2½ Cheers: A response to Transforming Place: Proposals for a Neighbourhood Strategy for Birmingham

The Green Paper, Transforming Place: Proposals for a Neighbourhood Strategy for Birmingham, clearly represents a great deal of hard work, and hard thinking – and the decision to submit something that, even in its own words, has already ‘been developed and agreed’ by a number of major stakeholders, to a wider public conversation is courageous, albeit utterly necessary. What emerges from this process of, hopefully rigorous, conversation should, ideally, contain some tried and tested wisdom that will help shape the future of Birmingham City Council.

I start from two key premises. Firstly, that this Green Paper is not just about practical outworkings. It is about a vision, an approach, a culture. As such, I am treating this Green Paper (I come at this as a messy mix of community practitioner, community development research student, and practical theologian) as a ‘theological’ text: its grandest aim is to describe a vision, a worldview, which should shape the way we think, and talk, and act, into the future. My second premise flows from this: that Birmingham City Council’s approach to, or better with, its neighbourhoods is quite simply the most important thing that BCC could possibly be about at this unprecedented point in its history and development. If it gets this bit right, everything else that BCC is about will fall into some kind of place. If it gets it wrong, it is setting itself up to fail in massive ways, all over the place, in the coming years.

So no pressure then!

2½ cheers!

There is a lot to affirm and celebrate in the Green Paper. Among them:

• The centrality of the ‘Social Inclusion process’ goals, particularly around the language of ‘empowerment’, ‘participation’, ‘connection’, ‘equality’, and ‘social cohesion’
• Seeking to offer an ‘enabling framework’, which places the importance of neighbourhoods at its heart
• Learning lessons from past neighbourhood working, but understanding that we’re in a radically new context
• Leaning towards the language of ‘asset-based’ approaches, and expressing a central aim of building social capital within neighbourhoods

At the same time, the Green Paper is full of tensions, some acknowledged explicitly and some not. I suggest that it is in the naming, and working through, of those tensions, that the most important insights may well be gleaned. Among the most significant, I would identify the following:

• Between ‘shaping our neighbourhood’ and ‘shaping our public services’
• Between ‘needs’ which result in ‘priorities’, and ‘assets’ which point towards ‘opportunities’ – with an implied (but untrue) ‘either/or’ between ‘needy/deprived’ neighbourhoods & ‘asset-rich’ neighbourhoods – and a lack of clarity about which is prioritised and invested in (with money, time and/or attention)
• Between ‘building social capital’ and ‘service / programme delivery’
• Between (active) local ‘initiative’ and (passive) ‘engagement’ (normally by the Council)
• Between ‘bottom up’ and ‘top down’ – with the assumption that BCC can only really do the latter
• Between BCC’s role as ‘responding to greatest need’ (a kind of ‘filling the holes’) and a ‘brokering / connecting’ role (within & between neighbourhoods)
• Between seeking what is ‘effective, efficient and economical’ and seeking ‘resilient communities’
• Between a vision of ‘a city of united neighbourhoods’ cf. a city of connected neighbourhoods
• Between singing the praises of the ‘proven value’ of ‘neighbourhood managers’, and ruling out any future possibility of funding a similar role

Key questions

Where the Green Paper falls short, I would suggest, is where these tensions collapse, as they so often do, in the direction of the structural, the procedural, and the centralised, rather than in the direction of the vital, messy, detailed life of neighbourhoods themselves. The following reflections are offered (and could, if necessary, be backed up by some pretty solid evidence, both contextual and academic) both to highlight and fill in some of the gaps in the Green Paper’s understanding, and to seek to redress the balance towards the neighbourhoods which are the Green Paper’s intended focus.

1. Understanding social capital

While I am delighted that the Green Paper seeks to bring to the fore the concept of ‘social capital’ and how it can be built and strengthened, its brief analysis betrays at least two critical issues. Firstly, its description of ‘bonding’ social capital misses the vast difference between ‘residents of a [potentially superdiverse] neighbourhood’ and members of ‘an ethnically specific organisation’. The kind of work needed to ‘bond’ in these two instances are almost incomparable. Community-building in a neighbourhood, and growing a Nigerian Community Association, for example, demand very different resources and capacities. Taking this point alongside, secondly, the understanding of ‘bridging’ social capital as being primarily between ‘groups’, leaves no space for a ‘local network’ approach to neighbourhoods, where diverse individuals are connected together through a wide array of distinct but overlapping activities. The ‘working principle’ (p.8) which seeks to promote both ‘networking’ and ‘a unified neighbourhood conversation’ is an example of this tension in action: there will always be multiple, overlapping, and inevitably contradictory, ‘neighbourhood conversations’ going on in any one neighbourhood. Finding a single ‘neighbourhood organisation’ with which to ‘engage’, for example, is not going to somehow resolve that complexity. A more patient, subtle approach to local ‘networking’ would be much more beneficial. Thirdly, the descriptions of social capital here also seem to leave little room for ‘bridging’ between neighbourhoods, what we might call a ‘connected city’ approach – implicit in places in the Green Paper, but with much more potential to be developed than is given here.

2. Understanding ‘community assets’

A second area where positive language is used, but the full implications are not grasped is when referring to ‘community assets’. The Green Paper wants to base its ‘new approach’ on the ‘many community assets built over the past years [that] are still in place’. These include, it suggests, ‘buildings and other facilities owned or controlled by community organisations’, but also ‘“softer” assets’ such as ‘active community organisations and development trusts’ which ‘provide quality services’ and ‘attract investments’, ‘community engagement mechanisms such as neighbourhood forums’, and ‘the staff of many public services, community organisations and local businesses’ (p.3).

