Category Archives for "Mutuality"

0 Community Development in the Future

In this final post in the current community development sequence, I discuss community development in the future.

My ebook, “Community Development is Dead!” (see below) is my account of the current state of community development in England.  Other places recognise many of the issues we experience in England.

The problem is not funding. We have seen a decline in support from local authorities and churches over the last 20-30 years.

However, even this is a symptom of the decline in support for community development in England. The real problem as I explain in “Community Development is Dead!” runs deeper. The failure is systemic.  It stems from the failure of development workers to make the case for community development. There is no career structure for development workers.

It is predictable, as money becomes scarce, activities unable to make a case for themselves will suffer. This is the mindset that sees community development as a luxury, something we cannot afford in a recession.  Community development as an amateur pursuit, a view supported by the lack of career structure, means experienced workers move on to other better paid activities, leaving inexperienced workers unsupported.

We need to reconsider the way we do community development, by placing activists at the centre and asking how to support them. In future, fewer workers will be less likely to work in neighbourhoods.

Community Development Online

One alternative may be online work, where development workers can provide support through online consultancy. This will differ from traditional development work because it implies activists supported by development workers will do most of the work previously carried out by development workers.

So, for example, a situation analysis might be carried out by local people. The development worker might help them plan their analysis and guide them as they accumulate information. Some will argue development workers will be less equipped to do the work if they are not doing local research themselves. Others may argue this is exactly what local activists should have done in the first place.

As an online community development worker, I can provide support to several projects, anywhere in the country at far less than the cost of employing a full-time worker. This might enable groups to employ administrators, for example, if they have funds and help them become more effective even with relatively few resources.

Can this possibly work? I believe it can and a few pioneers can develop this new approach (and indeed other new approaches).

If this new approach catches on, quality will become important. Practitioners who choose this new way of working will need to organise to agree standards and a career structure for workers. As my generation moves towards retirement, where is the next generation of experienced workers going to come from?   There is likely to be more than one answer to this question, as practitioners attempt various approaches.

This blog is “Community Development Online” and so everything on it relates to community development in some sense.   I’m sure I shall return to this sequence in the future but for now I shall be moving onto a new topic. Take a look next Wednesday to find out what it is!

0 A Case for Regulation

There is common ground between Jeremy Corbyn, the new leader of the UK Labour Party and Bernie Sanders in the US, an influential contender for the Democrats’ leadership. The word used of both is “authenticity”.  Their political stance implies they favour regulation.

My purpose is to ask what that word “authenticity” means and why it has so much impact. The implication is that politics as we experience it somehow lacks authenticity. The political centre has moved far to the right.  Even left-wing politicians such as Tony Blair or Barack Obama occupy similar ground to right-wing politicians. Corbyn and Sanders have fewer associations with vested interests on the right and tap into a sense of independent thinking.  Whether this makes them electable is another matter. It will be interesting to see the long-term impact of their influence

A paper, Threat to Democracy: The Impact of “Better Regulation” in the UK, issued by the New Economics Foundation this week, shines light on the reasons for this perceived lack of authenticity. The primary purpose of politicians is to protect the interests of the people who vote for them. Politicians bought by these huge commercial concerns become inauthentic.

A Case for Regulation

The paper describes an activity introduced during the Coalition government (with roots in the previous Labour government). They aim to deregulate just about everything. The paper is not long and so I shall not go into detail. It shows deregulation is not in the interests of the economy, society, democracy or the European Union. The United States is one of the few countries that has gone further down this road than the UK. The paper makes the point that regulation and red tape are not the same thing and indeed shows how deregulation can result in an increase in red tape, when it suits big business.

The main point I want to make in this post is the case for regulation. The following is a paragraph from the report. I’ve added bullet points but otherwise it unchanged:

Local Business Benefits from Regulation

In other words, regulation is good for local businesses. Deregulation is abdicates democratic control of the economy, resulting in capital accumulated in the hands of very few people. They benefit because politicians allow them to.

