Читать книгу For the Love of Community Engagement - Becky Hirst - Страница 6

There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.

― Margaret J Wheatley⁵

I grew up in Abbeydale, a modern suburb within the cathedral city of Gloucester, in the south-west of England.

Abbeydale was next door to Matson. Matson was, and still is, a densely populated urban area of relatively high deprivation. The ‘new’ suburb of Abbeydale was caught in-between the established suburb of Matson and the village of Upton St Leonards, and my parents tell me it felt like a no-man’s-land when it was first developed in the late 1970s.

While Abbeydale was on the ‘wrong’ side of the M5 motorway to be truly part of the upmarket Upton St Leonards community, it was pretty much regarded that Matson was on the ‘wrong’ side of Painswick Road for Abbeydale folk to relate to.

But that’s not to say we didn’t connect with Matson. The beautiful little church I attended as a child stood high up on the hill above Matson. I have fond memories of visiting Matson library, and my older brother and sister attended an excellent primary school there. I also remember that Matson had one of the best fish and chip shops around! During my University years, I had a great time working as the Playleader at the Matson Playscheme, a six-week school holiday program for local children.

In 1999, after three years at university in northern England, I was offered a job interview in Matson. That definitely felt like coming home.

My Mum’s liberal socialist tendencies taught me to judge no one. From her I learned to be curious about people’s stories, regardless of where they lived or what they did for a living. She taught me to embrace the underdog. And Matson was my underdog. Just to be clear about my language here: I see an ‘underdog’ as a person or group in a competition, usually in sports and creative works, who is generally expected to lose. My Mum used the world of popular culture to make her point. She told me that Cliff Richard was way too ‘squeaky clean’ as a performer. She found much more joy in the nomadic, waistcoat-wearing David Essex. Mum’s popular culture analogy was later reflected in my teenage music choices. I always preferred the hard-edged, East London boys of East 17 to the more middle-class, pretty boys of Take That!

My love of underdogs continued into adulthood. I admire dancers such as Steve Paxton, who in 1970 legitimised ordinary movement as a dance medium,⁶ by having forty-two naked redheads walking across the stage, and calling it dance! And Isadora Duncan who was a self-styled revolutionary, becoming known as the Mother of Dance.⁷ Or stepping away from dance, in 2003, I loved it when magician and illusionist David Blaine spent over six weeks living on just water inside a plexiglass box, hanging thirty feet in the air on the banks of the River Thames. I even made a lone pilgrimage from Gloucester to London for the day to witness him doing just that, thinking to myself how much I admired his determination to do what he wanted, seemingly without worry about what anyone else would say.

In my bedroom I have a photo of Philippe Petit, a French high-wire artist, who famously undertook an unauthorised high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York in 1974. His audacity inspires me no end!

Closer to home, and closer to my topic, my good friend Stephen Yarwood, whom I met just as he was announcing his intentions to nominate himself as a candidate for Lord Mayor of Adelaide in the 2010 local government elections, is one of my favourite underdogs. When we first met, he told me enthusiastically about how worn his boots were from walking the streets of Adelaide, door knocking potential voters. He was hearing loud and clear from the people he met that they intended to vote for him and felt quietly confident. Yet I remember watching a televised debate between the candidates when he barely got a look-in, as the media seemed to favour other more well-known candidates. I cheered with delight when Stephen, in my opinion, the underdog, won the election and served as Lord Mayor from 2010-2014, bringing a future thinking and urban planning approach that had rarely been experienced in Adelaide.

When I reflect on my admiration for these people, it’s their ability to think for themselves that I admire. They don’t try to conform and seemingly push against the tide of convention.

My parents were children of working-class families in the north of England. Mum’s relatives were heavily involved in the Jarrow March of 1936, an organised protest against unemployment and poverty in the English town of Jarrow at that time. All their lives, my parents worked incredibly hard, studying, working and in their home life. That gave their children what I’d call a privileged, middle-class upbringing. Nevertheless, their pride in their northern England working-class roots was not lost on us. While we accept that we are privileged, we are grounded and truly grateful.

This underdog affinity also applies to my brother, Richard. He is an assistant headteacher in a secondary school who, from early in his teaching career, had the challenge of teaching gritty, often socially disadvantaged students at government-funded state schools. There were less opportunities to teach the well-behaved, polished jolly-hockey-stick types he’d encounter if he’d taught in a private school. Whilst he admits he’d probably rather this scenario, to this day, his eyes light up when he explains the challenges of teaching disadvantaged students and how he loves helping them complete their education. Like me, he cheers on and supports the underdog, noting that the social disadvantage his career route has exposed him to has been very distant from our upbringing.

Nowadays, I consider many people who I meet through my work with government departments in delivering community engagement as underdogs. Whether it’s the truck driver turning up to a community workshop to passionately put forward his concerns about road safety; someone who feels strongly about the environmental impacts of a proposed housing development who’s trying to be heard by decision-makers; or a new mother who wants more services delivered to enable women to share post-birth experiences. These are all people who are avidly pushing against a tide of bureaucracy, or the establishment, in their own unique ways, for social things they care about.