While these are all undoubted potential assets within neighbourhoods, the Green Paper’s structural emphasis on ‘service provision’ and ‘community engagement’ means it misses – or at best seriously mislabels – some of the community assets that are in fact the most vital. No attention is paid to community organisations and forms of associational life which don’t focus on ‘delivering services / programmes’ or function as ‘engagement mechanisms’ but do, in all kinds of ways, build local social capital and resilience within neighbourhoods. And again, the informal networks of neighbours – which are proven to be the most significant factors in co-producing health and wellbeing, a sense of safety and security, and the relationships in which people are included and cared for – are not explicitly acknowledged at all, when it is surely nurturing these that should be at the heart of any neighbourhood-focused strategy for social inclusion.

3. Understanding a genuinely ‘asset-based’ approach to community building

‘While it will be important to continue analysing needs, focusing on the most deprived areas, with residents prioritising which of these needs should be acted on and how, it is important that there is a shift to a community asset based approach.’ (p.9) As I have already suggested, this is one of the key tensions running through the Green Paper, almost acknowledged as such, but never addressed thoroughly. In relation to the Social Inclusion process itself, it has been clear in previous papers and summits that the full implications of a genuinely asset-based approach are still a long way from being widely grasped. The problem is not just that the traditional ‘deficit approach’ involves neighbourhoods competing against each other to ‘“prove” that their neighbourhoods is more deprived’ – it is that the culture of ‘service delivery’ itself can so often disempower local communities from doing things for themselves, a vicious cycle that is only intensified when a community is identified as particularly ‘deprived’, and so in need of ‘priority’ attention and more intensive programmes.

It is telling that, throughout the Green Paper, what is described as ‘independent action by local communities’ always seems to come last on the list of forms of agency, which tend to start with the delivery of ‘public services’, ‘programmes’ and ‘city-wide initiatives’. Neighbourhoods are valued because they are often the site of ‘community organisation and volunteering’, but even there, the tendency is to lean towards the value of passive ‘community engagement’ rather than active, local initiative. There is an important acknowledgment (p.4), that ‘communities will need to be less reliant on public services and do more for themselves... They will need to be even more enterprising... they will need to be resilient with citizens supporting each other to overcome challenges, hardship and divisions.’ But this is presented in parallel with, and secondary to, the need for ‘public services ... to be more targeted on identified priorities of local communities’ and ‘to work more effectively together’. It is almost as if self-reliance and resilience are presented as the particular (moral?) responsibility of local neighbourhoods – as ‘their side of the deal’ – with very little detail as to how this might be achieved, and supported.

What is outlined in more detail are the ‘neighbourhood working principles’ (p.8). They are tantalising close to articulating a genuinely asset-based approach – but not quite:

• ‘start where a neighbourhood is at...’ they suggest, but only ‘for neighbourhood planning’;
• ‘recognise the points of community...’ they say, but so BCC can conduct ‘engagement’;
• ‘local leadership is needed...’ but primarily ‘for a neighbourhood delivery plan to succeed’;
• and ‘provide opportunities for neighbourhood capacity building and enable independent activity to improve the quality of life in a neighbourhood’ – but as something of a low priority on the list, towards the end.

I want to suggest that maybe one of the key stumbling blocks to properly seeing through an asset-based approach is the repeated, unquestioned, assumption that the Council operates in a ‘top down’ mode, in contrast to local ‘bottom up’ approaches. It may well be true that one of the great successes of Neighbourhood Management was that it enabled ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ to meet – making its discontinuation even more of a loss – but what this Green Paper is missing more than anything is the courage to imagine the possibility of a Council that discovers ways of ‘bottom up’ working. Rather than beginning, as the Green Paper does (p.4) with the question ‘What can the Council still do...?’, with a nod, late in the day, to the ‘independent’ activity going on within local neighbourhoods, a genuinely asset-based neighbourhood strategy would start instead with something like these questions, and crucially in this order:

1. What are the things that this neighbourhood can do for itself?
2. What are the things that this neighbourhood can do, with help from other agencies (e.g. BCC)?
3. What are the (remaining) things that BCC needs to do itself?

I would suggest that these questions can only be asked at a neighbourhood level, in the neighbourhood, with a broad cross-section of residents of the neighbourhood – rather than at the at-least-once-removed District level, in a forum dominated by councillors and council officers – and probably, given what I suggested earlier, in not one ‘unified’ conversation, but in a number of local, overlapping conversations.

4. The role of the Council

I welcome the Green Paper’s acknowledgment that the Council can offer different kinds of local investment – that time and attention in some places might be more valuable than money, for example. But the Green Paper is unclear, to my reading, as to how that might be discerned. It outlines ‘four broad categories’ of neighbourhood, from ‘neighbourhoods with little or no joint working and with weak or non-existent community engagement structures’ to ‘beacon neighbourhoods’ with ‘established neighbourhood budgets’ and ‘delivering a range of projects to empower local people and address social inclusion issues’. Such ‘beacon neighbourhoods’, the Green Paper suggests, ‘know how to use local assets, resources and talent to make deep seated sustainable change’ and so can therefore act as ‘mentors’ or ‘role models’ for other neighbourhoods. I would suggest that it might be much more difficult to categorise neighbourhoods – and certainly place them into a clear hierarchy – than is imagined here, for several reasons:

• The focus on structures (for ‘joint working’ or ‘community engagement’) does not necessarily ask the questions of functional effectiveness or broad, inclusive participation. A neighbourhood with a vocal neighbourhood forum does not necessarily have a high level of local social capital.
• The suggestion that a neighbourhood might ‘know how to ... make deep seated sustainable change’ is a red herring. There are neighbourhoods where there are ‘hub organisations’, or individuals, or networks, who know something about these things, and do them well.
• At the same time, neighbourhoods where there is ‘good stuff happening’, and networks that work, might also have a lot of fragility to them – and by no means necessarily have achieved a ‘united neighbourhood conversation’. The places to learn from are not necessarily the most robust or resilient – even if they may be heading in that direction.

