems to have been completely overlooked - but hopefully it will just happen. Otherwise, investing in outdoor exercise facilities for our ageing society is surely just common sense. As I wrote here, part of the problem is that adults don't play enough, they regard it as a phase children have to be hustled through. And too many seem to resent others who do play. The image comes from Lappset, who seem to have started it all.
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'What really works is localness' Just been speaking to an old friend who works in a college and is battling with the performance management nonsense of the educational establishment. She told them from her decades of experience in offering and organising courses for people who experience social exclusion, The only thing that really works is localness. Meaning - local contacts, learning delivered through community centres, supported by community workers and local volunteers, with established and trusted partnerships between the college and local agencies. That's based on high calibre creative workers; plus conversations, lots of them, sometimes called networking. Unfortunately, bureaucrats do not place value on apparently-purposeless conversation, because its effects can't easily be measured. Which may be why community education is slipping from crisis into oblivion. My take, FWIW, is that over the last ten years, if we had taken 50% of the resources put into having people in suits going round telling everybody to measure things (while ignoring the messages coming from the case studies they commissioned), and invested it in providing local learning responding to local need, we could have transformed levels of basic adult education in this country. Sorry to whitter on about it again, but the legacy of managerialism is not going to be a happy one. Previously: Shifting institutions

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