I was only 21 and a bit terrified, so I was surprised that my interview for the role of Community Involvement Officer at the Matson Neighbourhood Project went exceptionally well. Already, I could confidently access my passion for the topic and the neighbourhood. I believe that my humble confidence in my ability to do well in the role was a direct result of a childhood spent in the performing arts. And, importantly, a family that offered a strong foundation where we learned about fairness, equity, and kindness.

Andy Jarrett, my soon-to-be-boss, rang to offer me my new job. I tried to play it cool, telling him I’d need time to think about it and I’d call him back. I kept him waiting! My Mum felt the annual salary (£12,500) was not enough for a university graduate. Nevertheless, I had a good feeling. I called Andy back and accepted the post!

I still reflect on my projects at the Matson Neighbourhood Project. The Matson Library, located in the neighbourhood’s centre, is overlooked by semi-detached and terraced Council housing. One exterior wall, adjoining a large green space, was made of exposed brick that looked drab and attracted graffiti. That became one of my first projects. My new colleague, Sarah Payne and her family had a reputation in Gloucester for being community minded. In our spare time, Sarah and I worked together as Director and Choreographer on productions like Aladdin and Me and My Girl through both of our voluntary involvement with the Olympus Theatre. Sarah was a straight-talking, strong woman committed to getting things done. Under her wing was a great place for me to be. And to learn.

The agreed plan was to paint a mural on the external wall. I joined Sarah, who was working collaboratively with the two local primary schools. The proposed mural theme was the local environment. The students, aged between 5 and 10, had been exploring the neighbouring country park, Robinswood Hill, which proudly overlooks Matson and the rest of Gloucester. (Adding to its fame is that the hill was the Gloucester Ski Centre, training home for failed-yet-very-famous ski jumper, Eddie the Eagle.)

The students drew features of the environment seen on their adventures to Robinswood Hill. A local artist then used the children’s individual drawings to create a large mural design that was scaled to the library wall. Then the painting began. The children were not only involved in designing the mural, but they also took turns with painting it! I asked myself, what kind of crazy community involvement workers let the community take full ownership and responsibility? Oh, that’s right … good ones!

Strong visceral memories of that project remain with me. First is the smell of paint, and specifically accompanying Sarah to local paint suppliers to collect donated tins of paint. To honour the children’s design decisions, we had conscientiously selected paint colours, not simply picking up a boot-load of multi-coloured paints. I distinctly remember how exhausting that was. And I learned so much! The mural project was a big, early lesson in the importance of the behind-the-scenes effort required for any successful, creative community engagement project or process.

My second distinct memory of the actual painting process was the rain. It absolutely poured and poured with rain. For days! It was a freezing mid-Autumn in the UK. Nevertheless, the scaffolding was up, and a tightly managed roster of children kept coming and coming, painting their designated area, and then leaving. Sarah, I, and the artist would do necessary touch-ups between class visits or at the end of very long days. (You didn’t think we’d leave it totally in the hands of the community, did you?)

On reflection, this project was a lesson in professionalism. It was not just about having staff. It was about having dedicated staff who gave their all. The community involvement officer had to lead and coordinate, of course! But there was more. So much more! We had to roll up our sleeves, join in, get wet, get cold, and share with children and the wider community the pride of a project well done.

A final memory of this project was about a technical matter that turned out to be crucial to our project’s success. Sarah undertook intensive research into the anti-graffiti paint to be applied as a topcoat over the mural. She must have found something that worked because, decades later, the mural still glows. You can bet that the children who designed and painted it now show it to their children. You can see that in the smiling faces of these children in the press cutting below, local people have an extraordinarily strong sense of pride in this project. I suspect that anti-graffiti paint was never actually required.

Image 3 - Local media coverage of the Matson Library Mural project, Gloucester Citizen, 22 October 1999.

The mural kicked off my time at Matson and my career, with great grassroots gusto. But it wasn’t the only project in Matson that fuelled my enthusiasm.

Over the years, Matson had received massive amounts of media coverage from local news outlets, usually for the wrong reasons. Stories of unemployment, crime or other bad news dominated press coverage seriously damaging local pride. Increasing the number and quality of positive news stories about the area was an early challenge of mine, as I sought to achieve higher levels of community involvement and an increased sense of community pride. So, I organised a regular column in the local newspaper, the Gloucester Citizen, and worked with journalists to produce positive news pieces. Another strategy was to create our own newspaper: The Matson News!

I asked myself, how could people get involved in their local community if they didn’t feel connected to it, or if they didn’t even know what was happening? How could they feel a sense of pride if we didn’t share news about the good things that were happening? As eight-year olds, my best friend Laura and I would while away a Saturday afternoon pretending to be magazine publishers, creating our own little photocopied publication called Format 3 . Little did I know that this creative childhood play would provide the skills to bolster the pride of an entire neighbourhood!