My final observation, then, is that the implication that learning between neighbourhoods is going to be primarily ‘1-to-1’, and passed ‘one way’, ‘top down’, from ‘beacon’ neighbourhoods to ‘fragile’ neighbourhoods, is distinctly questionable. The connectedness between neighbourhoods needs to be seen much more as horizontal, mutual, and widespread. We all have valuable learning to do from each other – and it might just be that working towards a more ‘connected’ city is just as important a goal as working towards a more ‘equal’ city.

So perhaps the most important role of the Council might be to invest – and yes, both time and attention, and carefully-focused money – in asset-based community-builders (see fig. below), who can ask the questions suggested earlier, in, of and with local communities, who can support the building of local social capital – as much in the form of networks as organisations – and who can enable neighbourhoods across the city to connect with each other in ways that can make mutually supportive, transformative learning to happen. I realise that one of the basic premises of the Green Paper is that ‘there’s no money’ for this – but that premise itself is based on neighbourhood work being a compartmentalised section of the wider Council’s work and budget. My argument here is that neighbourhood-focused, asset-based community-building needs to be absolutely central to Birmingham City Council’s agenda, or all its efforts and expenditures in ‘service provision’ will ultimately be futile and counterproductive.

Concluding comments

So, 2½ cheers for this first attempt at a Neighbourhood Strategy for Birmingham – and mostly for the vital central aim of ‘building social capital’ within and between the neighbourhoods of the city. But that central aim – put most simply, of building community – is clouded, perhaps even fatally obstructed, by an old-fashioned ‘service delivery’ perspective. Despite the frequent use of the language, Birmingham City Council still needs nothing short of a ‘conversion’, a dramatic culture shift, from the ‘deficit-focused, service-provision model, to an asset-based, community-building approach. It is, as I have suggested elsewhere before, an addiction that needs therapy. There are good therapists to hand – many of them live and work in Birmingham’s neighbourhoods – but the patient seems to be, as yet, far from cured.

Revd Al Barrett (Vicar, Hodge Hill Church; Firs & Bromford Neighbours Together; etc.)

References:

All quotes come from Transforming Place: Proposals for a Neighbourhood Strategy for Birmingham (Green Paper, July 2013).

Some of the key sources that have informed these reflections include:

• Chamberlain Forum’s Communities Managing Change report (June 2013)
• CarnegieUK’s Appreciating Assets (February 2011) (http://www.carnegieuktrust.org.uk/getattachment/aedb15fb-a64a-4d71-a2d6-e8e6e865319b/Appreciating-Assets.aspx), esp. p.21 on ‘the anatomy of an Appreciating Assets worker’ (fig. reproduced above)
• the asset-based community development work of Cormac Russell (nurturedevelopment.org)

My own previous reflections informing this response include:

• ‘On “Social Inclusion” and professional addicts' (http://thisestate.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/on-social-inclusion-and-professional.html)

• ‘Towards an incarnate Council: reflections on “Communities Managing Change”’ (http://thisestate.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/towards-incarnate-council-reflections.html)

Going barefoot!

My wonderful Curate, Revd Dr Sally Nash, was ordained priest a few weeks ago, and presided at her first eucharist in Hodge Hill Church the next morning. It was one of the many very hot days of the last few weeks, and under my obligatory white alb, I was wearing as little as possible - which (in the interests of a little decency!) stretched to T-shirt, shorts and sandals. But even the sandals were feeling a bit hot and sticky, so I slipped them off before the service, and assisted my new priest-colleague, bare-foot.

I hadn't really given it a great deal of thought. But it was noticed by at least a few of those present, and afterwards someone asked me if it was intentional. I explained the sheer practicality of it, but if I'd been just a little quicker at thinking on my feet, I could have said (as Curate's husband suggested) that I was honouring the ground that was just a little more holy having had Sally preside on it! But as this long, hot summer has gone on, and the sandals have gone on (and come off) more and more often, the bare-foot thing has begun to gather some of that significance.

Stephen Cherry's book, Barefoot Disciple: walking the way of passionate humility, springs to mind. He tells of the ancient pilgrimage to Holy Island, Lindisfarne, and of how pilgrims traditionally walk 'the Plodge', the last bit - across the tidal sands from the mainland to the island - barefoot. He reminds us that shoes are never worn in mosques or Hindu temples, and in Christian places of worship too in many countries. "Removing our shoes, and, if we have them, socks, inculcates a different attitude from walking into a sacred space without a pause, or briskly brushing shoes on coconut matting... Following the way of Christ with humility does not involve scraping the mud from our boots. It involves, maybe even requires, that we encounter the earth as barefoot disciples and pilgrims." Stephen Cherry writes of the way of 'passionate humility', "a Christlike attitude that is down-to-earth, full of life, vulnerable and transformative."

Cherry also quotes Barbara Brown Taylor, another human being of deeply 'earthed' spiritual wisdom. "Take off your shoes," she invites us, "and feel the earth under your feet, as if the ground on which you are standing really is holy ground. Let it please you. Let it hurt you a little. Feel how the world really feels when you do not strap little tanks on your feet to shield you from the way things really are." (Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World) "Our attention is drawn," says Cherry, "to this point of contact, the connection between ourself and the earth. We experience in a new or deeper way both our vulnerability and our connectedness."

On holiday in Cornwall a couple of weeks ago, we spent a lot of time barefoot on the beach, and we also visited the amazing Eden Project, and did a great little 'barefoot walk' there, set out carefully to give our feet a feel of grass, stones, woodchip, rubber, and thick, oozy mud! Our 5 year-old Rafi and 2 year-old Adia both loved it - with a little bit of encouragement at times!

