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Problems and Aspirations in South Yorkshire and Beyond

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I picked up this tweet from the inimitable and award winning Tom Bloxham MBE, Uber Prize Winning Guru of UK regeneration

Urban Splash’s refurb is turning one of the republic of Sth Yorkshire’s biggest problems into an aspirational address

Now ain’t that regeneration as it plays out here in the UK?

  1. Find a ‘problem community’ in an area with easy access to the city centre
  2. Refurb it to take it from a place where only the poor would live to an ‘aspirational address’.
  3. Replace a problem community with one that already has ‘aspirations’ .

The same recipe plays out all over the place.

Drive the poor people out, tart the place up.  Increase the property values and encourage the creative classes to move in.  Secure an immediate GVA increase, eliminate a whole bunch of costs, attract a community of shiny happy people and another award wining development is completed.

Everyone is a winner.  Developers, politicians, treasury.

Everyone except the displaced, who can no longer afford to live close to the city that is their home.  Who are driven out.  Who are economically excluded from the city.  Whose communities are broken up.

Regeneration is not economic cleansing.  It should be a process of inclusive community building.

Surely its time we awarded prizes for some other kind of ‘development’?

A little less conversation, a little more action please…Leeds…

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Conversations of different types are opening up all over Leeds at the moment.

Organisations like Together for Peace host them as a way of helping people make connections around shared values and turn ideas into positive action.  The Culture Vultures have been flocking to conversations to talk about issues that matter to them with like-minded folk (generally this group is made up of younger early(ish) adopters of social media with a background in the creative arts and digital media).  The Leeds Initiative have been holding conversation as a way of drawing out priorities for the Vision for Leeds holding conversations both face to face and virtually.  Indeed my own twin projects of Progress School and Innovation Lab are little more than structured conversations focussed on helping individuals and groups who wish to make things better.

But what purpose does conversation serve if it does not result in a decent action plan?

Perhaps we need a little less conversation, a little more action please?  I sense frustration breaking out in all sorts of places that all this chatter is getting us no-where.  It does not build tram systems, arenas or social justice.  It just recycles hot air. Endlessly.

Well all I can say is that if the conversation is just re-cycling hot air then you are doing it wrong.  In good conversation something shifts.  Things are learned.  Possibilities are created by the group that no one member could have seen on their own.  The conversation itself transforms the way we see the world and the range of possibilities it offers.

So the conversations are building commitment, clarity, relationships and frustration.  Sounds like the perfect heady brew from which some really interesting innovation and change can emerge.  You see, contrary to the great Action Plan Myth some worthwhile projects are spontaneous, they emerge, take shape and make their mark.  They are not handcrafted in Microsoft Project, developing 5 year Gantt charts with milestones and objectives to be ticked at every stage. Hard work, commitment, flexibility, relationships and, above all perhaps, passionate belief make exciting things happen.

And everything, yes, EVERYTHING starts with a conversation…

So, if you find yourself frustrated, wanting a little less conversation and a little more action please just ask yourself what you can do to move things on a bit.

Perhaps a change of tactics is just what’s needed.

And one thing I am pretty clear about.  The more you try to steer the conversation towards action plans and outcomes the more anaemic those conversations become as people start to lobby and advocate rather than listen, explore and learn.

So, a little more conversation, frustration, relationship and commitment please.

The action has already started…and it is all around us…just this week end I witnessed the birth of @nofishybusiness and a wonderful trip to the seaside where 70 people from all over the UK (but mainly Leeds) were bought together by Leeds band Hope & Social to share music, food, conversation and dreams.  Test Space Kitchen made its debut at Temple Works, one of the world’s leading community organisers is coming to train in the city…

Things are happening all around us.  And if you can’t find something that works for you then just start something yourself.  The chances are that you are not alone….

NB not sure what YOU can be doing to make things better?  Try Progress School…

A Radical Idea for a LEP…

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First of all reject the temptation to be entirely strategic.

Don’t try to analyse the economy like it is a game of monopoly where you can understand the roll of the dice, seeing and preparing for an uncertain future.  Don’t pretend that people and their aspirations count for nothing as you ponder the balance between investing in ports, ring-roads, runways or fibre.

Instead learn to compliment strategic development with a responsive approach.  One that engages residents in their hopes and aspirations for a better life and gives them the power and the responsibility to pursue them.  Put your faith and confidence in people.  Provide them with hope, leadership and support.

Dare to be relevant to people and not just ‘the business community’.

A city region of around 3m people like Leeds would require a network of around 75 coaches to provide access to person centred coaching support for everyone that really wanted it.

  • It would engage about 45 000 people in the process of providing direct hands on assistance to their peers.
  • It would provide direct assistance to about 16500 beneficiaries a year, the vast majority of whom would make significant progress in their personal journeys as a result of benefiting from a coaching rather than a coercive approach.
  • I would anticipate at least 750 sustainable business starts from this cohort every year.  I would envisage business survival rates around the 90% rate after 3 years.
  • It would make a very real difference to the perceptions of some 20 000 people a year about the extent to which they feel that they ‘belong to’ and ‘feel supported’ in their community.
  • In addition to traditional ‘enterprise’ outputs I would expect substantial impacts on health and well-being as well as increases in volunteering, cultural productivity, mental health, fitness and so forth.
  • It would help to integrate the dual priorities of economy and community rather than treating them as separate and often incompatible determinants.
  • Within 3-7 years I would expect it to have made a sustained and measurable difference to the enterprise culture in the city region.