Whilst people, when asked about red tape, might favour deregulation in theory, they tend to favour regulation when they contemplate its detailed impact. The report puts it:

“It seems that deregulation, in the abstract, is an attractive idea, but when confronted with specific protections, most people quickly recognise how important good regulation is to the quality of their lives. It’s also clear that tokenistic consultation measures are sufficiently flexible to allow this inconvenient discovery to be ignored.” (Page 11)

Politicians are finding most people do not support this campaign to empower the corporations and so introduce it under the radar. Many sense politicians are either selling out to unelected corporations or else not aware of what is happening (much deregulation does not need parliamentary approval).

What is to be done? Read the report and support its recommendations!

1 Local Activists Marginalised

How do we marginalise local activists? Are activists really somehow inferior to development workers? Some people argue it is unfair to deny activists the opportunity to train as a development workers but why so little training for activists?  There are no equivalents to community development National Vocational Qualifications for activists and this devalues their role in consequence.

By all means, provide training for activists who want to become development workers but most activists do not become development workers and their unique and central role should be recognised.  Vocational qualifications for activists are perhaps inappropriate as activism is essentially a voluntary role.  However, activists use the same skills in paid employment and so there is a vocational dimension to activism.  Activist training should not focus on vocation but certification can bear vocational applications in mind.

It is important to recognise activists’ unique and central role in communities. I’ve been an activist for most of my life and did not stop being an activist when I practiced as a development worker.  I found it important to understand they are different roles and you can’t effectively be both at one time.  I found my performance improved as a development worker when I dressed differently in the role.  My jacket and tie reminded me and the activists I worked with that my role was different.  In my home community I was an activist. working alongside other development workers.  This works for me, other development workers find different ways of being clear about the role they inhabit.

Training

Training for activists includes:

Training for activists should be developmental, by which I mean “learning by doing”.  It may be necessary to pass on some theory but the topics and approach should be as close as possible to real life experiences.  Activists in training plan, execute and evaluate their activities.  This way they set their own agenda without the need for outputs many professional trainers bring to community work.

Activists effect change.  They’re hands on people; paid or unpaid entrepreneurs.  Some may legitimately use their activities to generate personal income.  So, for example, a café owner might encourage local groups to use their café for their meetings.  I appreciate this may seem to be heresy but I do want to emphasise that running a community group is only one way activists can effect change.  We have overlooked the role of small businesses, for example, in bringing about change.

Do we really need more than one community development worker per city?  Perhaps it depends upon the size of the city but a small team is all a city needs to provide the necessary support.  And they should never talk to funding bodies on behalf of the groups they support.

It would be interesting to work out how a small development team might be supported without direct grant aid.  In the States, they fund organisers  through dues paid to citizens’ organisations.  This never took off in Britain. But buying in development support could be part of any grant application.  Community organisations could then pay a central team for the services they receive.

Administration

We need activists and we need a few development workers to support activists.  Another important type of support activists need is administration.  Many community workers, dedicated to a particular neighbourhood, end up doing administration for activist groups.  It is a waste of resources to pay a development worker to do administration.  I suspect the reason this happened so much is funding bodies are reluctant to fund administration and so fund more expensive development workers who spend most of their time doing administration because that is the work that needs doing.

It is incredible that it is so difficult to fund administration.  If there is one thing that would transform community work in the UK, it would be ready access to admin support.  Even if there are people willing to take it on voluntarily, there is always plenty more people can be getting on with and a good administrator can enable a lot of work simply by being there.  A central development work team could provide administration as a part of their services.  This might at least bring costs down, by removing the need to employ an administrator directly but it is not immediately obvious how they would be paid.

Activism as the Central Role

My ideal model would recognise activists as central to neighbourhood regeneration.  They need some developmental support and a small central team in any urban area should be adequate to provide it.  When activists organise they need administration support.  This is cheaper than development support and funding bodies should recognise it as a valid response to local needs.

This puts activists at the centre, recognising their central contribution.  They need development support but by relieving development workers of the burden of doing their admin, most places could manage with smaller teams over larger areas.  Administration can be found in creative ways.  A neighbourhood with a delivery organisation could perhaps dedicate time to supporting the representative activities of the local activists and perhaps the planning activities of a local partnership.  Anything else is a project and needs to be run by a delivery organisation.  My model for community development helps clarify the support activists need for their activities.

So, what do you think?  Do we undervalue activists?  What support do they need?

