Neighbourhoods

For a robust and open democracy

The other day I gave a presentation and ran a mini-workshop on social justice and community development for the Policy Forum at CILIP (formerly the Library Association). One illustration of community development I referred to was the recent television series about the 'Unsung Town', which describes some of the process of using singing to stimulate connections, collective involvement and a sense of achievement in South Oxhey, an area I know well.

We know that what happenened there is community development because a committee for the choir has been formed and last week appears to have taken an independent political decision: it was offered a £1,000 grant by a county councillor and declined it:

“We’ve worked really hard as a group to be inclusive of everybody and promote an ethnically diverse choir. We don’t feel the BNP shares those values so, as a group, we decided to turn the money down.”

It's an example of the leaky lamplight of community development falling for a moment on big shadowy issues of social justice. For a new and probably inexperienced group it may well have been a challenge and they dealt with it, and will be the stronger.

All round the country today there will have been people in homes, workplaces, colleges, online and elsewhere, discussing the appearance of the leader of the British National Party on BBC television last night.

That discussion will be based around the man's tawdry opinions of other members of the species, and people will be airing thoughts on spikey political issues of racism, homophobia and blunt prejudice, which politics generally discourages them from exploring. So perhaps that's a good thing. Sound points about the representativeness of the audience from Philip Norton here.

The event has reminded us that we have a version of public service broadcasting which is intimately related to open democracy (even if it doesn't always do it very well).

It's been surprising the number of commentators who seem ready to overlook the inconvenience of the formal elected status of BNP representatives (including in South Oxhey). This is only good insofar as it highlights how unsatisfactory the electoral system is to more and more people. I suppose it also illustrates how we still struggle with the tension between the right to freedom of speech - for a party with a given level of representation, in public debate - and the right to be protected from racism and homophobia.

We still get confusions, like the hapless example of Yale University Press, who decided to cut the images when publishing Jytte Klausen's book on those Danish cartoons. But hey, what are centuries of debate and insight into the nature of democracy and freedom of speech to a committee at a university press? (Among the various explorations, see eg here).

Many years ago I wrote an essay on 'Freedom of access to information' (published in this volume: can't find electronic version) in which I made a point about how freedom of speech does not necessarily trump other freedoms or rights, such as the right to be protected from racist material. Or as Klausen herself puts it in an interview for Islam Online,

'Free speech does not give license to say racist things about other people or to incite violence.'

But. What interests me about discussion around last night's Question Time appearance is that so much of it still implies that one right demonstrably always trumps the other. I'm not implying that the example of Yale is directly comparable - I'm not saying that those who sought to stop the broadcast were comparable to the YUP committee. But democracy is surely going to be better when the source of dispute is there for all to see and the views expressed for all to hear, and when we feel empowered by the system to develop and discuss our own views.

For myself, I'm far less comfortable with the idea that the BBC might have denied voice to elected representatives, distasteful as their views may be, than I am with the prospect of lots of people hearing the threadbare BNP views widely broadcast and vigorously challenged, with the likelihood that more people will think more deeply about them. The latter is a much-needed if faint sign of democratic robustness.

33% believe people would not pull together to improve neighbourhood

The Citizenship Survey generates a lot of useful data that is helpfully repackaged by CLG. A topic report on community cohesion and social networks, from the 2007-08 survey, has been published today. It covers views of the immediate neighbourhood, views of the local area, and fear of crime and anti-social behaviour. The main headline is that 82 per cent agreed that their local area was a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together.

Another finding claims that

'Most people (68%) agreed that people in their neighbourhood would pull together to improve it.'

That doesn't sound too high to me, so I checked the tables, which confirm that 33% 'tend to disagree' or 'definitely disagree'. There's an interesting 14 per cent discrepency with the headline cohesion figure, presumably mostly comprising people who think that those from different backgrounds get on well together in their neighbourhood as things are, but wouldn't be bothered to act collectively to bring about change.

Other findings -

• Pakistani (85%), Indian (80%) and Black Caribbean (79%) people were more likely than White (75%) people to feel a strong sense of belonging to the neighbourhood.

• Meanwhile, Chinese (50%) people were less likely than White (75%) people to strongly belong.

• Meaningful interaction with people from different backgrounds was highest among those aged 16 to 24 years (93%) and lowest amongst those aged 75 or over (52%).

• People with no religion (86%) were more likely than those with a religion (78%) to have regular meaningful interactions with people from different backgrounds.

In the section about 'social networks', as far as I can see all the questions are about friends, which suggests a rather limited interpretation of social networks. I know you gotta start somewhere, but the risk with these kinds of authoritative statistics is that people start quoting them all over the place as gospel. 'Friendship networks' might have been a better heading.

Young, missing out, or just missing

Matthew Ryder is a 'national role model' for Reach, a government-supported scheme aimed at raising the aspirations and attainment of black boys and young men. In yesterday's Observer, under the headline 'The pursuit of riches at any cost is killing young black men', he attacks the prevailing 'get rich or die trying" culture. Ryder makes a clear connection between

'the teenagers I encounter and the likes of [disgraced banker] Fred Goodwin. Wider society, government included, has frequently championed the sort of role models whose ruthless pursuit of money at any social cost has set a dysfunctional template. It is an extreme ideology that spills from the City's boardrooms to south London's housing estates. That teenager will always believe that the pursuit of money is the key to happiness, if society constantly reaffirms that to be the case.'

Today Children and Young People Now reports Jon Coles, director general of schools for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, on research into Neets (young people not in education, employment or training) who had left the education system 10 years ago:

"They found one profoundly shocking thing, of their long-term Neets who had been out of the system for a long time," said Coles. Fifteen per cent of those young people had died within 10 years of leaving the education system.

Mile End Community Project's weekly Newsnite

Always reassuring to hear about an effective community project, even though in this case I'm not sure about it coming under the heading 'preventing violent extremism'... Here are some extracts from a good CYP Now article by Jo Stephenson describing an initiative in a community centre in London's Mile End:

More than 20 young Muslim men have gathered for the Mile End Community Project's weekly Newsnite session. Unlike Jeremy Paxman, the chair keeps contributors in order by shouting: "Shut up, man!"

The mood is informal as the boys relax on beanbags and sofas, downing cola and eating Doritos. Participants are expected to come ready to discuss something they've seen in a newspaper or magazine, on TV, radio or the web.

The scheme meets key government policy objectives, such as offering "a safe space for open debate" and a chance to air grievances.

"It helps us," adds Abdul Samad, 18. "Some ain't as confident. It helps them to debate and they get encouraged to say their stuff."

Volunteering: a minority perspective

I've been having some online correspondence with a blind woman from a minority ethnic group, about being a volunteer. She makes some sharp points about the receptivity of traditional volunteering agencies, and has agreed for me to pass on these observations.