Back home on our estate, there are rather fewer opportunities to go barefoot. Apart from the hard and often cracked pavements, there is a fair bit of broken glass around, and the occasional dog-poo surprise. Barefoot walking here demands a level of vulnerability that I am not prepared to risk.

But there are still those places, in my own neighbourhood, where I need to take up that invitation to go barefoot - perhaps literally, as well as metaphorically. I have found myself doing it often when I am listening to someone speak of the most vulnerable and fragile things in their life, treasured memories, or heart-breaking experiences, or both. A wise friend and 'learning companion', Cormac Russell, also pointed to the value of going barefoot in more conventional meetings: in those spaces so often structured by the formality of agendas and minutes, where it is all-too-easy to focus our attention on words buried in mountains of paper and words thrown and torn apart in 'discussion', where everything so often can be 'up in the air', Cormac was reminding me of the value of what has been called 'presencing' - intentionally placing our feet on the ground - on this patch of ground here - becoming conscious of ourselves as embodied, 'emplaced' human beings, 'earthed'... and in our 'earthedness' also connected, to those other embodied, 'emplaced', 'earthed' human beings who are in the room, sharing the same place, bringing vulnerabilities and passions not identical to mine, but just as worthy of reverence. I have not done it too often, as yet - it is so easy to forget, to slip back into our ingrained ways of 'meeting' (which is rarely really meeting each other). But when I have remembered, and been a bit more intentional about my 'presencing', I have been aware of the difference it makes - at least in how I am, and speak, and respond to others.

So may the long, hot summer continue - at least so that I can practise going barefoot a bit more often!

The Good Samaritan & the FoodBank: it's not about 'do', it's about 'who'

I was recently privileged, along with my sister and brother clergy from Birmingham Diocese, to listen to the Director of Christian Aid, Loretta Minghella, talk to us on 'Grace and Justice', on the very morning that the G8 leaders were drafting their communique on global tax justice. It was a privilege, particularly, to hear someone in such a vital public role 'think in public' through the complexity of responding to a political agreement which would always, inevitably, be a compromise between global justice and vested interests, an 'attempt' which would always also be a 'falling short'. How to respond with 'grace', but also with an undiminished longing for justice?

But Loretta's talk begin in much more intimate territory - with the death of her brother. Anthony Minghella is known to many as an accomplished film director - 'The English Patient' among his most well-known works. But for Loretta, Anthony was first and foremost her brother. His death, 'premature' if that word means anything, left her, as the death of a loved one leaves any of us, with a deep sense of the loss of a unique, irreplaceable human being. But in that realisation, for Loretta, emerged the more universal insight that each person, whoever and wherever they are in the world, is similarly unique, irreplaceable. And it was in that insight, borne out of intimate love and loss, that her passionate commitment to global justice came to life.

This morning, we heard one of the most over-familiar stories of the Christian Scriptures: the Good Samaritan. Its familiarity has bred in us something even worse than contempt: indifference. But we should try to return to it with fresh eyes, to rediscover its shock value, to let it challenge us afresh. The lawyer comes to Jesus to 'test' him: "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" he asks. He knows the law, and he knows it well: "Love the Lord your God with everything that you are, and Love your neighbour as yourself." Simple to say, demanding, impossible even, to achieve. So he asks a supplementary question: "Ah yes," we hear him saying, "but who is my neighbour?" He is after clarification, definition, boundaries, limits.

And Jesus tells him that story. The one about the priest and the Levite, the good, holy Jews - who pass by on the other side of the road from the man dying in the ditch. And the Samaritan who stops and helps. The 'good Samaritan', we call him - a synonym for kindness, neighbourliness, responsible, active citizenship - the epitome, perhaps, of the 'Big Society'.

The perennial danger with the story is that we take from it only Jesus' final words: "Go, and do likewise." The trouble is, of course, that that's really not the most important thing. The story's not about 'do' - it's about 'who?' It's about a Samaritan: the outsider, the foreigner, the deviant, the enemy, the one 'we' (putting ourselves in the shoes of the good Jews hearing the story for the first time) are most suspicious of, most despise, most go out of our way to avoid. This is 'my neighbour' for that good Jewish lawyer: the one he can't even bring himself to name.

There is renewed excitement, in some quarters, at the moment, about the possibilities for "the Church" (which is often unquestioningly translated as "the Church of England", and that in itself is an issue) to take on the 'provision' of some vital 'services' from the State, as the State withdraws under the cover of 'austerity', or 'localism', or some other guise of neoliberal ideology. One of the latest sparks of excitement came with the launch, at Lambeth Palace last week, of a new report from ResPublica, 'Holistic Mission: Social Action and the Church of England'. The good old CofE, the report argues, with its army of (largely middle-class) volunteers, can provide services and meet needs in ways more holistic, more local, and more personal, than any institution of the State.

This is dangerous, seductive stuff. The seduction is in the possibility not just of being 'useful', but of being 'special', being 'effective', being 'needed'. Many in the CofE mourn the loss of such epithets, and would jump at the chance to recover them. It is much of the attraction (as I've argued here before) of the FoodBank franchise, celebrated by David Cameron as 'the Big Society in action'. We can be society's 'Good Samaritans' once again.

But that is to completely misread the story. Because it's not about 'do', it's about 'who'. It is a challenge to recognise the outsider, the foreigner, the deviant, the enemy, the one 'we' are most suspicious of, most despise, most go out of our way to avoid... as our neighbour. And not just as one who presents to us with 'needs' to be met - but as one who we need, because it is us, it turns out, who are lying half-dead in the ditch.