1 The Entrepreneur Marginalised

My father was an entrepreneur.  He started as a sheet metal worker in Sheffield during the fifties for about 30 years until his health meant he had to stop climbing on roofs.

He was a problem solver and perhaps I inherited this from him.  Given a problem, he would design a solution and then make it in steel.

In the early eighties he complained whichever government was in power they neglected the welfare of small businesses.  The Labour Party (my father always voted Labour) saw employers as villains who should be taxed to provide welfare for the workers, whilst the Conservatives for all their rhetoric, support big business and have little concern for small entrepreneurs.

Marginalisation of Small Businesses Continues

Marginalisation of small business is deeply rooted in our culture.  Schooling prepares children to be employees.  Whilst many jobs have disappeared we still train children to be workers.  If you want a trade, something you can practice in your own right or at least turn your hand to when you’re out of work, then you have to work it out for yourself.

Perhaps we’re suspicious of entrepreneurs because our experience of the big ones is so negative.  Go back to the nineteenth century and whilst there were problems in the mills, eg low pay and poor health and safety, the mill owners lived near their mills and contributed to their city.  In Sheffield the names of Firth, Brown, Ward, Graves are well-known because their names are all over the buildings, parks, art galleries, etc they contributed to their city.

Compare them to the mill owners today.  They are rentiers, meaning they own businesses to make money through speculation.  They have no direct interest in the purpose of the business.  Many don’t live in this country, often living abroad for tax purposes.  They use legal tax avoidance to salt away their profits for their own benefit.

Still, there are many small traders; self-employed people making a precarious living.  They contribute to their local economy and make a greater contribution when they know their business is sustainable.

Community Development and the Economy

So why doesn’t the local economy feature in our thinking about community development?  Community audits rarely cover the local economy.  Do what I’ve just done and Google “community audit”.  Search whatever you find for mentions of economy, shops, finance …  The nearest you’re likely to find is employment.  A community audit can involve local businesses but in all the audits I’ve seen the economy is almost invisible.

Churches for example focus on the very young and very old and then wonder why the economically active don’t appear at their services.

Tesco recently opened a massive supermarket in my neighbourhood, one of the biggest in Europe.  Its local contribution is significant – I use its toilets regularly!  When it opened in November 2011, many predicted local shops would close.  So far local shops, including 4 small supermarkets within a couple of minutes’ walk are still open.  They’re struggling but survive.  How?

Because the Muslim community have put heart and soul into building their own economy.  I don’t know how they’ve done it and suspect a lot of unemployed family members work for almost nothing.  But they’re making it work.  They’re creating a community to their own model and that is an option open to all of us.

Remember not all local businesses are traders (and indeed not all are small).  How many self-employed people in your area work from home, perhaps with customers all over the world?  How do you find out about them?

Where are small businesses building the local economy in your experience?  How are they doing it?  Who is visible and who invisible?

0 Community Development and Community Activity

It is easy to forget why supporting community activity is important, when there are big plans on the table.  This post highlights some of the pitfalls.

Community Development Corporations

During the eighties, I attended a workshop about Community Development Corporations (CDCs), led by two Americans.  CDCs are similar to what we call Community Development Trusts in the UK.

I remember one American observed they were talking to the wrong people.  The room was full of community development workers, council officers and other professionals.  In the States he said he would be addressing a completely different audience.  It would be a mixture of community activists and representatives of foundations.  (Foundations are trusts set up by businesses that support community and charitable objectives and receive tax incentives.)

The representatives of foundations are business people seeking deals with local people.  The aim of a similar meeting in the US would be to help activists and foundations make business deals.

The professionals who attend this type of meeting in the UK would, in the States, be back in the office!  The local activists attend the meetings and negotiate with the foundations.

I have rarely seen anything like this in the UK.  Grants, contracts and loans fund community development,  promoted by professionals who have little at stake in the communities they claim to represent.

Social Enterprises

Social entrepreneurs are perhaps the closest we come to the US approach but many social enterprises are still grant orientated.

This has major disadvantages.  How many social enterprises have failed because they received up-front funding before they had built a customer base?  They fail when their funding runs out before they can build their own income stream.  The grant making body does not treat the grant as an investment and so has little real interest in the outcomes apart from requesting an evaluation report.