When my friend lost her sight, she was invited to join the management committee of the local association for the blind.

'It did not take me long to find out that they wanted me on the committee but would not trust me with any interesting work. As I had to give up work I tried hard to get into various voluntary organisations offering my services for free just for the satisfaction of doing something worthwhile. To cut a long story short, I have always had to prove myself, sell my services hard and push myself into some roles none would like. This pushing oneself hard, selling one’s skills and experience for an outcome of insults is not everyone's cup of tea.

'Charities begging for volunteers do not seem to realise that members of BME communities do not necessarily want to work with BME members. I have been told several times that they could not give me any volunteering roles because they did not have any BME demand, until I proved Caucasians were just as happy with my work.

'Agencies using volunteers as well as employers seem to think all similar looking people are the same. So, they club together all Africans, brown skinned people etc, no matter where they are from, thinking they would be happy working together. As one African friend of mine put it, these people calling themselves clever do not realise that someone from Somalia can be as different from someone from Nigeria as an Italian from an Englishman.'

Faith schools and cohesion

It puzzles me that people continue to defend faith schools, which to me are one of the most awkward embedded obstacles to cohesion in our society. Politically, they are going to take a lot of digging out and the present government's approach has not been promising.

Signs are that the Institute of Community Cohesion may be starting to charge the debate up a bit. Ted Cantle apparently has reported a little more critically on their effect (report not yet visible on the iCoCo site, which tends to be a bit sluggish).

Peter Hall draws attention to it and offers some interesting reflections here on Regen and Renewal:

'Many parents want their children to be educated in diverse schools, but get alarmed if there's a sudden surge in the numbers of one particular group. Their reaction could be crudely caricatured as "white flight" - and, almost inevitably, that was the headline to the newspaper stories on the report. But, ironically, their motivation is almost the reverse of the popular connotation of that term: rather than leaving for a white monoculture, they are seeking a school with greater diversity...'

According to Hall, Cantle remains adamant that faith schools in places such as Blackburn, with their large Muslim populations, remain "a source of division which have to be overcome".

Local events and community cohesion

I've been sifting the material I gathered from participants at the Wellcome community picnic last month. Report to follow. With the Big Lunch taking place this weekend, here's one remark which impressed me:

"For whatever reason, people don’t tend to be very engaged. There are very few activities that bring people together from different backgrounds and you’ll find people from similar backgrounds tend to stay within those social groupings. So this kind of event is fantastic because what it does, it brings people out into a very safe place where they can engage with other people who they wouldn’t necessarily normally associate with or have much connection to, and I think today’s been really, really successful. I was surprised, there’s a lot more people than I thought would come."

You'd hope they'd be angry

A while ago I noted some concerns about the proportion of young people who betray a profound sense of detachment and seem never to have inhabited a democratic culture.

This was just a reflection after a few workshops, firmed-up through discussions with teachers and others; it was certainly not the conclusion of systematic research. It felt as if a lot of the young people we talked to have difficulty with conflicting ideas, and they have little experience of organising, being organised, self-organisation, or organisations.

More recently I picked up on some questions about racism among young people. Then this week, two more snippets to add to this particular pile.

In a meeting on Monday evening a teacher spoke about students, particularly Ghanaian girls, practising clear self-segregation along ethnic lines within school, 'sometimes in a quite aggressive manner'. It's an interesting example because language has nothing to do with it: all Ghanaians speak English. We need to understand more about the sense of threat to community identity that causes these contractions.

And yesterday I spoke to a Dutch researcher who has been interviewing more than thirty young people about their sense of citizenship as reflected in their everyday lives. She said that her work (with a lot of data being processed systematically) confirms my reflections on both these themes.

Going to youth clubs and 'being organised' are not cool and levels of participation in other clubs and associations seem to be low. Racial tension in the Netherlands is worrying, often played out by young people struggling for some physical or cultural territory of their own. Sometimes what seem to be clashes of power may really be defiance against lack of it, or the removal of identity.

I suspect there's a link between these themes, I just don't know quite what it is. I fear it's quite profound, having to do with the struggle for acceptable identity and a denial of access to a democratic culture - all at an age where self-respect is very much under construction. Is what we think we're seeing exceptional, among other contemporary cultures or historically? Are we fussing over nothing new?

Thinking about people aged between say 13 and 19, sometimes I want to ask (it seems to me that they want to ask) 'what's the point of being young these days?' This period in their lives is a transition: to what?

One of the teachers I interviewed recently spoke highly of her students but with some concern about the formlessness of the everyday culture they've been left with. She said:

'You'd think they'd be angry. You'd hope they'd be angry.'

Promoting neighbourliness: communi-tea time in Knowsley

We've no way of knowing if neighbourliness has declined, although I think it's what we'd expect when we consider changes in the conditions under which it appears to thrive. But the essence of neighbouring is informality: and how do you promote that and nurture it in a bureaucratised public sector?

It's a question that crops up here occasionally - echoing a chapter I wrote about 'formalising the informal' in policy here, in turn echoing a question posed most clearly by Philip Abrams writing about neighbourhood care some years ago:

'How does one organise to promote lack of organisation?'

Not impressed? Well maybe the use of the word 'central' in the following quote, from Barbara Misztal's book on informality, will persuade you:

'the fine-tuning of informality and formality is central to the creation of social trust.'

Good neighbour schemes of various kinds have been tried, tweaked and tested over the years. Generally, I suspect they've had more success than they've been credited with, especially among housing associations. Unlike Neighbourhood Watch, as far as I'm aware good neighbour schemes have no central resource, co-ordination or funding. Neighbourhood Watch works on the basis of distrust: perhaps that tells us something about the policy-orientation.

Now here's an approach that attempts the kind of light-touch nudging of behaviour that we can expect will characterise much social policy from now on: all smiles please for Knowsley Council's playful campaign to stimulate local social interaction, including a mock news broadcast about a tea shortage threatening community spirit across the borough.

The message, says Adam Patterson on the New Start blog, is

'get together with your neighbours, share a cup of tea, get to know each other and help create a friendlier community.'

 

Place survey: the headlines

Headline results from the 2008 Place Survey, which reflects and contributes to local priorities under local area agreements in England, have been published today.

• 59 per cent of the population felt they belong to their immediate neighbourhood

• 76 per cent felt that people from different backgrounds got on well together in their local area

• 29 per cent felt they could influence decisions in their local area

• 30 per cent feel that in their local area parents take enough responsibility for the behaviour of their children

• 31 per cent felt that there were problems with people in their local area not treating one another with respect and consideration (37.5% in London).

Links to various formats here.

