Category Archives: Equality, Diversity And Inclusion
2012 London Olympics: An Opportunity For Liverpool?
Already, some people in Liverpool believe the 2012 Olympics will be ‘bad’ for Merseyside. Having already won the accolade of 2008 European Capital of Culture, – and bearing in mind also the City’s 800th Anniversary in 2007 – surely we in Liverpool are actually very well placed to benefit greatly from the 2012 Olympics, if we start to plan now? The glass is decidedly half full, not half empty. The next challenge for Liverpool is to recognise this and act on it.
The news on Merseyside today is that a survey shows more local business people think the 2012 Olympics will be bad for the Liverpool area than good for it.
They argue that benefit will probably be directly in relation to proximity to London; and indeed that finance for the Olympics will take any available monies, leaving not much for the rest of us.
This is a particularly puzzling view in Merseyside, where we are about to benefit from our 800th Anniversary in 2007, and then the 2008 European Capital of Culture – events brim-full of business opportunities and visitors, alongside the city’s current enthusiasm for regeneration.
Call me naive, but I see here a chance to build on whatever success we in Liverpool can make of our 2007 / 2008 events. The city’s leaders have consistently said they want the celebrations and developments kicked-started by the 2008 Culture Year (and the city’s 2007 800th Anniversary celebrations) to continue longer term, with a programme which has horizons well beyond those dates.
These forthcoming events are surely the way to make sure we’re on the ball for the Olympics, a position which is unique to Liverpool in the UK . By 2012 we will have put in place all the infrastructure and tourism facilities you could possibly wish for, and we will have learned a lot during our 2007/8 years in the limelight.
It’s up to all of us outside the capital to make sure that our Olympics ‘offer’ for 2012 is up to scratch. I don’t want to ask people now if they are worried about 2012. I’d prefer to ask how, already, they are engaging their imaginations to make 2012 a year when the whole country makes the most of chances to work together to show what we can do.
This is definitely one scenario where the glass is not half empty, but already half full – especially for Liverpool, 2008 European Capital of Culture. Let’s make sure the 2012 opportunity is relished, not rejected.
Liverpool’s Newsham Park needs to be conserved
Newsham Park in Liverpool is a Listed Historic Park; yet it has on its perimeter distressingly neglected vintage houses owned, it is said, by the City Council and local Housing Associations. Some concerned locals want the City of Liverpool to take action against itself on this matter. This situation, as some residents understand it, hardly suggests positive re-inforcement of active citizenship in one of the most deprived inner-city localities of the UK.
The very first place we ever lived in Liverpool was, literally, a garret in Fairfield Crescent, off Newsham Park. Still a student, I thought this quite exotic, a place of our own even though the downside was three very steep flights of stairs.
Since my time there many years ago Newsham Park has suffered considerable neglect. The local bank has disappeared, many more people seem to be unemployed, and despite some new retail outlets and the efforts of Kensington New Deal there is widespread visible decay in some parts of the area.
Nonetheless the area is blessed with numbers of residents who are fighting energetically for their patch. Newsham Park is in its design an elegant green space surrounded by large Vistorian houses and wide carriage ways. It was, and still has the potential to be, an urban gem for those who live in the north of the city.
It is shocking therefore to hear that some of the most delapidated housing around Newsham Park is actually owned by the City Council and local Housing Associations. And this, in a Listed Historic Park and within a Conservation Area.
The news is apparently that Newsham Park residents have decided to ask the City to take enforcement action against the owners – sometimes one gathers themselves – of the most neglected properties. Whether this comes about, and what the official response might be, we shall see.
But it does leave us to wonder exactly how one of the most deprived localities of the UK can bring about much needed change for the better, if those who live in and care about it it apparently have to ask their own city to remedy disgraceful neglect on their very doorsteps.
Should it transpire that the City Council, as an example and encouragement to concerned local people, can’t find ways to look after its own property, what hope is there for the rest?
Where Do You Live When You’re Older?
Increasing life expectancy offers many new opportunities to us all, but it brings problems too. Amongst these is how working families can also care for elderly parent/s, who often live many miles away. One possible solution which could also help others living alone might be to re-think the mix of housing required when building homes, whether in rural areas, in terraced streets or in the suburbs.
It’s an issue we almost all have to face at some point: what do you do when old age or dependency catches up, and entirely independent living begins to be a worry?
For some of us, this occurs when our elderly parent/s or other ralatives begin to need support; for others it may perhaps only arise when we ourselves find that getting around is not as easy as it was. Sadly for a smaller number the issue arises because they have dependent adult children who will always require care. But there are few people for whom it’s never at any stage a worry.
It’s even more difficult of course if the increasingly fragile person lives at a significant distance from anyone who could ‘keep an eye’ and offer support. Many of us find ourselves at some point dashing off at any available opportunity to visit elderly parent/s or other lonely or dependent relatives. The problem is, there’s no room, or it wouldn’t work, for them to live with you; but on the other hand they live too far away for easy access.
And this issue isn’t going to go away. We should all be delighted to acknowledge that people live longer now. For probably the first time in history most of us can now expect to get into our eighties in relative good health.
