community narratives and regeneration in peripheral regions
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Fiery spirits are really important - individuals do lead transformational change but they are often unsupported, and when working in institutional frameworks they are even seen as threatening and marginalised. We have seen examples of people who have taken asset based approaches to community development in disadvantaged areas and have found themselves marginalised by their respective agencies.
From our experience it seems that sooner or later funding and support systems let these individuals and their programmes down and we need to foster new approaches that give more sustained independence, for example access to broader kinds of support from different places, and partnership approaches that provide enabling conditions.
Projects such as YP2 and the TR14ers in Cornwall are applauded but are very grass roots and suffer from a lack of consistent funding. They lack the skills needed to raise funds and to present their work in ways that are required by funders. We would like to explore the possibilities of social enterprise foundations underpinning them because that would mean that their funding is more directly related to effort rather than whim.
We have found many examples of the value of an asset-based approach - most people don't use this language but the ones who achieve things in different fields all seem to work to similar principles.
An important element of this approach is to enter any situation looking for the positives to work with. This means it is as much about building a mindset and an attitude as it is about any particular set of techniques such as Land Trusts.
We suspect that there may be danger in mixing the debate about human and physical assets together. Physical assets can be negative as well as positive - but it is people who make things happen and there are lots of examples where negatives have been made valuable. People can also be negative and positive - but they can also change and there is nothing to be won by looking at the negatives. Staying positive seems to be a key technique. For example, we saw how difficult it was for one community leader to relate to the debate about 'negative assets'. The language and the very concept are deflationary and defuse the energy that community workers use to drive their work.
We have focused on the question of radical change and collapse of past patterns - because we think this will be a key issue for the 21st Century and we need to know more about how to respond.
We are looking at what happens when ideal community conditions are not in place, or have been broken and need repair. We think more work is needed to describe and demonstrate the underlying processes and conditions that will best enable change to have positive outcomes and restore the ideal qualities that the current models call for, and what techniques are effective for example, C2's connecting communities approach.
Communities who have been dependent on certain patterns of life for a long time undergo more than economic disruption when they go through radical change. There is a disruption of purpose and identity that sends deep fractures through the social fabric. We see this in the communities around the ex-mining areas of Cornwall. The social problems also include things like lack of motivation and ambition, and there are estates where people no longer can identify any common ground or reason why they live together. The situation is clearer in mining rather than fishing villages because the latter become colonised by second home owners and so on whereas mining village rarely do.
This is about abstract questions such as 'identity' as much as about lack of assets. Creating assets is partly a mindset thing: simply injecting buildings or other economic interventions into a deprived area can bypass the people who need it and become opportunities only for people who already know how to manage money.
So as well as money we need something else and we think culture is an important issue when addressing the needs of these communities. (Culture defined not as arts but in the way UNESCO does: "culture is a multidimensional system which cannot be restricted to art and includes also the way of thinking, behaviours, value systems and beliefs. Culture is the global environment in which people live and interact. It includes the natural words as well the world created by man. It is directed not only toward the present and the future but also the past.")
We have therefore been trialling and developing culture-led projects that explore the nature of change and the narratives that help people honour the past and take forward what is valuable, but still evolve and change. We have worked on this with WildWorks Souterrain project and the Clay Futures Projects and consultation and more latterly through place based education work with Will Coleman. We are also developing an intergenerational project called Four Generations with international links.
We think culture-led approaches are vital in reframing how people see themselves and their futures. The St Dennis-based Clay Project highlighted a number of key community values, for example the importance of a shared sense of purpose, a proud history of community service, events that bring people together to create something- tea treats, local theatre, brass bands, clay carnival, and local services run by the community for the community.
We have focused on an area that is undergoing radical change. We believe that the practice of community development needs to take account of the special challenges that arise in such circumstances. We also believe that dealing with radical change will become the norm in many more communities in the 21st Century. (A working definition of radical change is when the past is no guide to the future and so progress needs re-framing and re-imagining rather than modifying existing practice.)
People have complex relationships to change - even what seems like 'progress' can seem frightening and dangerous. We believe that our cultural narrative helps to determine our attitudes to change and whether it will be destructive or positive. Processes of transformation need to pay attention to these cultural dimensions. The cultural narrative itself needs to honour the past but be able to move forward into new realities and help people reframe how they see themselves and their futures and their relationships to the places they live in.