'Community picnic'

Yesterday I was at a 'Midsummer Picnic' in Cumberland Market, north London, promoted by the wonderful Wellcome Collection and produced by General Public Agency. It was described as

'an event for local people to discover personal collections on stalls designed by artist duo Juneau Projects and inspired by Henry Wellcome and his collection. There will be activities for adults and children throughout the afternoon, and visitors are invited to bring food to eat and share at this traditional summer picnic.'

There were various stalls including seed planting, temporary tattooing, veggie-pickling, face-painting, watercolour portraits, and Wellcome's own impressive stand which you can see in the pic. Principles of gift and exchange applied, nothing was bought or sold.

In practice the theme of local people's collections was a minor feature and most people I spoke to felt the event was more like a fete than a picnic. But it was emphatically successful as an intercultural occasion, a relaxed gathering of people from diverse backgrounds in a local space.

I've been asked to write a review and was working with film-maker Dani Jacobs to create a record. I spoke to a Filipino; an Italian; a black South African who has been in England since 1954; three remarkable white Londoners in their nineties, Winnie, Jessie and Ethel (the latter two pictured); an east end Jewish lady, passionate about diversity; two more Italians; two Polish children and one Bengali; a white Englishman; an English mother married to a Muslim; another Bengali and her daughter; a Greek woman; and various others. It took a reluctant effort to remember that the casual ordinariness of all the intercultural and intergenerational interactions is not universal. (Recent reflections on racism).

Among the other themes I'll be looking at are: how this relates to other organised outdoor events like street parties and family picnics, the traditions of festivals and fetes; and the irresistible anthropological theme of eating in public. I'll post when it's done.

Is racism increasing among young people?

A colleague and I have been puzzling over a level of racism among young people that we've come across recently. Complaints about racist behaviour were offered to us by workshop participants on several occasions, and we witnessed openly racist comments among the young people in a racially mixed school class and among a group excluded from school. These examples appeared to us to be crude and unreflective reiterations of unfiltered prejudices, in contexts where no challenge was expected.

Now I just came across a post by a youth worker on the CYP forum, claiming that racist attitudes have not only vastly intensified but they have also become calculated and covert.

Over the last couple of months I have been shocked by the hostile nature of the racist attitudes displayed by young people - supplemented with many references to support for the BNP... I have worked with disaffected kids for over 15 years and not one single young person has ever shown any self-motivated interest in any political party but now they know the names of their local BNP representatives.

The problem is out there, unseen and festering.  Whilst I roll up my sleeves and prepare for what is going to be a complicated challenge I cannot help but feel utter frustration for the damage caused by the hysterical “moral police” who have succeeded in driving this social cancer underground.

And disturbingly, when it came to reflecting on the recent elections:

Support for the BNP was very open throughout the day with young people joining in the revelry of “their” party.

This problem has been brewing, and I'm thinking about a paper published last year by Carolyn Gaskell on 'young people's experiences of (dis)respected citizenship and the New Labour Respect Agenda'. She pointed out how hard it is for young people to assume a role as an active citizen when the state does not reflect a sense of respect and worth to them:

'feeling disrespected by the state, living in insecure and often dangerous environments, without the voice, power or belief that change could be enacted, many young people subvert their citizenship, creating an alternative framework of respect for themselves.'

[Children's geographies, 6(3), 2008]

The power of maps

This image might look staged but it wasn't. A colleague and I were were running a session with a group of young Bangladeshi and Chinese mothers, and it was time to get them talking about their local environment.

So we spread the map on the table and instantly they all shot up out of their chairs and started pointing and talking.

In this case, it was particularly useful because it led to clarification of the extent to which the women remain in their houses even if they have friends on the same street; and the extent to which confidence that is undermined by inadequate english language skills can be further undermined by their experience of the built environment.

Lack of cohesion: a problem of the political class?

On the Joe Public blog, Dave Clements argues that claims about 'the death of community' are

"more an expression of the political class's own sense of dislocation from society than an accurate reflection of real world problems."

Consensus, community, and cultural capital

I’ve been gathering some thoughts for a session on empowerment and participation with some MA students at Staffordshire Uni this week, which has sent me back to Jacqui Karn’s excellent book Narratives of neglect. Fearful that I wouldn't do it justice, I failed to blog it at the time; but here are some belated thoughts based around some of my notes, covering two main themes: consensus and community; and cultural capital.

The book is an exploration of the processes of participation and governance in the regeneration of a Manchester estate. No-one I’ve mentioned it to in the participation field seems to have read it, which is a shame, because it's packed with insights.

I come at Karn’s analysis from the viewpoint that, from the time of the initial neighbourhood governance proposals, the government’s empowerment agenda was predicated on unrealistic assumptions that community could be construed to mean consensus.

Problems arise where consensus is not apparent; or, being assumed, appears to be threatened. The idea of ‘moral community’ which characterised the Blair years requires practitioners to pursue consensus at all costs. In this context, as Karn puts it, ‘community is in essence constituted as unproblematic,’ and participatory practices constitute ‘the community’ as those who participate constructively, cooperatively and reasonably within the process.

Those who do not adhere to the assumptions of what is best for the community are labelled as ungovernable and subject to demonising mechanisms that exclude them. Groups come to be categorised in terms of governability, which in turn legitimises coercion.

‘This dual, contractual emphasis on encouraging compliance with a latent community and the control of an ungovernable minority legitimises the use of state agencies’ coercive powers against the “irresponsible.”’

Consensus becomes a question of ensuring (or even guaranteeing) similarity rather than recognising and working with difference. In my view this is an important point for understanding how the engagement agenda might fuse with the cohesion agenda.

The second key theme refreshes some of my own recent thinking about the lack of attention paid to cultural capital. Karn stressed the way power was reflected in the language and knowledge that participants brought to the process she described. She found that

‘The dominance of professional language and knowledge undermined residents’ position both in the partnerships and amongst fellow residents as they so clearly lacked the capital at stake in the process to be able to exert an authoritative voice.’

Karn argues that the professionals in the context she studied tended to conceive of the community as in close contact and united. She adds that they tend ‘to present their knowledge of local problems and solutions as incontestable.’

‘The power dynamics created by this difference in the knowledge claims of participants are particularly important in establishing that the capital at stake in this field is not social capital but cultural.’

Karn, J. (2007). Narratives of neglect: community, regeneration and the governance of security. Cullompton, Willan.

 

 

Lifetime neighbourhoods in recession: what about people?

A couple weeks ago I was at a debate organised by the International Longevity Centre (ILC-UK) on the lifetime neighbourhoods agenda in the current economic climate. ILC have published a collection of essays to reassert the importance of this agenda, which is based on what in my view was one of the best government policy papers of recent years, written by Ed Harding.

The debate covered all the hardware stuff thoroughly - all the issues around building, planning, mixed use, transport connections and so on. Discussants understandably put a lot of effort into emphasising the need to keep a focus on quality environments. The mantra of 'the flight to quality' was served up for the converted to repeat, to strengthen our determination not to let present underfunding give rise to shoddy construction and uninhabitable townscapes in the future. Quite right too.