It was relatively easy to get The Matson News happening. In the late nineties, we didn’t have desktop computers, so I’d sit in the Neighbourhood Project training room where we had a row of newly installed computers and start laying out ideas using Microsoft Publisher or something similar. The training room adjoined the community general store, managed by the Neighbourhood Project, and I’d often be called on to help monitor the children coming in after school to buy their penny sweets. At first, I saw this as a distraction. Later, I saw it as a great way to connect with local children and their parents.

Often, using local noticeboards, I’d send requests for articles, jokes, quizzes, stories, and more. I’d use existing networks to help me reach people who had content to contribute. I’d include upcoming events, useful phone numbers, and maybe even a word search or a crossword. In the early days, I drove the content of The Matson News, but after a couple of editions, as word spread, increasingly the local community drove the content.

I approached a couple of local businesses for sponsorship to cover the cost of printing, which wasn’t exorbitant for a basic black-and-white, A4, eight-page newsletter. I organised the printing and stapling by another not-for-profit organisation. I remember my excitement at receiving boxes full of something I’d created. But more than that, I was ecstatic to know that so many local people had contributed to the success of the newspaper.

If the planning, design, and production were seamless, the delivery was not so much. We had to deliver The Matson News to 10,000 people! Maybe we ran out of money. I forget. But I do remember being with a very small group of volunteers who were hand-delivering The Matson News to every Matson household.

Nowadays, as a tired and cranky forty-something, I cannot imagine hand delivering thousands of newsletters to households for a client. But this is now and that was then. And twenty-one-year-old enthusiastic Becky, in her first ‘proper’ job, was literally skipping through Matson taking in every sight, sound and smell of this densely populated, urban area of high deprivation. What an experience that was! I learned that the best and fastest way to get to know a community you’re working in is to hand-deliver something to every single household. It was a steep learning curve, and I embraced all aspects of it, as shown by the media coverage opposite.

Image 4 - A day in the life of… a community project worker, Gloucester Citizen, 2000.

At first-hand, I experienced the consequences of high rates of unemployment, teenage pregnancies, low literacy rates, family violence and, of course, local authority high-density housing. It was immersion therapy: stepping over dirty nappies in shared entrance areas to blocks of flats: retching at urine in hallways; dodging used needles on the roadside; and listening to sirens to know which street to avoid. Not all of Matson was shabby and dangerous, of course. For every smelly high-rise apartment block corridor, I’d find a pocket of well-manicured rose gardens reflecting an immense sense of pride. Even the underdog had its underdogs!

On my delivery runs, I soon discovered a very cool time-sharing and skill-sharing program called Fair Shares. Fair Shares is still an active initiative in Gloucester. It describes itself as two-way volunteering, whereby its members get rewarded for the time and effort they put into their neighbourhood. And Fair Shares was a great help to me in a community development sense, as I tried to make sense of what I was experiencing. While I was skipping along delivering The Matson News, I met a woman with several problems that needed urgent attention. Nellie told me that she was lonely and anxious. Several jobs around her place had fallen into disrepair, and she couldn’t afford to hire anyone to help her. Fair Shares came to the rescue for both of us. We did a trade. For every hour Nellie helped me delivering The Matson News, she could bank an hour in her time bank to spend on ‘buying in’ someone to help her.

So, a local man would give an hour of his time to mow her lawn and use the hour he earned to pay for a babysitter for an hour. The babysitter could use the hour they had earned to buy some mentoring from a local maths tutor. The maths tutor could get her lawn mown… and so on. With this simple concept, the economy of time suddenly created a level playing field. And got stuff done!

I am a huge fan of the concept of living in a circular economy – these days hosting guests in a converted shed on our private property via Airbnb; ride sharing with Uber; reducing consumerism from fast fashion through my thrift shopping addiction; and delighting in concepts such as Little Libraries, where my children regularly take and replace books in random roadside locations! A circular economy approach to life strengthens connection and communities.

As these community-led, sharing approaches grow and prosper, I predict that unless there are radical changes, governments will continue to move further away from having genuine connections and relationships with the communities they serve, and those communities will become more underdog in their activities. A different approach is needed. One that includes embracing communities through more community immersion, and fewer layers of bureaucracy, which at present simply stifle communities.

Conversation Starters

 WHO is the underdog in your work or in your life? What’s your relationship like with them? How do you react to them, physically and emotionally?

 WHAT kind of community engagement could you achieve with a budget of just $50? You don’t always need big budgets to engage a community. The next time you find yourself saying, ‘There’s no budget’, consider how you might reframe the situation. What can we do with what we have? What resources can we draw on?

 WHY is it so important to genuinely involve people in activities in their neighbourhoods? And why is it so important that we avoid doing everything for them?

 WHEN did you last wander around the community in which you live or work, with no purpose other than to become immersed in observing its happenings?

 WHERE do you come from? How does this affect your perspective of community engagement?