In other words, the ‘dependency ratio’ – the ratio of people in work to those not working – is shifting towards fewer working people and more elderly, retired folk. So here is a matter requiring social adjustment and new policies for a whole range of services and facilities.
Would it be sensible to suggest that a policy of accommodating older people within reach of their nearest and dearest is essential wherever possible? The classic response is the personal arrangement of building or altering accommodation as a ‘Granex’, somewhere in or by the family home where a single older person can live independently but alongside their adult offspring.
But perhaps now is the time also to recognise there is a new commercial construction opportunity here, a development which would facilitate family contact but at the same time help older people to maintain their personal autonomy within the wider community.
We already have groups of small housing units which, although all separate and private, have shared wardens and services. These tend however to be in short supply; as indeed do privately owned bungalows suitable for less mobile seniors.
When housing estates (either private or for rent) are built, or when streets are renovated in the inner city or wherever, perhaps there could be a requirement that a given percentage of the development is very small clusters of accommodation suitable for elderly single people?
There could, for instance, be a recommendation that every fifteenth – or other appropriate number – plot be not, say, two conjoined semis, but rather five smaller flats, each with easy ‘disabled access’ and with a common lift, garden space etc. These small unit blocks, scattered around local communities, would provide homes to be sold or rented in exactly the same way as any other accommodation. The only difference would be that they might offer special ease of access and, through some shared amentity, an opportunity for the residents if they wish to maintain or develop a community of personal contacts and to keep an eye on each other.
If there were enough of these small unit blocks scattered around our communities, a real need could be met. Many adult children who wish to have their elderly and dependent members nearby but not for whatever reason actually in the family home could do so, using the normal mechanisms of the market. And this could also offer mutual support for others who are alone but don’t choose to live in larger blocks of flats.
Not everyone who lives alone can afford, say, suburban accommodation intended for two or more people, but there is no logical reason why smaller single living units can’t be developed in areas usually associated with the semi, as well as in the city centre. Similar arrangements could also apply, to use the other extreme, in rural villages, where affordable housing is becoming a major headache for people on lower incomes.
The evidence seems to be that mixed housing is a step in the right direction for stable and comfortable communities. General incorporation of single / small units of accommodation into ‘semi-land’ and terraced streets could increase choice for single people and help families to keep in touch with elderly members in a more routine and relaxed way.
Given the acknowledged inevitability in the UK of increased single living and also of elderly dependency, there really is a need to think about housing in new ways.
Why Do Farmers’ Markets Cheer Us Up So Much?
Farmers’ Markets have a special place in city life. They encourage us to feel part of a community, yet when we go to these markets we also feel that as individuals we are attending to our health and leisure needs. Farmers’ Markets may indeed sometimes in reality be big business, but they fill a gap in our fragmented urban lives.
Farmers’ Markets seem to be all the rage in Liverpool at the moment. They started in the ciy centre (by the Victoria Monument), and recently sprouted up in Lark Lane to the South of the city. Now, this Sunday, there is at last to be one in Hope Street, the cultural quarter. All the recent evidence suggests that, weather permitting, this too will be a big success.
So why is everyone in the city so enthusiastic about Farmers’ Markets? Several possible answers to this question come to mind:
Farmers’ Markets make us feel healthy. Whether the produce is actually fresher and more nutritious (or beneficial in other ways, if not edible) than produce we can buy in supermarkets, we willingly go along with the idea that it must be.
Farmers’ Markets make us feel part of a community; we throng around, perhaps sharing comments with perfect strangers about what’s on offer, and aware of the shared purpose in our being there. Yet we also feel like individuals – not for us the pre-packaged routinised stuff of the big stores. We are making a positive, personal choice to buy, or perhaps just to consider buying, produce which feels, against supermarket standards, just a bit exotic.
Farmers’ Markets take us back in time. We imagine, more or less accurately, that this until quite recently is how people have always conducted their financial transactions. There’s a rusticness about what we’re doing which harks back to a supposed golden age which is in contemporary times usually only seen on Christmas cards.
Farmers’ Markets are ecological. If we can, we walk to them (or at least park the car a distance away), clutching cane baskets and imagining, correctly or otherwise, that what we intend to buy is organic.
Farmers’ Markets let us feel authentic. We can actually talk, and maybe even negotiate our purchase, with the people who are seling their own goods – which we naturally suppose they have also themselves carefully crafted. The goods are authentic. The person-to-person transaction is authentic. We must be authentic.
And Farmers’ Markets are interesting. We are often not sure what we’ll find when we get there. Who will turn up this time? What will they have to sell? We attend trustingly, purses speculatively at the ready in our pockets; not for us on this occasion the usual boring shopping list!
It might be surmised from this list that I have a problem with Farmers’ Markets. Not so at all. They have a real part to play in the lives of many city people, just as they always have had in more rural contexts.
It’s the function these markets perform in our splintered urban communities which fascinates me. They may in fact sometimes be the visible parts of very large business operations, but they are perceived as ‘small’, micro-enterprises undertaken by real people. They make us feel special, they spark our imaginations and they activiate our interest in important aspects of health and community.