And it would cost about £3.75 million a year.

The price of a very rich wo/man’s house.

NB this piece was prompted by reading ‘The Economic Opportunities and Challenges for the emerging Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in Yorkshire and Humber – Briefing Paper‘.

As far as it goes this is an ok piece of work. Unremittingly strategic, focussing on communications, infrastructure development and targeting support at key industries – all tried, tested and largely at best partially successful ideas for economic development.  One of the ideas challenges it identified is to develop sufficient ‘low skill jobs’ for our low skill economies.   It talks about the structures required to ensure integration of LEP structures across the region.  One can almost here the creaking of bureaucracy…

Learn the Skills of Community Organising in Leeds

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…or if it is good enough for Barack Obama it is good enough for me!

Community organising seems to be all the rage at the moment.

Leeds Community Organising and Bradford Changemakers are jointly hosting  a Community Organiser training weekend in September.

The training is taking place over two days on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th September 2010 at Leeds Church Institute in Leeds city centre (20 New Market Street, LS1 6DG), and will run from 9.30am to 4.30pm each day.

This is an opportunity to deepen your knowledge of the principles and practice of community organising, extend your own leadership skills, and grow relationships with others involved in the development of Community Organising in Leeds and Bradford.

The full weekend costs £30 per person and includes lunch and refreshments. Further information and booking details are included on the attached flyer – please do tell others in your organisations and communities who may be interested!

I certainly hope to be there!

Download this flyer (pdf) for further details Sept 2010 flyer-1

Who Are the Innovators?

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Recently I have been reflecting with Imran Ali about the nature of innovation in the city (of Leeds in this case) and how it might be developed.  The assumption being that more and better innovation will be an unalloyed good in a fast changing, dynamic, complex yet very finite environment.

Most of the discussion has focussed on some obvious innovation levers that we believe could yield some relatively quick and easy wins, such as:

  • encouraging more innovation across traditional boundaries of department or role
  • seeking applications of technology for social innovation
  • thinking as idealists rather than realists – exploring the art of the possible not just the pragmatic
  • providing ‘investment ready’ development programmes
  • engaging non traditional sources of funding in the innovation process and so on.

But the implicit assumption all of these approaches to innovation is of an innovative elite.  A creative class with the brains, the money (or access to it) and the networks to figure out how to make things significantly better for the rest of us.  Scientists, technologists, financiers, policy makers, politicians, environmentalists, campaigners, entrepreneurs (social and not so social) and academics are all encouraged, incentivised and trained to ‘unleash’ their creativity and innovation.

But how many in the city form part of that elite?  The hallowed few from whom progress is expected to emanate or who feel it is their duty to change the workings of the world. A few thousand perhaps in a city of 800 000.  I suspect it is less than 1% of those living in the city.

I believe that innovation, creativity and change in pursuit of progress, are essential human qualities that will find means of expression.  Regardless.

  • How does the potential of ‘innovation’ play out for the rest?
  • How do the processes of creativity and change in search of progress manifest for them?

Well, I suspect there is another slug of the population who are deeply engaged in creativity and change in relation to developing their  practice, in the more or less explicit hope, that they may be able to join the elite.  Training, learning, networking and thinking of ways to get their hands on the innovation levers.  Would-be entrepreneurs, politicians, students, scientists and bureaucrats who are working their way upwards and onwards.  Some, of course will join the elite. But most, by definition, will not.  And they will join another group of potential innovators.

These are the ones who do not wish to change the world/city/community.  Perhaps they have given up on the challenge. Perhaps they never engaged with it.  But the essential creative drive remains and will be expressed.  It may play out through personal lifestyle choices.  Living the environmental life perhaps, gardening,  reducing the golf handicap, pursuing cultural enlightenment, renovating houses/cars etc.  Progress is defined in more or less personal terms.  It is perhaps the pursuit of happiness rather social change.   Work becomes a job rather than a way to make a mark on the world.  Creative courage is reserved primarily for ‘out of hours’ activities.

And then there is another group who never really established a foothold in ‘the system’.  Those for whom a steady salary providing some level of ‘disposable’ income was never really ‘on the cards’.  Vocational and professional routes for creative expression never opened up for them.   From this group I suspect the systems demands not innovation and creativity but just passive compliance.  Do as your told, smarten up tour appearance, brush up your CV and look for a job.  Or at least pretend you are looking for a job.  But the drive to innovation will out.  Creativity will be expressed.

So when we are looking to support innovation in the city where is the great untapped potential?

  • Does it lie in providing more and better support and training to the elite?
  • Or should we try to mobilise middle England, Big Society style, to rally tot he cause?
  • Or should we perhaps change the terms of engagement with those at the margins of the system?  To shift from a coercive approach to a coaching one?

Anyone for ‘Innovation Coaches’ in Leeds?