I suppose this is a dilemma for me, although I don’t see it that way. I am still a community development worker at heart and subscribe to its values despite making my way in the conventional business world. This Wednesday I was involved in three activities that related to campaigning for the Urban Environment.
After a business breakfast, where I promoted my Facebook Live campaign, described in last Friday’s post and my webinar about the local economy, I spoke at the Urban Theology Unit (UTU).
Re-Enchantment of Dark Holy Ground
I’ve been a Trustee of UTU for many years and the meeting was an introduction to the new director’s recently published book. The book is “Re-enchanting the Activist: Spirituality and Social Change” by Keith Hebden (affiliate link). I haven’t read it yet and I will review it as soon as I have. They asked me to comment on the book; no mean feat given that I hadn’t read it!
I spoke about my experience in Cleveland County during the 1980s, a time of overwhelming unemployment. The discovery by long-term unemployed of the dark face of God and that many were living on Dark Holy Ground. Sometimes empowerment comes from the darkest of places. This contrasts with self-help approaches that sometimes seem relentlessly cheery.
I’m sure the experience most people have of being highly sceptical or even cynical about just about everything, including marketing campaigns and political campaigns. Many people are seriously disenchanted although this does not always lead them to choosing the right people to follow.
Save Sheffield’s Trees
After that I joined a demonstration outside the Town Hall before the council meeting, after the early morning tree removal on Rustlings Road earlier in the month. I’ve known that road for all of my life and it was a beautiful road before the forced removal of 11 trees, most of which had earned a reprieve from the Council’s tree panel.
It involved 22 police officers knocking on doors at 4.30 in the morning, to ask people to remove their cars.
The Council has entered a 25 year PFI contract with a contractor that sees trees as an obstacle to maintaining roads and pavements. It seems this contract overrides democratic accountability. This takes us to the nub of the tensions we all feel about business.
Few people would argue that business is essential to community. Everyone needs income and businesses need lots of people with money to spend. If we build public spaces, then business is necessary. But it is not sufficient.
Public spaces are where people interact and trees are an essential part of those spaces. As soon as we allow specious arguments about efficiency to tear down what makes our spaces humane, we are losing track of the purpose of our lives. And it seems there are some businesses that power this destructive tendency. Most business owners have little problem with the idea that as citizens they are accountable democratically. But it seems size and power clouds judgement for some business owners and politicians.
This is why I and many other Sheffielders have joined STAG (Sheffield Tree Action Groups). You can join on their Facebook page; follow the link and click on join.
Proposal to Convert the Sheffield’s Central Library into a 5-Star Hotel
Sheffield Central Library, Surrey Street. © Copyright Chris Downer and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
Then I met up with Billal Jamal from the Public Speaking Academy (affiliate link). He suggested we use Facebook Live to conduct an impromptu Vox Pop about the proposals to convert Sheffield’s Central Library into a 5-star hotel. The building houses several libraries and the Graves Art Gallery. The paintings and indeed the art deco building were gifts to the city; contributed by JG Graves, a prominent business man in the early twentieth century.
If you follow the link you will find the video at the top of my Facebook page. It is about 15 minutes. Billal worked with me to ask people to take part, whilst I interviewed them. Billal took the opportunity to show me the power of Facebook Live as a campaigning tool. It is equally effective for promotion of business and for campaigning. It may be an effective approach to helping people’s views to be heard. One problem many campaigning groups face is they end up talking to each other. Facebook Live is a splendid to hear what people are saying.
Julian Dobson in “How to Save Our Town Centres: A Radical Agenda for the Future of High Streets” (affiliate link) devotes a whole chapter to libraries. They are an important part of the public space. And note I specifically asked about the value to business in the city centre. Perhaps business is a threat because the proposal is to hand the building over to a private enterprise? It does not necessarily follow that all the businesses in the city centre would benefit from such a change.
Sign up to the Sheffield Central Library Action Group, if you wish to support the campaign for the library.
Still a Development Worker at Heart?
Billal later suggested that perhaps I am still a development worker at heart. It could be argued that I am unlikely to accept the business thing, speaking their language and following their ways.
Except that is not really what I am about. I am seeking a new standard where business finds its place at the heart of society. Business people are members of our families, they are friends from school and university. They are also some seriously delusional billionaires who really believe the world owes them increasing wealth and power.
We have to find a way to direct the entrepreneurial vision away from self-realisation and towards an ethic of the common good. After all, it is well-known our relationships form the selves we seek to develop.
Where Individualism leads to isolation from the world, it is bound to become morbid. Precisely the tragic consequences Keith Hebden describes in his book.
How do you experience tension between business and community?