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Person Centred Development at Schumacher North

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Person Centred Approaches to Social and Economic Development

23rd October 2010 – 2.00pm Leeds

Building on Schumacher’s ‘Economics as If People Mattered’, I will run an interactive workshop to look at person centred and responsive approaches to community building and development.

The workshop will explore how we can influence investment away from ‘concrete, steel and glass’ and into ‘the potential and aspirations of people’.

The impact of this approach on the ideals and ideas of ‘Transition’ will also be explored.

Find out more about the Schumacher Conference and book your place.

Creating Jobs in Leeds….

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What a very touching and re-assuring letter those 35 key directors of FTSE 100 companies published in the Telegraph this week.

In their view the cuts are necessary and have to be made quickly.  And the resulting  job losses of some 500 000 from the public sector in the next four years will be offset by new jobs created in the private sector.

But what has their track record been in job creation in recent years?

Well, according to Andrew Hill in the Financial Times they have between them shed 20 000 UK jobs since 2007.

I believe that  large employers have not been creating jobs in the UK for a good while.  Nor should we expect them to in the future.  It is not what they exist to do.  They exist to create profits, not jobs.  For them, jobs represent costs and wherever possible should be cut in pursuit of productivity and profit.  If they can use technology or offshore labour to reduce employment costs, then that is what they will try to do.  Not because they are bad people, but because they are first and foremost good business people.

There seems to be some suggestion that ‘Big Business’ is prepared to invest some of the war chests that they have accumulated over recent highly profitable years in creating new jobs.  Personally I can’t see it happening.  Not on any grand scale.   Not unless those new jobs make good sense in the pursuit of profits.  And in that case they are hardly doing a social service are they?

In Leeds I have been told that the top 100 employers employ between then 100 000 people.  Should we expect that number to go up or down?  I know where I would place my bets.

So where might jobs be created in Leeds if we should not expect big business to do it for us?

Well, maybe we need to shift the thinking away from ‘jobs and employers’ to  ‘enterprise’ and ‘good work’.  Instead of the main narrative being about ’employers creating jobs’ it could be about us learning to find our own work; understanding for ourselves how to keep our economic engines running while doing ‘good work’ that makes our communities a better place for us and our children?

And this is not about getting on our bikes and chasing jobs down the M1 or across the M62.  It is about asking ourselves what we can do to create value in our own community and make it a place of hope and potential for all of its members.

Making Leeds the Best City in The UK…

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…

That is the challenge laid down to us by the new Leeds City Council Chief Executive, Tom Riordan.

What would it mean for any city to be the best?

What criteria would be used to decide and bestow such an accolade?

And who would it be ‘best’ for?  Employers?  Residents? Students? Homeless? Artists? Financiers? Children? Elders?

But suppose we framed the question of ‘best’ differently, and asked how we could make everyone in the city feel like Leeds was the ‘best’ place for them to be to make the most of their life and to fully explore and develop their potential?

To live their life the way they want to, making their own decisions and living with the consequences.  Feeling valued, respected and like they belong here.  Feeling supported in a community that they enjoy and contributing to it fully.

Now that would be a question worth asking.   An accolade worth pursuing.  A league table worth topping.

It would almost certainly not depend on physical infrastructure, but on psychological infrastructure.  A network of relationships, support and encouragement that valued people, regardless of wealth or education, ethnicity, gender, sexuality or age.  A psychological infrastructure in which help could be asked for and offered.  A city in which collaboration, association and innovation in the pursuit of progress was everyone’s business

It would be a city of enterprise and compassion.

I Need a Hero…

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The Leeds City Centre Vision Conference yesterday was quite a shebang.  Several hundred people with an ‘interest’ in the future of the city centre convened by the council and a raft of property developers and land owners down at Clarence Dock.

And one of the main narratives?  We need a hero.  A mayor perhaps.  Or a ‘captain of industry’.  Someone who can bang heads together, make things happen, drive through a vision and ‘bring communities with them’.  We need to concentrate power in a paternalistic figurehead who will lead us to the promised land where ‘Retail is the New Leisure’ and even poor communities are ‘needle free’.

Someone who we can depend on.

This has been the recent history of the relationship between ‘the leadership’ and ‘the led’ in Leeds for as long as I can remember.  Communities are things to be ‘brought with us’ (“we are of course doing this for them too – just think of the wonderful job opportunities that the Arena will bring to Little London – all those ‘high grade concierge skills we are going to needs to realise our profits…”).

‘Innovate and collaborate’ they say.  ‘Proper partnerships!’ they cry.

So here is an innovative idea.

As well as being bedfellows with the developers, become reliable and consistent allies of communities and the people who live in this city.  Stop seeing them as things to be managed or fixed.  Listen to them, engage with them and above all support them, invest in them, and strengthen their capacity to build their futures in the way that they want.   Engage with them on their agendas.  And then just perhaps they might show some interest in engaging with you on yours.

We may need another River Island/Top Shop and a cinema chain from ‘that London’ to maintain our mid-table position in the list of medium sized mediocrities of European Cities (did I actually see that chart at some point yesterday?), but investing £1.25bn in shopping centres and arenas is not going to make this city a more beautiful place for all who choose to make their lives here.  Indeed I suspect it will only serve to increase inequality in the city.

I am not against the world of structural, top down, strategic regeneration.

Of course we need good top down planning and excellent infrastructure.  We already have a pretty good infrastructure for developing the city.  Just look at what has been achieved in the last 30 years.   The physical infrastructure of the city has been transformed.  My challenge is that this is necessary but not sufficient.  We also need many more of the 750 000 people that live here to be actively engaged in making and shaping their own futures.  Learning to collaborate and associate in the pursuit of their own progress.  Not relying on a hero to make things better but doing it for themselves.

Because we have been waiting  for a hero for a long time now.  And if one does comes along (no doubt fresh from ‘some other fight’) I am far from convinced that it will result in a fairytale ending.

And within minutes of the opening of the conference I found myself writing out this lyric, that so often comes to mind when I hear the powerful talking about their plans to help the powerless….

Mother Glasgow

In the second city of the Empire
Mother Glasgow nurses all her weans
Trying hard to feed her little starlings
Unconsciously she clips their little wings

Among the flightless birds and sightless starlings
Father Glasgow knows his starlings well
He won’t make his own way up to heaven
By waltzing all his charges in to hell

Let Glasgow Flourish!