realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

Duck Farming, Enterprise, Big Society and Neighbourhood Challenge

by

This morning saw the launch at NESTA of the Neighbourhood Challenge.  A chance to pitch to become one of 10 organisations to be given 18 months and £150k to galvanise communities to respond to local priorities.

Much talk of hyperlocal websites, community organisers, big society, radical shifts in power and areas of low social capital.  All good stuff.  But not the kind of things I hear when I am talking with people in communities in Leeds about their priorities.  These things are not their concerns.  They are the concerns of policy makers and funders.

It reminded me of  the launch of the Local Enterprise Growth Initiative.  A very sage colleague of mine said to me at the time,

Mike, I have concerns about this programme.  These people don’t understand enterprise.  I think if the minister had stood up and said that ‘The future of our communities lies in duck farming, and so today I am launching a major new programme to promote duck farming in our most deprived communities’ we would have had much the same audience nodding and clapping.  These people know how to write bids.  They know how to manage projects. But do they really know about enterprise?

I hope that this mornings audience was more versed in community organising, social capital and community.

And less versed in snaffling up money on behalf of the communities that they serve.

I am sure many communities will put forward bids.  And I expect that people from outside of their communities will sit in judgement and decide.

And there is the rub.

Employers and Jobs or Self Reliance and Good Work?

by

Schumacher pointed out that from the perspective of the employer, work is a bad thing.  It represents a cost.  It is to be minimised.  If possible eradicated – handed over to a robot.  This truth always makes me smile when the government talks of the private sector ‘creating jobs’.

From the perspective of the worker too it is  often a bad thing. What Schumacher called a ‘disutility‘. A temporary but significant sacrifice of ‘leisure and comfort’ for which compensation is earned.

Schumacher pointed toward a Buddhist perspective where work serves three purposes:

  • to provide an opportunity to use and develop potential
  • to join with others in the achievement of a shared task – to provide opportunities for meaningful association
  • to produce the goods and services that are necessary for what he called a ‘becoming existence’

He then went on to say

to organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence

What can we do to make sure that more of our work is ‘good work’ and not merely a disutility for which we are compensated?

What products and services do we really need for a ‘becoming existence’.

This for me is the true role of the ‘Social Enterprise’ sector in our economy.  The development of good work.  The enhancement of association and compassion.  To provide a real alternative to the mainstream ‘work as profitable disutility’ philosophy of much (but not all) of the private sector.

And there is no good reason why we should not take sufficient value from our business to lead a ‘becoming existence’ is there?

I’m trying to learn just to die with pride,

Like the birds and the trees and the earth in time

But I’ve got this complex and it makes me fear,

That I’ll die knowing nothing and feeling less.

Hope and Social

Now, anyone for some truly social enterprise?

Making Leeds the Best City in The UK…

by

…

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…

by

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!

What If Leeds was a ‘tax-take opportunity’ for Whitehall?

by

John Baron over at the Guardian Leeds site recently published a quite remarkable dialogue between our new Council Chief Executive, Tom Riordan and elected councillors.  It is a tremendous piece.  It is the kind of openness and transparency that I think offers real hope for progress.  Tom, John and the Councillors involved are I think to be commended.
But it was just 2 sentences from the piece, which I recommend you read in full, that really caught my eye.
We have to convince the people in Whitehall that Leeds is a tax-take opportunity for them if all the jobs we aim to create up here come off.
If we’re going to grow the economy we need the Environment Agency’s new flood defences, we need the Leeds trolleybus scheme, we need our LEP to be the best in the country. – Tom Riordan, Leeds City Council CEO, as reported in the Guardian Leeds
2 short sentences that tell a powerful story.  An every day story of top down strategy.
We have to persuade Whitehall that we are a ‘tax-take’ opportunity to secure the investment needed to create jobs.  Because jobs depend on us getting large infrastructure projects such as trolley busses and flood defences.  And these depend on investment by Whitehall.
It also depends on us having a really smart Local Enterprise Partnership, a group of ‘the anointed‘ who will take decisions and make investments (if they have any money) that will lead to increased gross domestic product in the city.  It will be up to them to realise the city as a ‘tax-take’ opportunity for Whitehall; as an efficient driver of profits for people with the capital to invest.
A compelling story perhaps, but not the only story.  It is a story based on our deficits.  The things that we have not got.
Might there be some other stories we could explore?
What if we imagined that ‘growing the economy’ (or indeed a bolder and braver vision of developing sustainable communities; economically, culturally and socially) depended not on trolley buses, LEPS and flood defences, but on us engaging the intelligence, passion, creativity, aspirations and dreams of the people who live in the city and supporting and networking them to create real power to the create sustainable communities in which more people felt both valued and supported?
We could call this story ‘grassroots, bottom-up and responsive’.  Or ‘person centred’.  Holistic perhaps as it would integrate economy. society and culture.  This is a story that is based on our current assets, the things we already have and how we make the very best of them.  And, no less true for being a cliché, ‘people are our greatest asset’.
Both stories are valid.  Both have truth in them.  Both are necessary.  And I believe that Tom is interested in developing both, even though in this piece only the more dominant current narrative about physical infrastructure gets an airing.
Only one of these narrative receives massive investments of time and money, requires massive budgets and leaves most of us pretty much uninvolved and powerless spectators.
One receives almost no investment by comparison, requires very modest investment and would engage and develop all who wanted to be engaged in creating the future that they want for themselves and their community.
One of them has powerful interests behind it, with deep pockets and powerful connections who can manage and lead discussions in the city.  One of them has no such powerful ‘leadership’.
One of them will primarily serve the wealthy and powerful, relying on trickle down, philanthropy, social mobility, and taxation to re-distribute wealth.  One of them will promote social justice and inclusion.
Now both narratives are necessary.  Of course we need the right infrastructure.  Of course we need good strategy.  Of course we need powerful advocates who can fight our corner in Whitehall and beyond.  But this is only part of the story.  Both ‘strategic’ and ‘responsive’ narratives must be developed and resourced if the city is to move forward in a way that is sustainable, economically, culturally and socially.
‘Responsive’ and ‘strategic’ are the yin and yang of balanced progress.
And if you need any convincing that perhaps the balance is not yet properly struck in Leeds just explore this conference coming up to discuss the future of Leeds City Centre.  Look at who sponsors it?
Attendance at the conference is free.  So I would urge you to attend and make sure that your voice gets heard.  It is the only way that we can find out if anyone is REALLY listening.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
– Theodore Parker/Martin Luther King