And that is the truly dangerous message of the gospel. Because it destroys all our carefully-constructed 'professional boundaries', class divisions, 'meritocratic hierarchies', gated communities and financially-entangled 'securities'. It reveals for the dehumanising heresy it is the project of creating our society as a 'hostile environment' for outsiders, and for insiders too who don't fit the current economic model of the 'good' (meaning financially productive) citizen. It refuses our attempts at putting 'pragmatic' limits on who we count as our neighbours, and instead throws us into the limitless ocean of impossible neighbour-love, in which every single unique, irreplaceable human being is swimming. This truly dangerous message is the real 'holistic mission' of the church, if only it would dare to embrace it. And it's not going to make any government happy if it does.



[I'm indebted to Ivan Illich's reading of the Good Samaritan for much of the thinking behind this piece. You can hear him talking about it here, and there's also an excellent introduction to it here. I'm grateful, as ever, to Cormac Russell of ABCD Europe for pointing me in the direction of Illich.]

Towards an incarnate Council? Reflections on 'Communities Managing Change'

The fabulous Chamberlain Forum launched 'Communities Managing Change' this afternoon. It's an excellent report and well-worth reading and translating into action and change. You can find it at www.chamberlainforum.org

I was asked to respond briefly. It went something like this...

I want to say a big Yes... But it's a 'Yes, and...' It's a big Yes to 'connected places'... but also to bodies, and stories...

So, a story:

About a year ago, I got wind, via a phone call, that a team from Birmingham's Social Inclusion inquiry were visiting the Firs and Bromford, my neighbourhood, in the very near future. Hardly anyone knew about us, and it was to happen in a Council venue that was not even on the estate.

With a phone call or two, we managed to get it moved, to our shop front on the estate, a very 'hubby' place (in the words of the report) - so much so, we call it The Hub! We also managed to get more local people and practitioners there.

On the day, the team arrived late, they had less than 45 mins with us, and they mostly asked us what was wrong with our estate.

A number of us were, to put it mildly, rather cross! Another phone call or two, and the next day I had a call on my mobile from a senior Council officer. He wanted to offer an apology, changes would be made to ongoing visits elsewhere, and he offered to come out and see us again.

He did. For 3 hours. A group of us chatted together, ate together, and we then went for a long walkabout round the area. We talked about the demise of the local 'walk in' Neighbourhood Office, whose doors are now closed to the public, and where you have to phone a call centre to arrange an appointment for a week, or 6 weeks, time. As we walked, our visitor spotted Fort Dunlop, just across the M6. "That's where the phone calls to the call centre go," he said.

We talked about The Hub - run as a partnership between ourselves and Worth Unlimited, a space for youth work, which now also hosts children & families provision, community lunches, meetings of local Practitioners Network, and more. At The Hub, we'd recently started 'Open Door ': run by gifted volunteers, the idea began as a possible 'job club', but turned into a place of welcome and hospitality, a place where people might come with 'needs', but who are invited to rediscover what's in their heart (passions), head (knowledge), and hands (skills) that they might be able to share. This small beginning is just starting to develop into the idea of Time Banking, a way of enabling those gifts to be shared with those who want and need them, of unlocking those gifts to make new neighbourly relationships and build community. And now, Open Door's beginnings of Time Banking have been taken right to the heart of the area's 'Big Local' neighbourhood plan - it's not the £1 million financial investment, but the simple idea of Time Banking, that will be at the 'organising core' of the regeneration work we're beginning on Firs & Bromford. None of it was rocket science for us, but the reaction of that senior Council officer was interesting - his eyes were suddenly wide with newly-discovered possibility!

So that was the story. Now just a few brief reflections.

Co-production between neighbourhoods and Council has barely begun, but the sky's the limit - from environment & green spaces to health & wellbeing, from youth work to adult social care, you name it, and more.

In nature, the most resilient systems have what are called 'tight feedback loops' - they're responsive quickly and flexibly to the smallest, but often significant, changes at the most local level.

The key technical word from my own faith tradition is 'incarnate'. It means discovering a power that's not invested in top-down hierarchy but is connected, fleshy, earthed. It's about where you spend your time, who you come face to face with, who you listen to and where you put your feet.

A Co-operative Council would be good. But I want an 'incarnate' Council... I want a Council Officer in every neighbourhood, literally a body with their feet on the ground, their eyes open and their ears receptive to the stories of their neighbours, and asking 3 key questions, in the right order:
1) what can this neighbourhood do for itself?
2) what can it do, with the right help from the Council?
3) what can only the Council do for this neighbourhood?
[the questions come from my friend Cormac Russell; anything 'lost in translation' in the paraphrase I take full responsibility for!]

And finally two of my favourite quotes:
1. "Inside every Council officer is a citizen waiting to get out" (Cormac Russell again)
2. (originally attributes to Australian Aboriginal feminist activists in the 1970s, but perhaps could be said at this point in time to BCC from those of us in Birmingham's local neighbourhoods) "if you have come to help us, you are wasting our time - but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with ours, then let us work together"

Spaces of encounter, vulnerability and pausing

I recently shared my PhD work with a group of clergy. It was great to get some encouraging, stretching responses, energising the next steps of the journey. But one of the most precious gifts of that encounter was being pointed to a poem by R.S. Thomas, which in Thomas' raw, sparse choice of words, evokes a space of encounter, vulnerability, and pausing - painfully necessary in the world that we find ourselves living in today.

SICK VISITS

They keep me sober,

The old ladies

Stiff in their beds,

Mostly with pale eyes

Wintering me.

Some are like blonde dolls,

Their joints twisted;

Life in its brief play

Was a bit rough.

Some fumble

With thick tongue for words

And are deaf;

Shouting their faint names

I listen:

They are far off,

The echoes return slow.

But without them,

Without the subdued light

Their smiles kindle,

I would have gone wild,

Drinking earth’s huge draughts

Of joy and woe.