But we badly needed a perspective on local social relations to make these prospects of lifetime neighbourhoods seem worth realising. Understanding how to make mixed use neighbourhoods function in an ageing and diversifying society is already challenging us desperately. We don't invest properly in intergenerational work or community development, while continuing to plan new settlements apparently without thought for local amenities Will lifetime neighbourhoods be another agenda which gets stripped down simply to those things the accountants know how to measure? - bricks, heating, journeys...?

Well, maybe not. Absent on the day but present in the published volume, up pops JRF's John Low with a solid essay which I strongly recommend. He reminds us that there are good reasons to expect that deprived neighbourhoods will decline faster than more affluent ones and that 'housing solutions alone will not solve the multiple problems that beset our worst neighbourhoods'.

Of course financial cuts are threatened all over the public, voluntary and community sectors. But here, with my emphasis added, are three 'rays of hope' offered by John Low:

• Community empowerment has risen steadily up the agenda of all political parties, including a plethora of initiatives from the current administration in England. Especially in local authorities that have taken this seriously, good practice is reasonably well embedded and may prove harder to cut. Also, as suggested above, localised and affordable neighbourhood management approaches seem very much the best bet for ‘recession proofing’ deprived areas; and such initiatives need underpinning with good community work.

• Over the last 10-15 years independent voluntary and community sector bodies have increased their national profile and collective voice. This too may help to act as a brake on cuts. We should also not forget that many development trusts, churches, other faith groups, councils for voluntary service and schools are playing key roles in supporting neighbourhoods. Everything possible should be done in the present climate to sustain their work.

• Finally, although institutions are often criticised as having poor memories, the serious social disorders that broke out in the 80’s and 90’s in a number of very deprived areas will not have been forgotten. Nobody will want a repeat of these, and his fear could act as a strong disincentive to paring down services and funds, in such neighbourhoods, to the very bone: and as an encouragement, on the contrary, to retaining a range of low level but effective services in these areas.

Perceptions

Here's Junior, who told me about braille nail painting and sign language on T-shirts.

Junior grew up in a violent home and was going nowhere, which in his case meant 26 years in and out of prison. He's passionate about finding practical ways of integrating able-bodied and disabled perspectives, which is how he got into sign-painting, T-shirt design and nail painting with a focus on different languages, alphabets and fonts (including Moon). He showed me some of his designs, including a T-shirt for Deaf Rave.

I've never met such a passionate educationalist outside the education system (however broadly defined). Talking about the various phases of his life (but not his own disability) -

"All of it is education," he said. "You jump from one education to the next."

And later -

"Homelessness has been such an education for me. It's the people that you meet."

And on managing a football team of people with various disabilities:

"Every aspect of it was educational."

We talked at length about the importance of identifying patterns in our surroundings and in behaviours, and then knowing how to deal with what we learn. Junior is finding ways of using clothing and fashion to help young people understand the impact of their behaviour and to explore issues of exclusion. Braille nail painting is just one small, curious component in his thinking about how we can present conversation pieces to each other, and start learning.

When Junior gets a website organised, I'll post about it here.

Coming round

This blog was in a coma for five days - medical report from Typepad still awaited - so for once I will succumb to the temptation just to offer quick links to some good stuff going on.

What works in enabling cross-community interactions? Perspectives on good policy and practice. This is a paper by Andrew Orton for CLG as part of their work on meaningful interaction. It matters because it's about small-scale community activity and informal connections gradually getting some of the policy attention that is needed.

Dancing with Down syndrome - Hildy Gottlieb links to a striking video to remind us to keep pushing back at the Culture of Can’t.

The Eden Project has launched (more quietly than expected; one suspects there is some tense politics in the background) The Big Lunch - street parties everywhere on 19 July.

'The day after the Big Lunch, people will walk down their street and know someone in most windows.'

Paul Evans shows there's even benefit in a human being of the right calibre travelling to Miami, by coming back with knowledge about Mixed ink, which looks like a sweet way of stimulating civic involvement.

Helen Milner and colleagues have set up a blog on digital engagement (which I applaud) with an invitation to write yet another manifesto (which I don't). Manifestos (manifesti?) have a role, but it's usually to do with the process of structuring action around pricniples and surely we've come further than that. Maybe we should (a) dig out the three or four previous manifesto attempts in this country and be familiar with them, together with the recommendations of the shelf-and-a-half or reports that got generated (unh, mea culpa); and (b) assess what impact they had.

Julian Dobson quite rightly calls for more thought about the over-excited bashing of public sector language ('jargon'). The Local Government Association have got all lathered on this; or rather, I suspect, in New Labour style they are following some assumptions of popular media fancy. Reminded me of my wee challenge to the Plain English Mafia.

Informal influences on local social capital

I love these little coincidences. This afternoon I was sitting in the final plenary at an international conference on community cohesion run by the British Council and iCoCo in Manchester. Just before Runnymede Trust director Rob Berkeley stood up to speak, an email from Communities and Local Government plopped into my mailbox offering figures released from the 2008-09 Citizenship Survey:

'76 per cent of people feel that they strongly belong to their neighbourhood with 81 per cent of people satisfied with their local area as a place to live.'

Presumably unaware of this news, although quite possibly already informed about some of the survey findings, Rob reflected quietly on the need to bring some refinement to the evaluation and measurement of cohesion and belonging:

'I live in south London. If my neighbours don't break down the door, I think we're getting on pretty well. In a rural village, if someone doesn't turn up to the fete, their neighbours might think relations have completely broken down. We do need to think about the different ways people think about belonging.'

This echoes a point I made in my own presentation yesterday, consolidating a strong sub-theme of the conference, which was best expressed in a comment by Haroon Saad, director of QeC-Eran (Quartiers en Crise). First, in his presentation, he observed that:

'Intercultural dialogue is taking place on Facebook' (I think he meant social media in general) 'and what's significant is that it's dissociated from institutions.'

Then in a discussion about how agencies were still trying to deal with tensions between local factions in Northern Ireland, Haroon said:

'What organisations are doing pales into insignificance compared with what's going on in the informal sector.'

And that's it: sooner or later policy makers and cohesion practitioners are going to have to get to grips with informal social relations, because everything else we do is not enough. Ciara Wells, deputy director of CLG's Communities and Faiths Division, spoke on Wednesday about the ongoing work on meaningful interaction. Substituting for one of her colleagues, I followed it up with some points about neighbourliness, home zones and neighbourhood online networks, contrasted with reflections on the slightly more organised, formal occasions of street parties and living library.

Devices like steet parties and living library justifiably generate a lot of interest, because they legitimise conversations that otherwise probably would not take place. But ultimately they're artificially constructed occasions, and however transformational the experiences they stimulate, it's hard to see how they can trump all the informal influences on local social capital.