The Clay Project highlighted a number of key community values that would have been lost with more standardised approaches, for example the importance of a shared sense of purpose, highly specific local landscape features, a proud history of community service, events that bring people together to create something- tea treats, local theatre, brass bands, clay carnival, local services run by the community.
Consultation processes that help to build social and cultural capital, can help return more than analysis back to the community by sharing skills, training, expertise and local knowledge. These events should help to strengthen bonding social capital through shared experience while bridging social capital by offering inspiration and new ideas.
In the absence of community links through work, geography alone does not seem to be a strong enough common ground. It is also crucial to undertake events that encourage bridging social capital. These could again be cultural activities but there are also roles for shared learning activities such as exchanges and the creation of social spaces - third places.
We have also become aware of the need to help foster the positive mindset and imaginative approaches that are a key part of asset-based techniques.
We have been exploring these issues through our Sense of Place events and events that bring community groups into Eden Project outside of their normal settings and patterns. We have done this with youth groups, vulnerable people and community groups and we are developing experience of the positive effects it can have, although we still have much to construct an evidence base. On this latter point we are trying to obtain funding with the Health Complexity Group from the Big Lottery.
On the back of this we are developing a theoretical model of how radical change can best be faced - not by attempts at prediction, but by strengthening the qualities that communities need to be adaptable, and by identifying the enabling conditions that make it more likely that positive outcomes and positive reframing will result.
This is the programme we want to take forward.
We would like to see a general recognition of asset approaches, and more means of support given to fiery spirits. But by this we mean support to help them become less dependent on government funding and 'permission', both of which can easily be withdrawn.
We would like to see regional development funds giving greater recognition to the value of social and cultural activities rather than just 'economic' ones. But this means grass roots every day culture, not high culture protected by arts gatekeepers.
We would like to see policies that recognise the challenge of change and risk and what sort of systems we need to survive the 21st Century. For example 'just in time' distribution systems are seen as 'efficient', but they assume no disruption. Is having no stores or local supply systems really safe in times of change? Is the global agriculture system the best answer even if it is the most efficient?
We would like to see more systems, departments and organisations that embody an enabling approach and build partnerships that encourage people to develop their own ideas and solutions as core value. Too many agencies and organisations are funded in a way that means they maintain communities in a state of dependency.
A devolution of resources and assets to communities to enable them to achieve and develop the things they have identified they need. Funds like neighbourhood renewal are still organised around centrally driven targets that often don’t match local priorities.
A transfer of assets to the local community. Seed funding to get community trusts and interest companies off the ground. More events and learning opportunities that inspire and build confidence in communities to be able to use the assets they have to develop a sustainable future.
A recognition that the most important elements driving positive change are people-based: ideas, attitudes, culture, narratives. It is a hopeful message in some ways because investing in people is cheaper than huge infrastructure projects - but it seems to be harder for policy makers to do and to justify. So we think they need to foster structures and mechanisms that can do this for them - social enterprises, community trusts and so on, things that bring reliable resources into play and don't let people down.
This fits with what many of the RARP partners are arguing for - and with some government policy - but we need more commitment and support and more understanding of why these initiatives fail and how to stop them falling over.
The experiences of radical change are not unique to rural areas. But remote and peripheral regions are especially vulnerable, and also good places to try and understand the relationship between culture, identity and change - issues that are less easy to tease out in the urban 'melting pot'.
We hear a lot about how urban centres are the core locations of innovation and invention, because of the people and resources they bring together, but living in remote places - life on the edge - also forces a kind of innovation based on self-reliance and asset-based approaches. The urban 'idea set' is perhaps too ready to assume that whatever we need can be shipped in from distant places - and we need the rural 'self reliance' models as an important complement.
We have established a framework for our approach to rural community development and a network of practitioners that are focusing on demonstrating and driving change.
We have begun to identify what we see as the enabling conditions that support positive change, and our idea is that one of the roles of a Host is to try to bring those conditions into play.
We will therefore be taking many of these ideas forward into the Community of Practice and Hosts activities working with Carnegie and partners over the next five years.
We will have helped build support and recognition for vulnerable fiery spirits taking risks to help people bring about positive change for themselves.
We have also been able to identify and align other complementary projects that will help to develop this work.
By Juliet Rose and Tony Kendle
Eden Project