R.S. Thomas 1913-2000

The Echoes Return Slow. 1988, London: Macmillan, p.63.

Why #Listen?

"Someone's crying, Lord..."

Someone's crying... in anxiety... in suffering... with longing... with hope... with possibility...

Someone's crying, in isolation, longing to be heard.

We all need 'a good listening to'.

Listening builds understanding and empathy between people.

Listening establishes real, lived evidence, challenging and undermining our own prejudices and those of others. It builds an authority, a rooted, shared authority - a foundation from which we can speak and act.

Listening bridges divides, and builds relationships of trust, friendship and power-through-connectedness.

Listening interrupts our hurry into action, disturbs our 'instinctive responses', comfortable patterns, and what we think we know we should do. It shapes and energises 'good', careful, attentive action.

Listening 'hears to speech' those things and people that have not been heard, or have even been silenced. Listening ushers in the 'new thing', the 'outsider', the 'hidden'. Listening unlocks gifts and unleashes possibility.

And as listening 'hears others to speech', it empowers them as new 'hearers' in turn. Listening builds a movement for change.

That's why we listen.

(Reflection offered at Citizens UK in Birmingham Founding Assembly, 25/4/13)

Children, Community & Sustainability in tough times (Part 2)

In Part 1, I outlined our 'instinctive' approaches - shaped by our current social and political climate and its dominant language of 'austerity', 'scarcity', anxiety and fear - to children, being human, 'community' and, particularly for voluntary organisations, 'sustainability'. Now I want to 'shift the focus', change the language, tell a different story - that might just shape a different, practical approach.

(If you're one of those, dear reader, whose natural instinct, when faced with apparently 'religious' language, is to get cross and/or turn off - I beg of you a little bit of patience - I'm not, by any means, suggesting that Christianity has, or is, 'the answer' to all our problems - I am simply starting the journey again from where I am - where we go, I hope you might find interesting, promising even.)

Shifting the Focus

"Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, ‘What were you arguing about on the way?’ But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest.
       He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’
       Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.’" (Mark 9:33-37)

This little story, right in the centre (the 'hinge', even) of Mark's gospel, is, I want to suggest, a big clue. Jesus' disciples, his followers, have been arguing: about who is the 'greatest'. They are anxiously competitive - it is as if 'greatness' is a scarce commodity that they desperately need some of - as much as possible, in fact. Suspicion, pre-emption, accumulation - all the 'core principles' of the 'fear business' are at work here.

So what does Jesus do? First, he sits down. Not as insignificant as it might seem. This is to be no stand-up row. Jesus presses the 'pause' button, he creates a 'breathing space', some 'time out' from the pressures of the economy of scarcity for reflection, face-to-face conversation. He diffuses the anxiety in the air.

And then... Then, he takes a little child, and places her or him 'among them' - in the centre. He shifts the focus, changes the conversation, points to a different centre around which thinking and talking and responding might be re-organised. And this 'different centre' is 'a little child' - in Jesus' society, quite literally a 'nobody' - one of the 'least', most marginal, most insignificant. And around this centre, Jesus weaves a new economy...

• It is a 'bottom-up' economy where it is 'the nobodies', first and foremost, who are understood to be of divine value.
• It is an 'abundant' economy - because there are more than enough 'nobodies' around, no scarce supply - and 'nobodies' who bring a wealth of gifts previously unseen and unimagined!
• It is a non-competitive economy, because it is not about 'who is the greatest', but simply 'whoever'.
• And it is a hospitable economy, because the 'way in' is not through accumulation of status (or money, or whatever), but through the simple practice of welcoming...

"People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them:
      ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’
      And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them. " (Mark 10:13-16)

A different response: CHILDREN

These two 'little stories' together paint a very different picture of 'what a child is' - economically, emotionally, socially and politically, morally and spiritually - to that of the 'dominant story' we explored in Part 1. Here, we discover children as:

• God-given gifts - not 'burdens' or 'commodities'
• Made in God's image, so 'fully human' - not 'non-adults' but, 'in it together with us'
• 'Companion disciples' - like us adults, caught up in what we sometimes call 'sin', neither 'innocent' nor 'feral', but bound up with us in dynamics and structures that dehumanise, alienate, induce shame and fear... but understanding this 'caught-up-ness' not as requiring 'punishment', but 'discipleship' - so again, like us adults, and with us adults, learning to 'fall and get up, fall and get up' (as a monk once described the way of faith), learning to detach ourselves from our addictions, learning patiently how to love and live for others...
• Among 'the least', so, in fact, 'the greatest' - as 'the least' in the economy of scarcity, signs of - judgments on- the state of the world as it is, and how we treat the world's most vulnerable; as 'the greatest' in the new economy, signs of divine presence, objects of our reverence, care and service
• Agents, teachers, hosts, 'model citizens' of this 'new economy' that Jesus calls 'the kingdom of God' - not 'blank sheets' or 'empty vessels' to be filled, but innately spiritual, and instinctive, natural leaders and subversives who might just - if we pay attention - show us how to live in the economy of abundance ('unless you change and become like...'). 'Play' is one of the vital clues here - but we'll come back to that a little later.

Just some local 'snippets' to ground these ideas...

Firstly, our 'Good Childhood Conversations', facilitated by the Children's Society in one of our local secondary schools, and down at 'The Hub' on our estate, listened to hundreds of local children talking about 'what all children and young people need for a good life', 'what sops children and young people having a good life', and 'what could be changed to make life better for all children and young people'. The earthed 'practical wisdom' gathered in their responses is still feeding our planning and visioning a year on - and they are conversations we're committed to continuing.