I very much welcome CLG's commitment to further work on meaningful interaction, and I hope it will be seen as an opportunity to develop some more nuanced understandings of the sense of belonging, the importance of trivial encounters, and the value of social networks.

Previously:

On superficial neighbourhood relations

Enter the official local handyman

Try a little MSI

Communities and Local Government today published guidance on 'meaningful social interaction,' reassuringly sub-titled 'How encouraging positive relationships between people can help build community cohesion'.

It needs to be seen in the context of the work and recommendations of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, and more broadly of the debate on how policy can influence behaviour.

I happen to think this is an under-appreciated topic and deserves more policy attention, and more media attention, than it gets. And to be fair, the document also deserved a bit of copy-editing: that might have helped avoid the feeling that this theme is given a relatively low priority in a tiny corner of a huge government department.

Here's my quick take on it for the Joe Public blog.

 

Make your neighbourhood nicer

There's a superb little booklet published by Refugee Action offering 11 easy steps to helping make newcomers feel welcome at neighbourhood level.

'There are lots of ways to make asylum seekers and refugees feel more at home and more valued in your neighbourhood. Everything from setting your nan straight about the asylum system to getting a bit bolder and braver by letting your MP know that us ordinary Brits really do care about how newcomers are treated.'

As Esme Peach says on the back cover:

If you read just one Make your neighbourhood nicer: how to welcome refugees and asylum seekers in 11 easy steps book this year, read this one.

Local social ties have weakened, but where's the evidence?

In the early seventies, I seem to recall, the hapless Bruno Bettelheim suggested that the increasing prevalence of dishwashers and similar labour-saving devices in households was likely to reduce family cohesion as people spent less time together doing what needed to be done.

A few more observations like that over the years - for instance about the use of cars, geographical mobility, smaller households, television viewing etc - and understandably we begin to assume that there has been a decline in neighbourhood relations. It's what we would expect. All we lack is some way of proving or disproving it with robust methods.

So along comes the Changing UK report from the Social And Spatial Inequalities group in Sheffield, commissioned by the BBC, which appears to illustrate how Brits are now more polarised and live more 'among our own kind,' than we used to do.

The report is a strange blend of stolid survey-based affirmation of some gloomy, familiar social trends, with constant reference to the BBC's tv and radio areas - a peculiar geography to many of us I suspect. Presumably the client wanted some local and regional social data (tick) and some kind of news story it could broadcast (tick).

Many of the considerations are straightforward:

These trends may be linked to higher likelihoods of fearfulness because we are less likely to see and therefore understand each others' lives... The polarisation and segregation processes may also lead to stronger feelings of isolation and weaker feelings of 'belonging'.

The report justifiably links these trends with evidence of political disaffection and economic polarisation, all pointing to a rather bleak future. To be fair, it's not as if our politicians have been ignoring it all. Although the finality with which social capital was dumped as a policy issue a few years ago remains puzzling, there is a healthy amount of energy being focussed on community cohesion. There is public attention paid to the questions raised, and the BBC is playing its part.

But the evidence does matter. Take this for example, from Mark Easton's piece on the BBC site:

'The study ranks places using a formula based on the proportion of people in an area who are single, those who live alone, the numbers in private rented accommodation and those who have lived there for less than a year. The higher the proportion of people in those categories, the less rooted the community.'

Unh? That amounts to a definition of 'rooted community' which I'd be reluctant to sign up to.

What bothers me a little about this research is the bundling of assumptions about loneliness, living alone, isolation, and not belonging. For a start, loneliness is not the same as isolation - the latter implies a dearth of social ties, which some people prefer, while some people can have an ample supply of ties but experience loneliness. And obviously, living alone does not necessarily imply loneliness or isolation at all.

Again, people claiming that they 'belong' somewhere (or don't) doesn't tell us anything reliable about the strength or extent of their social relations. You may have a weak sense of belonging without experiencing loneliness; or a strong sense of belonging (“been here forty years I ‘ave”) but experience profound loneliness.

I wanted the report to be clearer about these nuances, and more critical about its measures. It's hardly contentious to note that if local face-to-face ties are diminishing, network ties may have been increasing in strength or range - you only have to watch how people make non-business use of mobiles.

So I'm left unsure what the research offers. It tells us that local social relations have weakened, which is a message we're primed to hear anyway; but it does so with an unconvincing voice.

Living Library at the Awards for Bridging Cultures

The living library project which I ran with Linda Constable earlier this year was shortlisted for the 2008 Awards for Bridging Cultures.

At the ceremony last night we came away with 'highly commended' - the trophy in our category was swept away by the Limeside and Clarkwell Project, a superb initiative which links two contrasting housing estates in Oldham. The whole programme was crammed with inspiring projects celebrating all sorts of diversity and cohesion activities.

Living Library pioneer Dany Abergel joined us from Copenhagen for the day. We got added value from running a 'quick-loan' living library session at the learning event during the day. This took place in the vaults at the RSA in London, with delegates popping down for a quick browse among the seven living books on offer.

On this occasion the choice included a refugee from Eritrea and one from Somalia, a vicar's daughter, someone who has experienced several bereavements, someone who was born overseas of parents from different cultural backgrounds, a refugee project worker, and 'African war-child, prison governor'.

Among the borrowers, Ted Cantle, founder and chair of the Institute for Community Cohesion, already a fan of living library, seen here borrowing our prison governor Tony Amaechi.

Living Library Network.

Local living library report.

Meaningful social interaction

We're still in the very early stages of 'measuring' meaningful social interaction with people from different backgrounds (that doesn't mean we don't already know a lot about it), and every little step is fascinating.

As in the early years of cohesion policy, it's a shame that this theme tends to get limited to 'people from different ethnic or religious backgrounds' - as if interaction between people from different social classes and different age groups was not hugely significant, especially in neighbourhoods. Lots more to be done, but meanwhile here's the latest snippet from this summer's Citizenship Survey data:

In April-June 2008, 82 per cent of people mixed socially at least once a month with people from different ethnic or religious backgrounds, either at work, at a place of education, through a leisure activity, at a place of worship, at the shops or through volunteering. This has increased since 2007-08 (80%) when it was first measured.

Intergenerational disengagement

Does it matter if older people and young people don't communicate with each other?  The International Longevity Centre got funding for a survey on intergenerational relations and found that 55% of respondents of all ages think different generations find it difficult to communicate with each other.

Researcher James Lloyd also notes that:

Large numbers of people, including older people themselves, appear to regard social disengagement among older people with younger people as a natural part of ageing, as opposed to the result of social context and environment.

The report was launched last night, but with the new minister for work and pensions in the room, the discussion was nearly overwhelmed by calls around pensions and retirement age.