Community development must focus on developing people so they are able to raise and manage funds themselves.  Failure to this:

1. undermines the role of local activists
2. marginalises local entrepreneurs
3. denies community groups the business support they would receive with an investment
4. makes social enterprises dependent upon grants, contracts and loans, all tied to the objectives of the body that awards them.

Grants, contracts and loans have a role but when they dominate the funding scene they distort how local organisations function. Development workers need to equip local activists to take on entrepreneurial roles in community.

Can you think of examples of  social enterprises financed too soon or where finance has helped them grow?

0 Who Owns the Future?

Who Owns the Future by Jaron Lanier offers two visions for the future. Like all such visions, they are incomplete.

The first is a humanistic future, where machines help people become their true selves. It is where people find “the thing they cannot not do” and if they need help machines are on hand. So, the surgeon uses machines to monitor and guide her hand. And note this is a world where all benefit. Those who are differently-abled find machines help them live a full life. The key idea is shared benefits are true benefits.  Maybe this is idealistic but some people have already chosen this future and through collective action we can choose to make this real for all.

The alternative is not, as you might expect, a machine-centred future. Machines have no purpose of their own and Artificial Intelligence is still something we’ll ever see. The alternative hierarchical future is where machines concentrate money and power into fewer hands. Again, some will argue, it is already happening.

Evidence for both futures can be seen in the present. We can choose either.  There are other possible futures, for example where there are no machines because we can no longer fuel them. My hunch is the second future is a step along the road to ecological disaster.

Our Choice

We can choose to use machines to help us become better human beings. The key word in that last sentence is “us”. Who is “us”? I could have written, “We can choose to use machines to help others become better human beings”. Perhaps I mean “those whose hands are on the levers of power can choose to use machines for the benefit of others”. If current practice is evidence of their intentions in this respect, the prospects are not encouraging.  The Volkswagen scandal suggests they have used machines to deceive; no-one believes they are the only ones.

“We can choose to use machines to help others become better human beings”. Look closely at the last sentence and ask, who is “we”? Perhaps the key to this is mutuality or self-interest. When I help others, I benefit too. The key to the future is not machines, it is collaboration. People working together for a better future for all.

Jaron Lanier

Jaron Lanier in his book “ Who Owns the Future?” argues the impact of machines has not been entirely benign because they have concentrated information into the hands of the few. Kodak used to employ 140 000 people and was worth $28 billion. It is now bankrupt and replaced by Instagram, worth $1 billion and employing 13 people.

Middle class people used to benefit from what Lanier calls levees. Levees are the walls built in fields to retain water and so feed the crops. It used to be possible to build levees around certain activities, where the practitioner’s expertise prevented others joining them without being accepted into the profession. Machines are used to break down these walls. For example, a few years ago you would have had to ask professional video makers to produce a video. Now you can easily do it yourself. Granted there is still a market for good videos from those who don’t have the time or patience to learn to do it well. The same applies to web design.

However, what might appear to be a process of democratisation, where people are able to do things they couldn’t a few years ago has its downside. Are those 13 Instagram employees really worth $76 million each? Compared with Kodak’s employees worth only $200K? If Instagram’s employees are really worth that much, I wonder how many of them have seen anything like $76 million.

Siren Servers

Lanier writes about “Siren Servers”; they

“gather data from the Internet, often without having to pay for it. The data is analysed using the most powerful available computers, run by the very best available technical people. The results of the analysis are kept secret, but are used to manipulate the rest of the world to advantage.”

Think of the impact of siren servers on bookshops. Siren servers practice data scraping, where they pick up bargains on rival bookshops’ websites and then they can undercut them. How do we react? We can choose to visit the local bookshop to look at books but there is always the temptation to find the online offer that undercuts their special offer. The net result is fewer bookshops. Is that what we really want?

(Yes I am a hypocrite.  I use affiliate links to a huge siren server.  I don’t do this for the money (income from my affiliation so far is zero) and I don’t believe this will significantly change.  It serves as a link to more information about the book I’m reviewing.  Where you choose to buy it is your choice.  Perhaps we need a peoples’ movement who check out online and then purchase in shops, where shops are accessible.)

