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What If Leeds…the video

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At the What If consultation event on the future of Leeds they showed a video created by volinteers at Oblong.

If you were not there to see it, or would like to see it again, here it is:

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/19267856]

Your thoughts, comments and observations would be very welcome.

Duck Farming, Enterprise, Big Society and Neighbourhood Challenge

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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.

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.