There was surprisingly little reflection on the neighbourhood as a primary context for intergenerational interaction - no mention, for instance, of the potential of street parties, nor any thinking about how the recession might affect household size and increase the extent to which we occupy our neighbourhoods to mutual benefit. Neighbourliness is of profound significance for older people and interaction with the younger people who live around them should be a natural part of that.

Nor among the necessary generalisations was there any recognition of the 'two youths' phenomenon - where as I've mentioned a few times we seem to have one category of young people more socialised, respectful, courteous and comfortable in the company of people from different backgrounds than any were when I worra lad; and another category more disenfranchised, bitter, and profoundly care-less than is healthy for any society. (I think this is known across la manche as les deux jeunesses. I know I will be corrected if I have that wrong).

James Lloyd rightly tries to stir up some policy thinking about intergenerational relations, but it seems to be hard going. We have an established body of practice, thanks to the Beth Johnson Foundation; and some belated recognition coming through in cohesion policy, with officials now earnestly acknowledging that cohesion is 'not just about race and faith...'

Next, I expect, we may see some recognition in policy of the most structural, visible options for promoting intergenerational interaction, such as breaking up housing segregation, and making it easier for older people to contribute to learning in schools.

But the last area to get attention, as always, will be informal interaction in the public realm, because it's so much less obvious how we do it.

One way to create a culture in which older people do not feel threatened by groups of kids hanging out, is if they happen to have spent time in each others' company occasionally and had the chance to identify some common ground or interests. A culture which increases the differences and denies opportunities to discover the commonalities is storing up problems.

Like a light going on

Earlier this year I worked with Linda Constable on a pilot project with four library services in England, using the 'living library' process. Living library, pioneered in Denmark, allows someone to 'borrow' a person for a conversation, to explore their experience or interests and to understand other backgrounds and cultures. The project sought to develop a community development model, taking advantage of the trusted place of libraries in the public realm.

Among the participants was Harry, a World War 2 veteran about 90 years old. He was in his early twenties when he found himself stranded with his brother on the beaches of Dunkirk. One of the people who 'borrowed' Harry for a chat told us how insightful it was to hear him talk about events: 'Like a light going on’.

The project was funded by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and involved Bournemouth, Bradford, Kent and Staffordshire library services. The report is now available here.

Previously: The hands in conversation

Crime and ethnicity: yet more findings from Chicago

From time to time I try and track some of the research about neighbourhoods and crime. I just clicked my way to a paper by Christopher Lyons in last November's American journal of sociology reporting on research in Chicago:

'Antiblack hate crimes, in contrast to general forms of crime, are more likely in relatively organized communities with high levels of informal social control. Conversely, antiwhite incidents appear more numerous in traditionally disorganized communities, especially those characterized by residential instability.'

Schools overwhelmed by parenting role?

Some years ago a community worker was telling me about the children in her area - 'some of them lead such unstructured lives,' she said, 'it's amazing they turn up for anything.'

Now I fear there is truth in this:

"Schools are being required to take on more and more of the responsibilities that rightly belong to parents; and to provide more of the stability in children's lives which should be provided by families."

The quote is from Philip Parkin, general secretary of the teachers' union Voice, in today's Guardian. The article by Jessica Shepherd notes:

Schools already have to check pupils for weapons, gang membership and extremist views, as well as measure their weight and speech development.

The [UK government] schools secretary, Ed Balls, wants schools to chart children's well-being, teenage pregnancies, drug problems and criminal records from next year as well.

Parkin said he was worried that the more schools did for parents, the less responsibility they would take for their children.

"The transfer of responsibility becomes complete and the expectations upon parents reduce," he said.

This prediction might be far-fetched, I don't know, but it's worrying, and it fits with my growing sense that there is a sharpening contrast between those young people who have supported childhoods and those who don't.

Part of the response might be to ask, is it too late to put forward neighbourhoods as the primary environment where norms of behaviour are shared, tested, learned and accommodated? Is it possible to rescue the idea of neighbours as co-producers of the culture and norms of behaviour around them?

Not, it seems, while so many of the sources of cultural capital (including education but especially 'parenting') are only fitfully or partially available to so many. (I really mean something broader than 'parenting' - positive individualised support from known and trusted adults is what I mean).

Schools also have to deal with our society's inconsistencies around the baggage and paraphenalia of faith groups, as in yesterday's court judgement in favour of a 14-year-old Sikh girl who had been banned from school for wearing the kara (a bangle widely accepted as a symbol of the Sikh 'race and religion') in defiance of regulations. (NB in some interpretations, the case rested on the definition of Sikhism as both race and religion, making the school governors' role a no-win situation and probably leaving quite a few of the supporters of Liberty, which supported the student's case, a bit uncomfortable).

School regulations on jewellery it seems (not to mention daggers of course, another widely accepted Sikh symbol) can be trumped by religion, especially if it can defend itself as race. This makes it hard for teachers and governors to know where society expects them to take a stand. And when we're all confused, there's even less stability in young people's lives.

Older people and neighbouring

My wee text on Older people and neighbouring was launched at the House of Commons the other day, with the help of Age Concern England, Community Development Foundation, and the National Association for Neighbourhood Management.

We were there as guests of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Ageing, chaired by Eddie O'Hara MP (pictured here with John Grogan MP) who I knew years ago when he was chair of CDF Trustees. Special thanks to Martin Dudley for these pics.

Thinking about what I had to say on the day, and subsequently reflecting on the comments (especially from Alison Gilchrist, author of The well-connected community, seen here with co-discussant, Chris Gittins of Streets Alive) makes me think that perhaps the book's sub-title - 'an enfolding community' - is the idea that resonates  most strongly with people.

The work I did for the book clarified the extent to which older people tend to experience neighbouring as individualised, in contrast to the kind of 'enfolding' collective experience of neighbourliness that seems to have characterised their childhoods. In the narratives of decline so often recited on this theme, we have to take account of the remarkable stability in the early lives of that generation - childhoods described by dutch researcher Pearl Dykstra as characterised by the greatest uniformity ever. The rapid social changes that took place since those childhoods help to account for the sense of bewilderment and tendency to withdraw.

But of course this doesn't help us work out what is needed in policy or practice terms. I'm about to rush off to give a presentation to a Young Foundation seminar, as part of their Neighbourhood Action Network, where I'm hoping we'll start to develop some clearer practical ideas about how to stimulate neighbouring. More soon.

'Overheard a conversation'

Informality and conversation are recurring themes of interest to me, and the recent Local Living Library sessions have given plenty of angles for thinking about them.

I'm just going through some of the evaluation material, and came across this response from someone who 'borrowed' a recovering alcholic for a conversation, and with some insight described living library as 'a very good idea to build relationships, to see behind one's prejudices or assumptions.'