Conclusion

Lanier’s book is a good explanation of the challenges we face from those who control new technologies. He suggests solutions, which certainly open up new possibilities and show how decisions sharing data online are not set in stone.

Whether his solutions are practical is another matter. My view is people need to be realistic about where the power is online and work together to create genuine alternatives. These alternatives must be rooted in our lives as we live them and we decide if machines will aid us.

We have access to information and communication unparalleled in human history. We can allow the corporations to control it and so concentrate power in their hands or we can collaborate to build our own levees, where genuine interactions can take place in our neighbourhoods, cities, towns and villages.

2 Participative Methods 6: Non-Directive Consultancy

Non-directive consultancy differs from the other participative methods because it is an arrangement between a consultant and a consultor, usually one person.  It is not usually an activity for a group, although it is possible for the consultant to work with a few people from the same organisation.    See my previous posts about consultancy for resources about this method.

Usually organisations pay consultants to do research, planning and / or design because they lack capacity to do the work.  The consultant is the person who does the work because the consultant is the expert.

Space shuttle Atlantis a booster analogy that probably breaks down if you push it too far!

With non-directive consultancy the consultor is the expert and does the work.  The consultant boosts the consultor’s brain power.  The consultor knows the situation better than any consultant and so the consultant’s role is to help the consultor think things through. This approach is sometimes called coaching.

The task might be analysis, design or problem solving.  The consultant might have specialist knowledge, although this is not essential.  So, I use non-directive consultancy as an approach to website design in a community development context.  Whilst I may know more about web design, the consultor knows more about the purpose of their organisation and their website.  The consultor is often unaware of how much they do know and the consultant’s task is to help them access and apply their knowledge.  Where I can use my specialist knowledge of website design and community development it is always to help the consultor as they work on their own task.

The project is always in the hands of the consultor and the role of the non-directive consultant is to provide the consultor with approaches to problem solving they need to complete their task.

Four Issue Types for Non-Directive Consultancy

George Lovell developed non-directive consultancy in the context of church and community work.  He identified four types of issue workers might encounter, based upon community workers’ experience.

More information about these can be found in my series of posts about non-directive consultancy.  It may seem obvious these can all be used to mentor new workers.  In practice, all workers benefit from non-directive consultancy support and many experienced workers continue with this type of support.  Similarly, development workers can use these approaches with activists in their neighbourhoods.

Have you had experience of working with or as a consultant in community development?  Why do you think your consultancy worked or failed?  Leave a comment to let me know what you think!

1 Our Town Centres Tomorrow

The core principle to Julian Dobson’s approach in “How to Save Our Town Centres” is perhaps summarised in this single sentence:

“The thriving high streets and town centres of the 21^st century will be those that rediscover how to maximise returns to their communities.” (page 127)

The concept of community is notoriously slippery and perhaps mostly we must fall back on “I know community when I see it”. We can say community is present where there is growth of sustained relationships between people committed to a particular place. Whilst there is a degree of trust required in any financial transaction, in large commercial chains it is primarily through written contracts and familiar branding; not so much through personal contact.

City Centres are Complex

So far, so simple. Dobson shows how complex our cities are and the many factors we need to consider. So, in the second part of the book, he has written chapters about:

Economic Development Equals Community Development

Dobson questions the approach to regeneration that brings together the great and the good. He writes:

“They fail to appreciate that economic development must encompass community development … this means considering not only what kind of places we want to create, but how they are to be run and in whose interests: who will control or influence what can happen in 5, 10, 20 or 50 years’ time and how to ensure our towns are no longer at the mercy of decisions taken hundreds or thousands of miles away – or even behind closed doors in the local town hall or chamber of commerce.” (page 262)

In my free e-book (see below) “Community Development is Dead! Long Live Community Development!”,  I argue practitioners have ignored the local economy. The corporations have taken advantage of the neglect many local activists have practiced towards their local economy. They have their power because activists have refused to dirty their hands in trade. As a result community activity has become grant dependent and so unable to build sustainable programmes in their communities.

An Objection

And this brings me to an objection to Dobson’s argument. We cannot get there by concentrating solely on town centres. Town centres are one part of larger towns and cities with many suburban centres. And they too need regeneration. The big supermarkets recognise local shopping centres are important and wealthier centres usually house at least one major chain in direct competition with local businesses.