Secondly, the 'Youth Know Your Neighbourhood' programme we've developed here has helped young people to map and photograph their neighbourhood, gather statistical information about it, visit local institutions and interview key 'community leaders', with the aim of gathering hopes and dreams, challenges and frustrations, wisdom and possibilities, not just for 'places and provision for young people' locally, but for the common good of the neighbourhood as a whole. These young people have developed their skills and potential as community leaders - not just of the future, but of the present.

And thirdly, the 'Bromford Dreams' cube, an amazing collaboration with international graffiti artist Mohammed 'Aerosol' Ali, enabled some of our local lads who are sometimes labelled 'NEET', seen as being right on the 'edges' of community and society, to give expression not just to their experiences of alienation, but to a profound 'earthed spirituality', crossing divisions of faith and culture, with bold proclamations: 'no struggle - no progress', 'value life' and 'more than money'...

A different response: 'COMMUNITY'

"It takes a village to raise a child", we say (although we're often not very good at practising it). But we discover too that it takes a child to grow a community. With our 'shift in focus', taking an imaginative leap into an economy not of scarcity but abundance, we discover communities like my own not as 'deprived', 'needy', and 'broken', but as places of profound giftedness. As we learn to discover the giftedness of little children and the other 'least ones', we begin to unearth the heart-passions, the head-knowledge, the hand-skills of our neighbours. We discover that our communities have within them the gifts they need to nurture and 'raise' our children, to care for our elderly, to create safe environments around us, to enable all of us to be healthy and flourishing. The language in the business (and we're talking the 'abundance business' now, which is far from 'business' in any conventional sense) is 'Asset-Based Community Development' - it's as easy as ABCD...!

We discover also, in the new economy, that 'community' can be a place generous enough, hospitable enough, to even include us, the 'professionals', the 'outsiders' - so long as we are willing to let go of the baggage of 'providing services' and 'meeting needs' that so often encumbers us, and discover a way of working - a way of being, in fact - that is much more about 'forging solidarities', or even, simply, 'making friends'. If we do so dare, though, we discover the possibility of co-opting the insidious political language about community, and re-framing it within the new economy: we discover 'community' as a place that embraces (and where we can embrace) our own 'troubledness' (a deep-in-the-gut 'troubledness' we see in the Jesus of the gospels when he is moved to compassion, and even anger); and also our own 'brokenness' - our individual brokenness as a gift to share and to connect us with others, and our brokenness as communities and society, as an invitation for reconciliation, rather than 'fixing'.

A different response: BEING HUMAN

'Whoever does not receive... like a little child...' says Jesus. We discover, in this new economy, an insight which those who are described as having 'disabilities' (physical or intellectual), and those who spend time in their company, know all too well: that “despite our tendencies to value autonomy, freedom and independence, the empirical evidence is that human beings are dependent on one another in all things, even to become persons: ‘I am because we are.” (John Swinton, ‘Who is the God we worship?’)

Embracing our dependence and interdependence, then, we begin to practise something that we might call receptivity. It is, perhaps, the very opposite of the 'initiatives' and 'strategies' that we are so plagued by, from governments, and within our voluntary organisations (and churches!). To repeat a description I've used again and again in this blog, we're talking about learning the art of 'over-accepting':

“In improvised jazz, the musicians in the group are practised at listening carefully to each other. Anything any of the musicians play we might call an ‘offer’ – a snippet of tune, a clever harmony, even a wrong note or two. And the other musicians make choices, in every moment: to ‘block’ an offer – ignore it, write it off as a mistake, or simply pursue their own thread of music unaffected by the other musicians; or to ‘accept’ an offer – to echo it, develop it, creatively run with what they’ve heard from their fellow musicians to make something more of it. The best improvisers are those with the daring and creativity to ‘overaccept’ all offers – to take even what might have been a mistake or a crashing discord, and develop into something musically new, different, beautiful, exciting.”

 I'll illustrate the idea of 'over-accepting' in a moment, but there's one more dimension of 'being human' in this 'new economy' that I want to highlight first.

A different response: 'SUSTAINABILITY'

Learning a different approach to children, to 'community' and to 'being human', the question of sustainability inescapably becomes: sustainability for whom? For us as organisations? Or for the communities we claim to 'serve'? I am reminded of the powerful, challenging words of Aboriginal women activists from Australia in the 1970s:

“If you have come here to help us, you are wasting our time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with ours, then let us work together.”

If our liberation is truly bound up with those in the communities in which, with which, we work - if we are not in the 'meeting needs' business but in the 'forging solidarities' business - then I suggest we as organisations, as professionals, as workers, ditch the kind of competitive, scarcity-economy 'sustainability' practices of suspicion, accumulation and pre-emption, for the 'abundant-economy' practice of being overwhelmed. David Ford, who introduced us to the idea of 'multiple overwhelmings' in Part 1, goes on to suggest this:

“the wisest way to cope [with being multiply overwhelmed] is not to try to avoid being overwhelmed, and certainly not to expect to be in control of everything; rather it is to live amidst the overwhelmings in a way that lets one of them be the overwhelming that shapes the others. That is the “home” or “school” in which the practicalities of coping can be learnt.” (David Ford, The Shape of Living, p.xxv)

I want to suggest that we need to learn four dimensions of 'being overwhelmed', which will then shape our responses to all the other overwhelmings we're facing now and in the future:

1. Being overwhelmed by STRANGERS - practising hospitality but also learning to receive it; discovering that those we once called 'service users' or even 'customers' can actually (need to actually) become 'friends'; and learning the vulnerable, costly, power-yielding art of working in partnership
2. Being overwhelmed by GIFTS - practising gratitude, and discovering that the gifts are all around us; learning the art of generosity, and especially of throwing a good feast; and re-learning (taught by our children, often) the habits of joy, laughter, and play
3. Being overwhelmed by BROKENNESS - our own and our neighbours - finding our guts stirred with compassion, our hearts fired towards solidarity; 'hearing to speech' the laments, and placing our bodies in the places of protest

How are these working out in Hodge Hill?

