Tuesday, 22 January 2013

Above you!

Fly gallery 1It's some years since I went on about the huge collective local endeavour that is community panto round here, and tonight's involvement was quite unexpected. I got a call with half an hour to get to the hall for dress rehearsal - could I stand in for someone pulling the drops in the fly? - the gallery above the stage.

I was given a script and, literally, shown the ropes.  

It might not seem much to some people but it felt like a great privilege to me, witnessing from a different angle the coming together of all that creative effort (sometimes laborious, grudging and half-hearted, but often inspired and always driven by teamwork and a commitment to fun).

Talk about co-production. Let's hear it for community drama.

Fly gallery 2

 

22 Jan 2013 22:30:07

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It's free Snow across the country the past few days. And here's a text from a young muslim mother in poverty, with whom I've been corresponding - 'I was hoping to have a lie in today (wishful thinking!). We've been out in the snow every day since friday, [the children] were up @7am asking what time we could head out!' And I thought, rather weakly, that's it - the snow is a delight in its own terms and it's free. For once, something pleasurable in this country that is not reserved for the Haves (although it helps to have decent clothes and a way to dry off, to warm up afterwards, and replenish with quality calories...)
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Neighbourliness and social networks: a little welcome attention? In a new RSA paper Nicola Bacon argues that ‘we need to find fresh approaches that can be delivered in an age of low public spending and a shrinking state... we need to find new ways to put the lived experience of residents at the centre of regeneration policy and practice. We need to build on local assets and boost resilience in a way that both supports mobility for those who wish to leave, and stability for people who choose to stay in the areas that they call home.’ Plenty of ‘we needs’ – this is think-tank language - but not much to disagree with there. I have an open mind about whether or not ‘new ways’ or ‘fresh approaches’ are required. This is an essay about community development and I’d say there is nothing much wrong with the values, principles and processes of CD - maybe it’s the political context in which it is expected to perform magic, and the forces working in the opposite direction, that need attention. Having said that, new tools – for local digital spaces for example, or tools like the Young Foundation’s well being and resilience measure which exploit the power of statistics - can surely help to bring a compelling persuasiveness to the local case. So what we have is the RSA keen to keep building its presence and credibility around the practice of local social development; together with a welcome determination that the importance of local social networks should be recognised in policy, especially in times of severe financial constraint. Emphasising the value of local social networks is here packaged as ‘turning strangers into neighbours’ - translating from the language of sociology into that of local newspapers without shaking off the questions of the kind of neighbouring and the kind of privacy that is assumed to be desirable, in policy or by 'strangers'. Anyway, the opportunity as presented is to ‘explore the viable ways of “turning strangers into neighbours”’. The point is made strongly that ‘neighbourliness and social networks are a critical protective factors against many neighbourhood problems’ (the unedited grammar being symptomatic of the paper as a whole, I’m afraid) - but we scarcely get beyond that assertion, and I couldn’t see any ‘new ways’ of encouraging the wholesale conversion of strangers into local network connections. Just when you think something special might be coming up, the paper ends, quite abruptly. So as with the Res Publica paper, that I reviewed six months ago, I’ve approached with a sense of optimistic anticipation and been disappointed, the redeeming factor being that important topics are being aired by influential agencies. Maybe we’re not supposed to be bothered too much about papers like these? Are they just territory markers? It’s like we’ve got think tanks going round the policy townscape cocking their legs and spraying the conceptual lamp-posts. Guaranteed to make me go sniffy. In this case, most people are going to find the relentless reference to the Young Foundation at best tiresome, particularly...

Kevin Harris

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