Local businesses not only base their activities outside their town centre because they can afford the premises but also because they value where they are. They build networks of suppliers and customers where they are.

We need a model that provides a framework for trade across the city, allowing customers to find local businesses not only in the centre but across the city. I’ve written about Hunters Bar in Sheffield, a distinct centre that draws people for recreational purposes, perhaps on an afternoon off work. In the same post, Spital Hill is another example of a local centre, where there is in embryo an Islamic shopping centre. There are many other similar places in the city. We need to find ways of supporting all this economic activity and the city centre can support these satellite centres.

This apart, “How to Save Our City Centres” is an essential contribution to the debate about the future of our cities, local economies and communities.

3 Participative Methods 5: Using Citizens’ Organising

Citizens’ Organising is immensely powerful in the United States but is not established in the UK. However, I suspect many development workers pick and mix insights from citizens’ organising and so it has not been without influence.

You can find out more about the history and background to Citizens’ Organising, including some reference works in my post Citizens’ Organising.

I took Citizens’ Organising leaders’ training in 1992.  Whilst I had issues with their whole package, much of what I learned has been helpful in my community development practice.  The method is not written down anywhere because citizens’ organising is passed from practitioner to practitioner; by mentoring not study.  Be aware there are sound reasons for this.

Some Basic Citizens’ Organising Concepts

1. 

   Old church buildings can still contribute to the community. Friends of Burngreave Cemetery organise events for local residents from the old chapel.

   Organising starts with the churches.  Why?  Because churches are there for the long haul.  In disadvantaged communities they can be the only institutions that maintain a presence.  (While it is true that in the UK, churches are often the last institutions to leave some estates, the churches overall have less influence in the UK.  There are fewer of them, fewer people involved and therefore they are less financially robust.       Leaving aside any reservations churches may have about being involved in Citizens’ Organising, the reality is their presence is nowhere near as decisive as it is in the United States. It is hard to think of any other organisation that could take on the role in the UK.)

2. Organising depends upon power analysis.  The statutory, private and professional voluntary sectors access power through organised money.  Community organisations cannot do this, as they have no money, so they access power through organised people. (In the UK, the grants industry usually drives community development. Citizens’ Organising in my city went down the road of applying for grants, presumably because it couldn’t generate the income it needed from its members’ dues. This had two effects: it subtly changed their approach. They made demands on community organisations that should have been their allies and failed to build a sustainable movement and so eventually closed.)
3. Contributions from member organisations are the sole source of funding for Citizens’ organisations.  This guarantees independence, as grant aid means they become beholden to donor organisations.  Citizens’ organisations must unambiguously represent the interests of their members. (This is perhaps the fatal dilemma for Citizens’ Organising in the UK. With less potential for support from the churches, it cannot generate sufficient income from membership dues. This not only means they are prone to become beholden to grant making bodies but also they are unable to build a citizens’ movement. In grant dependent culture, organisations normally receive money to pay for community development and do not pay for it themselves.)
4. Power tempered by love.  Power is collectively exercised and used in a disciplined way that marginalises no-one. (In the UK, power language is somehow extreme.)A
5. Anger and self-interest motivate the people involved.  Anger energises leaders and ensures things get done.  Self-interest is where I understand I benefit when I work for the benefit of others and so it is the wellspring of mutuality. (Words like anger and self-interest are not commonly used of community activities in the UK. Community is about people working together and so conflict is frowned upon. In reality, community organisations (and churches) are often battlegrounds because people do not know how to resolve conflict. Citizen’s Organising offers the structures organisations need to resolve conflict and help organised citizens be more effective. Whilst it is possible to use some of these insights they are not generally understood.)
6. Leaders never occupy any position in the organisation for more than one year. They develop their skills by moving between positions and not remaining in them.  This way they pick up new challenges and make space for others who pick up their old responsibilities. (Whilst UK groups do talk about succession, the most common reason is fear of losing the current leader. A lot of the conflict within organisations is because they become ‘self-perpetuating oligarchies’ and one reason for this is most organisations do not take seriously the training and education of their members for leadership. This is surprisingly common in the UK and indeed many churches face similar issues. Perhaps the best known failure to bring on the next generation of leaders is the current leadership election in the Labour Party. (They are enacting the consequences in the full glare of the media although all parties face similar difficulties.))
7. They work by ensuring people with power, eg local politicians, business people, church leaders, etc are accountable through their own aims.  (And this is something not generally understood. The first recourse needs to be to the aims of the organisation that is using power to the disadvantage of our communities.  Malice does not motivate most institutions but they often act in self-defeating ways. This is often caused by failure of their own leaders who lose touch with their organisation’s purpose.)
8. Citizens’ Organisations have no permanent friends or enemies, the aim is always to develop relationships. (This insight has become better known in the UK. Properly understood, it helps community organisations enter into genuine partnerships, helping powerful institutions meet their objectives locally. Where it is not understood, groups collude to make cosmetic changes and do not address deeper drivers of disadvantage.)

