Thursday, 02 July 2015

Local Level is 10 years old

LLcirclesI set up Local Level in July 2005 and in some ways it’s surprising to find that we're still going in spite of the recession – indeed we've won three new contracts in the past couple of weeks, in addition to several ongoing, so business could be described as healthy. (But I can still justifiably describe it as an unintentionally non-profit organisation).

Looking back, I’m struck by three things:

  1. The diversity of the work we’ve covered without (I sincerely hope) losing sight for a moment of our values and principles - empowerment, equalities, inclusion, collaboration, and shared learning. Their meaning has been reinforced and refined by so many of the inspiring people we’ve worked with.
  2. The lack of improvement in the processes of public sector procurement – still a focus for a lot of poor information-sharing, grotesquely exaggerated bureaucratic caution, and questionable (sometimes downright lamentable) project briefs.
  3. The importance of having worked with a range of consortia, associates and other companies, from solo operators to large consultancies. Apart from helping to ensure work this has served to share knowledge and experience, and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

There ought to be an award for best client over this ten year period, but I find it impossible to decide from this list. Perhaps rashly I'll narrow it down to seven, and if there were a cake, they could share it:

  • The British Council – thank you Sarah Metcalfe
  • Caloundra City Libraries, Queensland - thank you Louise Bauer and Gail Robinson
  • Fontys University, Eindhoven – thank you Jan Steyaert
  • Shipley College and Shipley Streets Ahead – thank you Margaret Robson and Jonathan Hayes
  • Third Sector Research Centre, University of Birmingham – thank you Angus McCabe
  • Watford Council for Voluntary Services – thank you Bob Jones
  • WoodGreen Community Services, Toronto – thank you Diane Dyson.

I don't think we should read too much into the fact that three of these are overseas clients, but it's curious.

There are fewer candidates for the 'Worst Client' award. These will not be revealed just yet.

Finally I want to thank the various good folk who have been ready to call themselves Local Level associates and with whom I have worked on projects over the years: Martin Dudley (pretty much from day one, thanks for the support mate), Bev Carter, Cathy Herman, John Vincent, Rebecca Linley, Hugh Flouch, Sarah Chapman, Linda Constable, Alison Gilchrist, and Jackie Black. I do not include the many inspiring colleagues with whom I have worked under some other aegis, who are rather too numerous to mention, but my thanks go to them all. My sincere apologies if I have left anyone of this list, let me know and I can remedy it. (I ought also to offer sincere apologies to anyone who is on the list and doesn’t want to be: ditto!)

Here's to another ten years, if I'm spared.

 

2 Jul 2015 17:28:29

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Communal living and neighbouring: time for ‘re-co-operation’? I had a fascinating conversation the other day with Tobias Jones, author of A place of refuge and this recent Observer article on communal living. I am in quiet awe of what Tobias and his family have achieved at Windsor Hill Wood and how they have gone about it. I’m also hugely impressed by the openness of his thinking and the clarity of his writing. Tobias is exploring commonalities in different approaches to ‘community,’ from communalism to community development to neighbouring in its most manifest - and presumably least manifest - forms. As I understand it, he is searching for ways of strengthening those commonalities. We scratched the surface of a few issues. While I would have my doubts about attempting to package insights into evidence of a lasting contemporary grassroots movement – I’d love to be proved wrong – I think there is much to be said for a more systematic sharing of understanding. I look forward to what Tobias is writing next, an essay for New Statesman. Just thinking about communal living in comparison with neighbouring is helpful. The amateur anthropologist in me is immediately muttering about how communal living is where we all came from: in the evolution of humankind, neighbouring is a rather more recent way of organising social relations. Tobias neatly offers communal living as ‘an alliance with the past to critique the present in the hope of a better future.’ This lived experience of time eludes most of us, however neighbourly our locality. In the contemporary neighbourhood context, it is much harder to remain immersed in ways of doing things that are mutual and sustainable. Allotment gardeners might have a grasp of it, commuters are less likely to. We struggle to appreciate how to do things sustainably in the sense of reducing emotional and spiritual damage as well as environmental damage. It’s no coincidence that gardeners do most of what they do outdoors, and commuters do most of what they do indoors or cocooned in vehicles. We often get the pace of living wrong and we lose much of the vocabulary of stewardship. I’m reminded of a quote from the wonderful Erri de Luca: ‘Holy man of Africa, I think, you come to impart your wisdom to a European savage who follows the moon on the calendar and the clouds on the radio and can’t read a word without an alphabet.’ Communalism comes with the category heading ‘Lifestyle’: neighbouring does not. I note also that the settlement co-residents described by Tobias are there at least partly to establish or regain a sense of stability in their lives. The context of neighbouring is different: much of it is about asserting and retaining – and often defending – stability. Tobias and his family welcome ‘visitors’ – some for a day or two, some for months: this is about transience – again, acknowledging the natural passage of time, not the generally implied permanence of neighbourhood relations. There is much to be learned I think from this path...
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What has become of our humanity? On the subject of the Other and the shame of Calais, here's Frankie Boyle in yesterday’s Guardian: “If we can look at another human being and categorise them as 'illegal', or that chilling American word 'alien', then what has become of our own humanity? To support policies that dehumanise others is to dehumanise yourself. I think most people resist that, but are pressed towards it by an increasingly sadistic elite. If you’re worried about threats to your way of life, look to the people who are selling your public services out from under you. The people who will destroy this society are already here: printing their own money, printing their own newspapers, and responding to undesirables at the gates by releasing the hounds.”

Kevin Harris

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