The response to the question 'How did you find out about living library?' was:

Overheard a conversation.

The evaluation report, which I'm preparing with my colleague Linda Constable, should be ready late summer.

I hope you know what you're doing

A few years ago I was in Brasilia and gave a seminar (about community cohesion as I recall) at the Education Ministry. Afterwards I was invited to meet a senior official who proudly told me about a new adult literacy campaign they were about to launch, bringing the alphabet and all its benefits to indian people across Amazonia.

I was an honoured guest in the country of Freire, but I didn't feel I should desist from saying hesitantly, I hope you know what you're doing. I made direct reference to Walter Ong's remarkable Orality and literacy which explains how, once you bring literacy to an oral culture, that's it, you can't restore orality, not ever. Ong certainly convinced me, not that I needed convincing, that the most powerful technology humans have ever invented remains the alphabet, but we may not be very good at understanding quite how powerful it is.

There's a map and list here of the indigenous languages of Brasil. If you scroll down you can see a selection with the word 'extinct' next to them. Yup, this is available globally using the written english language via the internet.

I don't know what happened subsequently to the literacy campaign, but I do appreciate that the reasons for releasing these pics yesterday, taken by Funai, the Brasil National Indian Foundation, of an uncontacted tribe near the border with Peru, may be quite different. Hopefully they will help to spread the message that there is a moral responsibility to leave people alone. (I suppose I could try and tease out some ironies to do with the fact that I had been invited to Brasilia partly to talk about cohesion, and partly to talk about information technologies and inclusion...)

And just to put this in even broader context, there's the History Channel's Life after people documentary, which somehow left me celebrating the prospect of the decline of our cultures.

Older neighbours and street parties

Streets Alive has just made available a briefing called Older people and neighbouring: the role of street parties in promoting community cohesion, which I co-wrote with Chris Gittins.

The work was part-funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation and gave me the chance to go through some interview and survey material from numerous street parties held in England between 2005 and 2007.

We found that 84% of respondents thought that street parties bring together residents of different backgrounds either ‘a fair amount’ (45%) or ‘a lot’ (39%). Respondents met on average between seven and eight neighbours ‘for the first time’ or ‘got to know them better’. Key to the success of the events is that never less than 50% and often as high as 80% of households participate.

Street parties appear to be ideal when it comes to celebrating diversity and promoting cohesion between ethnic groupings. But part of our concern was that differences in values between generations can emerge that may be at least as significant as those between ethnic and national backgrounds. It seems that some older people exclude themselves from street parties, and it comes down to levels of recognition and trust. One resident told us:

‘If they know they can trust people and get to know them, they will come out in force. If they don’t know you, the shutter comes down, and that’s that.’

We drew out three conclusions:

• it's important to make the particular efforts needed to engage older people in street parties, because weak levels of neighbourliness will disadvantage them disproportionately;
• however, if older people do not attend, it's not a crisis. Street parties will still enhance neighbourliness and the benefits can still be extended to older residents;
• we should be wary of characterising older people as if they were just the recipients of bounty. The principle of interdependence means that we should put effort into exploring how older people themselves can shape and contribute to the events.

The paper is available as a pdf from Streets Alive.

The hands in conversation

Here's another of those hurried poor quality photos that characterise this blog, and one that reveals a curious connection. I took this yesterday in Bradford Central Library. It shows the not-quite-everyday occurence of a lady demonstrating crochet to Emiel the goth. The cakes and the candle are woollen.

With my colleague Linda Constable I've been developing a variation of the Living Library concept, one which is locally-sensitive and non-confrontational, and helps to build relationships. It's unlikely that someone who is interested in talking about knitting would find a place within the established European tradition of Living Library - it's emphatically about confronting prejudices, but perhaps not that kind of prejudice - but our project encourages local libraries to take their own approaches and recruit their own catalogue of local people.

That's how we came to have Emiel (who's also featured in a promotional clip here on BBC Look North) sitting with a knitter on a sofa while both were waiting to be borrowed for a conversation, and getting absorbed in the arcane mysteries of The Woolly.

He and his two fellow-goths got the bug and one rushed off to buy some crochet hooks. Leaving me fascinated at the part played in this apparently trivial connection by (i) the organisation of the series of events, which set up numerous conversations that otherwise would not have happened, and (ii) the focussed occupation of the hands in conversation.

Social mix and attachment

The debate over social mix continues, which in itself is not a bad thing. Here's something from a report on The influence of neighbourhood deprivation on people's attachment to places, published by JRF and the Chartered Institute of Housing today:

'In general, high levels of mix of various sorts do not have much of a negative effect upon attachment. Indeed, some dimensions of mix (notably tenure and education) can be good for attachment. Where policy creates new communities, this research suggests that the most beneficial form of mix to consider is a mix of educational levels.'

(Attachment is assumed to be a Good Thing). The summary points out that:

'Higher levels of social mix are not generally associated with lower levels of attachment'

and also suggests that

'it might be useful to find ways of recognising or valuing local connections when assessing applications for social housing, since this may help to strengthen existing networks.'

Indeed - noting that suggestions like this tend to get made in a tentative way, I'm gathering a little collection because I suspect/hope that there is some momentum building, and we'll gradually start whispering more loudly. Summary. Full report.

Meanwhile, yesterday we had a report from the Dept for Work and Pensions, on
Social housing and worklessness: key policy messages, coming a little while after this literature review.

I still wonder about the government's new-found purpose in addressing 'worklessness' wherever it thinks it can be hit. I was struck by this paragraph:

'It is questionable whether interventions intended to diversify the social mix in existing areas of social housing will have a substantial impact on levels of worklessness for two key reasons. First, there are various practical challenges associated with the creation of more mixed-income communities. Second, it is questionable whether the promotion of social mix will effectively address social polarisation and concentrations of worklessness in areas of social housing. Disadvantage in the labour market was far more commonly associated with personal disadvantages and roles and responsibilities that were incompatible with work, rather than anything intrinsic about where people were living. This is not to suggest that gains might not be forthcoming from the promotion of social mix, but to point to the importance of such activities being complementary to efforts to improve the incomes and support the livelihoods of existing residents of disadvantaged areas.'

Neighbouring and older people

My text about older people and neighbouring will be published shortly by Community Development Foundation.

There will be a launch, or to put it more technically, an excuse to gather and guzzle, at Shared Intelligence in London on Tuesday 27 May 2008, which happens to be National (wait, make that European) Neighbours Day. (Thanks to Ben Lee from the National Neighbourhood Management Network for providing the venue).

Speakers include David Sillito from BBC News, Chris Gittins from Streets Alive, and Ryan Campbell from Age Concern England. If you'd like to come along, please register as places are limited. Further information is here.

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.