'Hodge Hill Unsung Heroes' invited local people to nominate friends, neighbours, local workers, as 'unsung heroes' who'd shown compassion, generosity, trust, friendship and hope in who they were, or what they did. We were overwhelmed with nominees - 97 in all - and gathered them all together for a party, with food, drink, and awards presented by the Lord Mayor. We shared their stories, and asked each of them: 'if you could find 2 or 3 other people to join you, what would you start in your neighbourhood?' Strangers became friends, feasting and laughter abounded, we were overwhelmed by people's gifts, and the energy of (and indeed the left-over money from) the event overflowed into new connections, new ventures, in the months that followed: a Nigerian Independence Day event and a little catering business; a local theatre group who've already done a panto and a Passion Play (more of that in a moment); to name but two...

'Open Door' is a weekly, volunteer-run 'drop-in' on a Saturday morning, for a couple of hours. People might be sent from the Job Centre, or just wandered past, and we can help them write CVs, access the internet, search for jobs. But much more importantly, when they come in through the open door they are met with a smile, a warm welcome, a cup of tea and some toast - and a fellow-human being who is not interested in what they haven't got, but in what they have. Our first conversations at Open Door are about people's passions, gifts, knowledge and practical skills. The kind of stuff that might be on their CVs - but often, in fact, stuff they'd never dreamed of mentioning, but in fact comes to the heart of what meaningful, worthwhile activity looks like for them. And out of Open Door we're just developing Time Banking - linking up people's skills and offers of time, with other people's needs - building relationships, drawing out people's gifts, affirming their dignity, growing community, getting things done, and... living out a different kind of economy, where all have gifts aplenty, and an hour of one person's time is valued equally with an hour of someone else's.

Our community lunches are a monthly thing, again with an open door to all-comers - workers and residents, young and old, of all faiths and none - to come together, bring and share and eat and drink and talk and laugh together. And just a little bit of 'work' together: each month, we invite people to think about the things, the people, the gifts, the moments that they are thankful for. Not - at least in this space - the moans and the grumbles and the struggles. There's sometimes a short pause while people think. But every time, the flood gates seem to open, and one thing comes out after another. For friends and family. For opportunities. For a new day. For good-enough health. For neighbours. For sunshine. And on it goes...

And lastly, the Passion Play. I've written here already about how it came about, and how it turned out, but for me it is one of our best examples of letting ourselves be overwhelmed by the gifts of our neighbours - of a stranger turned friend; of engaging in a riskily creative partnership; of deep, mutual generosity; of play and exploration; of much laughter; of giving voice to some of the laments of an estate which, deep in its collective memory, has felt abandoned time and time again; and of discovering, in the ashes, a sense of hope and possibility which, even in its fragility, is just as overwhelming - and shapes and energises our journey onwards from the crucifixion scene under the pillars of the M6.

Which leads me to one last dimension of our 'being overwhelmed'...

4. Being overwhelmed by THIS PLACE, THESE PEOPLE

Remember the words of the Aboriginal activists: “If you have come here to help us, you are wasting our time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with ours, then let us work together.”

'Sustainability' is ultimately a concern not for our own organisations, but for the community or communities we have committed ourselves to. In another 'dark age', another age of 'multiple overwhelmings', St Benedict created monastic communities shaped by three vows: 'stability', 'obedience' and 'conversion'.

'Stability', first of all, meant committing to this place, these people, for life. And letting our commitment to this place, these people, shape everything that we do and decide. Here in Hodge Hill, whenever we have recruited a new worker, we've asked them, in the clearest possible terms, to consider moving to live here - to see the 'offer' not just as a job, but as a life-commitment - to put down roots, get to know neighbours, make friends, raise children here, use the local shops, and so on. On Friday nights, a growing group of us meet together, with our kids, to eat and talk and pray (very simply) together - to feast and light candles and laugh and cry together. Into the future, we're longing / hoping / praying to find a house locally that we can develop for people to come and live in, to work (either paid or as a volunteer) locally, to build relationships of trust and friendship with their neighbours, and to offer a place of hospitality, sanctuary, listening and prayer - meeting people at points of need, maybe, but a place committed to discovering, unlocking, and being overwhelmed by the gifts of those who come across the doorway.

'Obedience' for Benedict meant, at root, listening to each other, attentively, carefully. And 'conversion', rather than something that happens in a moment, was a lifelong journey of surprise, change and growth. Benedictine communities were - and are - places of sanctuary, solidarity, support and spirituality.

This is the kind of 'sustainability' that we aspire to here in Hodge Hill. It can be one of the most valuable - if often well hidden! - gifts the local church has to rediscover, and offer, to the wider neighbourhood. It is lived out from day to day in natural, un-forced inter-generational relationships; in spaces for both conversation and silence; in moments to enter into awe and wonder; in opportunities for thanksgiving, generosity and liberation from 'stuff'; in spaces that offer enough safety to be able to take risks, to grieve and fail, and to discover hope and forgiveness; in doorways into a different economy, where power is turned inside-out and upside-down, where there is both time and space to rest, to grow trust, to feast and - most importantly - to play. No less than the great 20th C theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher said "children play - adults practise". What he meant, I think, is that we adults are all too often obsessed with results, with goals, with objectives, with targets. We think meaningful activity needs to have a purpose beyond itself (Liz Truss's recent comments about pre-school provision being an excellent example). Children know a different wisdom: play is an end in itself - we play for its own sake, for its own delight. As we re-learn to play, we find ourselves wandering straight into the 'new economy' - that which Jesus sometimes calls 'the kingdom of God'...