Conclusion

So, in Britain we have not yet developed an approach to organising that suits our own culture.  I’m not sure it is possible if the churches are unable to provide support equivalent to churches in the US.

How would you apply these principles in the UK?  Use comments to tell me what influence organising has had in your community. Perhaps you live somewhere where there is still a citizens’ organisation. If so, how do you fund it?

2 Our Town Centres Today

So, what are the problems facing town centres today? Last Friday I introduced Julian Dobson’s book, “How to Save Our Town Centres”. Today I shall summarise what he understands their problems to be.

What Are Town Centres?

We are making a massive mistake if we think town centres are solely about retail; fundamentally they are places where relationships develop between citizens. Retail depends on trust and so the nature of cities and their spaces, where relationships can grow, is important. At least, that is true for local retail businesses. The large corporations depend on their brand to develop trust and so have become independent of civic institutions.

Dobson writes:

“Not only the shops are going: many of the institutions that once anchored town centres, from churches to libraries to adult education centres, have disappeared or diminished. The activities that brought people into town in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries are often no longer there, and sometimes no longer anywhere.” (page 10)

Later, he writes:

“Go back to the ancient Greek idea of the agora and you will find a far richer mix than exists in even the most successful contemporary street markets. The agora was a civic space, not just a marketplace. In the agora of Athens there was the courtroom, places of religious worship, the gymnasium, the mint that produced the city’s coinage, and the bouleuterion, the council building where people assembled to legislate and to discuss public affairs. The agora was used for theatre and performance, meeting and holding court: it was far more than a shopping precinct.” (page 46)

The Marketplace

This vision will be familiar to readers of this blog although I’ve usually used the word marketplace to describe similar diversity. People generate all these activities and so we say they are people-centred. Of course, some institutions, for example civic authorities, manage activities such as courts or council meetings. But all these activities are essentially public activities. They take place behind closed doors only in totalitarian states.

But ideally local businesses and community organisations generate most activity. Each activity supports future activities because town centres have histories known by the people and are an inspiration to them. They take civic pride in their unique place.

Three Trends Undermine Town Centres

According to Dobson there are broadly three trends that have undermined our town centres in recent decades:

“The shopping centre, the supermarket and the internet giant: each in its way is stripping trade out-of-town centres and away from local businesses.” (page 78)

And when the trade goes it becomes more difficult to sustain the other activities.

The one thing that unites these three threats to town centres is branding. Meadowhall, Tesco and Amazon (for example) are all trusted brands. This means they are well-known, provide a massive range of goods and offer credible guarantees of quality.

What Can Be Done?

Whilst many local retail businesses can compete on quality they can rarely compete on their range of goods (addressed by having many businesses and not so much by increasing the range of goods held by a trader) or becoming well-known because they have limited marketing budgets and are often based in premises they can afford outside the town centre.

Somehow we have an economic system that makes no effort to protect the interests of local businesses and communities.  Local authorities plan to attract corporate businesses into their areas in the hope it will regenerate their towns.  Instead they take more finance out of the area, destroy local supply networks and then when they find a better offer, are likely to leave.  Where are the plans to grow, support and protect local businesses and communities?

No summary can do justice to Dobson’s book and especially the wealth of examples he offers based on good and bad practice.

Next week I shall explore some of the solutions Dobson offers and reveal the one point on which I do not agree with him.