Living library: take out a prejudice

Ronni Abergel, one of the originators of the 'living library' idea, is in London next week launching a new guide at this event -

Local Level is currently organising a series of public library-based Living Library events, so we were struck by the slogan 'take out a prejudice'.

It will be interesting to try and find out whether this challenging approach (developed in the context of youth work, I believe) attracts people who might otherwise not be encouraged to explore experiences that are new to them, or whether they might be put off.

Our Living Library events will take place as follows:

Norton Canes Library, Staffordshire

Sat 26 April, 1000-1200; Wed 7 May, 1000-1200 & 1330-1500, Thurs 15 May, 1700-1900.

Bradford Central Library

Wed 14 May, 1500-1900, Thurs 15 May, am, Sat 17 May, am.

Bournemouth Library

Sat 3 May, 1000-1200, Wed 7 May, 1400-1700, Mon 12 May, 1000-1300.

Sevenoaks Library, Kent 

Tues 29 April, pm, Sat 10 May, am, Wed 14th May, am.

Cohesion and inequalities

'I do not think you can get community cohesion unless you tackle the basic inequalities at the same time... I do not think it is possible to have cohesion where you have got such a stark set of differences between people competing in the same area. Part of cohesion and part of the original definition of cohesion was to tackle inequalities at the same time... I do not see them as being two different things. Of course, if you do tackle some of the inequalities, then the chances are that people are going to end up in the same workplace and are going to interact with each other. They are going to end up at universities and in schools in order to interact. The process of measuring inequalities means that you are also maximising the opportunities for people to relate to each other as well on an equal footing.'

Ted Cantle, Institute of Community Cohesion, speaking to the communities and local government committee on community cohesion and migration, 25 February 2008, uncorrected transcript.

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.

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.

Friends Out There - 15 Feb in Watford

Here's my friend Bev Carter promoting a crazy event she's roped me into - the launch event for a charity which will run arts based projects with residents of Umulogho Village, Nigeria.

Friends Out There takes place at Watford Colosseum (WD17 3EX - just 20 mins from London) on 15 February. Map. Further details and ticket prices. It's going to be a blazing celebration of African dance, art and music.

• African drumming, dance, juggling and art workshops for children and adults
• Matt the Statue
• Food, refreshments and craft stalls
• Art exhibition and information about links made between Umulogho Village and schools in Watford.

Doors open at 6pm with live performances from 7.45pm until 00.45am, featuring -

• Kakatsitsi, Master Drummers from Ghana
• Chimanimani from Zimbabwe, music to which apparently even I could not remain seated
• Fire juggling and stilt walking by Area 51, the Masters of Breathtaking
• and Rolf Harris has kindly agreed to perform live, accompanied by his friend Shining Bear on didgeridoo.

More details and tickets available from the box office: 01923 225671, or contact Bev Carter on 0208 387 0483, bevalittlesomething (at) hotmail.co.uk

The main aim of the event is to raise funds to improve facilities in Umulogho village and establish a new school building. We also expect to have an outrageously good time. I'm helping with event management so if you are able to come, ask for me and come and say hello. But be warned, I may be on the lookout for volunteers.

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.

Refugees and libraries

The Welcome to Your Library project, which worked on connecting public libraries and refugee communities in five areas around England, has come to an end.

The evaluation is primarily oriented towards library services, although it also points to some interesting case study material. Most strikingly, it suggests that, even in this outstanding project, the libraries' contribution to community cohesion cannot be described as embedded practice. The researchers note:

• a pattern of delivery where services predominantly continue to be delivered “to” refugees rather than “with” them
• conclusions from the refugee environmental testing exercise, which reported there were no visible signs of refugees being an integrated part of the overall library user group
• rare examples of the project advocating on behalf of refugees and raising awareness in the wider community of refugees’ contribution to the community.

This comes across as negative but I think it's a clear indication of just how long some of this stuff takes. As we'd expect from the library sector, achievements in more 'internally focussed' themes, such as reading and learning, were more consistently embedded into practice.

One hopes the momentum from practical initiatives such as conversation clubs, when extended from refugee communities to the general public, will cause a significant benefit spillover. As usual, the message is 'we're not done yet.'

Social capital in schools

Social capital continues to make a comeback. Last month the Department for Children Families and Schools published research into 'the development and impact of young people's social capital in schools.'

Drawing on survey and qualitative interview data from two inner London schools, the researchers looked at the sense of school belonging, access to social support networks, and attitudes to diversity.

As we'd expect, their conclusions assert the importance of the school context in the social life of young people. They emphasise the uneven distribution of social capital (with white boys from lower socio-economic backgrounds having the lowest levels of social capital, and white girls having the lowest levels of socio-psychological resources).

They also point to the need to relate the citizenship curriculum to the neighbourhood context and build extended services that promote collaborative relationships between different social groups.

The report refers to the new duty on schools to promote community cohesion, and I noted one striking finding described in the summary:

The schools in this study were highly ethnically diverse and, on average, students tended to hold positive attitudes to cultural and racial diversity... However, in both schools gay people were perceived as a small minority, and students seemed much less positive to diversity in terms of sexual orientation. Hence, while cultural diversity appeared to be valued, or at least regarded as a non-controversial issue within school, the data suggest that homophobia was a considerable problem in our two secondary schools.

Banal encounters?

It could be that the cohesion movement is discovering the importance of informality. A report by the Institute of Community Cohesion on divisions among young people in the London Borough of Hounslow has apparently floated the idea of creating more 'banal encounters' where children and young people from different communities meet.

This gradual recognition is very welcome. I recall some background unofficial conversations around the work of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, which indicated how difficult it was to get even those who are very familiar with the issues to appreciate the significance of everyday unstructured encounters with diverse others. If I go on about it a lot (eg ephemeral relationships; or respecting informality as a principle) it's because I'm persuaded that it's under-appreciated.

The point surely is not whether this makes sense, because it's attention which is obviously overdue; but how to ensure (i) that the occasions and opportunities for encounters are constantly there, maintained and reinforced, and (ii) that people have the confidence and competence in social interaction to manage and benefit from encounters with diverse others.

Source: Children and young people now. (Thanks to John Vincent of The Network).

Everyone's welcome

From a cracking new resource on migration just launched by our excellent National Archives.

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.

Out in the open

Many neighbourhoods in England experience occasional or persistent tensions due to the lack of adequate and appropriate sites for Romany gypsies and Irish travellers.

This year's Building and Social Housing Foundation consultation report is on the theme of providing accommodation, promoting understanding and recognising the rights of gypsies and travellers. In 2006, it says here, 21 per cent of gypsies and travellers had no legal place to park their caravan. (Although we're also told that estimates of the numbers of gypsies and travellers in Britain vary widely, with nothing like a definitive answer; so take that as 21% of roughly 100%).

Out in the open - full text download and summary available .