Don’t miss the next Liverpool Farmers’ Markets. Be sure to be in Lark Lane on Saturday, or in Hope Street on Sunday!
Cherry Picking Liverpool’s Sefton Park Agenda
Liverpool’s Sefton Park has beautiful cherry trees, at present under contentious threat of being demolished. Why not, instead, use this situation as a way to engage local people, especially children, in ownership of their local (and often greatly under-appreciated) green space, and of the natural cycles which must always occur?
Unsurprisingly, there’s much consternation in Liverpool at present about the fate of the cherry trees around Sefton Park‘s middle lake. For some, they look like worn out relics of their former glory, due for the chop. To others (me included!), they are still wonderful, showering their landscape with gorgeous pink blossom for those special few weeks in the Spring.
But all things do come to an end, so ultimately the trees will have to go. The question is, when? Why can’t new trees be planted and allowed to blossom forth before the ‘old’ ones at last become wood chip?
An under-valued community resource
Sefton Park is situated in what is genuinely the inner city ‘donut’. It is surrounded on most sides by areas which include many children who lack first hand knowledge not only of parks, but also even of how things grow. It is also a hugely under-valued urban resource; a situation which hopefully will be much improved by the new, long overdue, proposals to revamp the park as a whole.
It’s not an especially original thought, but is there some way that the new trees could be ‘owned’ by children in different school classes or clubs? Or indeed from different surrounding streets?
Recycling trees and art?
Then, when the new trees have grown, the ones they are replacing could finally become part of the recycling process, with all this entails being explained in due course to their replacements’ ‘owners’.
Perhaps, even, some of the ‘old’ trees can be carved or otherwise used to represent aspects of our local lives? (So many trees are already being cut down, doubtless for good reason; but where are the sculptors and artists who can put their remnants to good publicly visible use? – and cherry wood, I understand, is particularly fine for this, when eventually it comes to it!)
Engaging people in change
People find it hard to accept change. Here, if there’s someone or some organisation willing to deliver it, is a way to help local folk engage positively. Why have a fight about something as beautiful as cherry trees, when so much else should be taking up our energies?
See also: Sefton Park’s Grebes And Swans
Liverpool’s Sefton Park, Swans, Herons And Grebes
Sefton Park, Liverpool: Winter Solstice 2006
Cherry Blossom For May Day In Sefton Park, Liverpool
What Now For Liverpool’s Sefton Park?
Liverpool’s Sefton Park Trees Under Threat – Unnecessarily?
Solar Lighting Could Solve The Parks Problem
Friends Of Sefton Park
Where Have All The Gardens (And Allotments) Gone?
There are many unattended back gardens in cities; but there are also many people who would like to have allotments. Could these two observations be brought together to provide a sense of place and an opportunity for city children to learn more about things that grow?
If, like me, you travel on trains quite a lot, you also see quite a lot of back gardens. Some are beautiful; some are not. One striking thing however is that the beautifully kept gardens seem to be contagious – on each side there are usually tidy gardens, gradually petering out to the less tidy, and then to the frankly unkempt. I have always been fascinated about how this happens. Perhaps visible example enables achievement, just as in any other area of human experience?
It has to be said, however, that quite a lot of the unkempt back gardens tend to be inner-city. Yet at the same time there are reports in some places that waiting lists for allotments are at an all-time high. Can’t these back gardens become ‘allotments’? And maybe ‘parks’, too?
Are there areas where people might be pleased to get rid of their battered fences, at least at a given distance from their actual houses, and turn these into pleasant shared ground? Alleygating of terraced housing has in general proved to be popular. If alleyways can be shared to advantage, how about gardens?
Promoting environmental awareness through gardening
Maybe there are people who would like to have their allotment as an extended patch behind where they live, as long as they don’t mind sharing.
Are there any organisations which might encourage this sort of collective gardening activity? Could there be educational as well as community benefits? Maybe that way fewer city children would believe that peas are manufactured in tins. And maybe also those in a given ‘garden community’ who wanted to move beyond their immediate backyard into shared garden space might have a safer place than the street to meet as neighbours.
This idea naturally begs a lot of questions, and there are multiple reasons why it might not work, but perhaps there are also some why it might.
Can Digital Technology Meet The Challenges Of Social Inclusion?
New technology, particularly email and the worldwide web, has many benefits to offer almost everyone. But it fails to reach many who would find it useful, principally because of its complexities and unfamiliar style. Perhaps we need to think about a ‘Library of the Web’ as a way of offering a level of guarantee of acceptability in terms of content, and to adopt a Plain English Campaign-style approach to e-tech presentation.
There is plenty of evidence that the worldwide web has helped people to make contact across huge divides; but the debate continues (see Guardian letters today) about whether on overall balance it contributes, or does not contribute, to social inclusion.
Essentially, the most serious techno-divide seems not to be between people of different ages or of, e.g., different genders, but between those who are willing and able to get to grips with new technology and those who are not.
Email can be a great boon for people who are housebound, as well as home-workers and of course those in employment. Websites can provide the most amazing information. In every case however there has to be a facility in both the physical and the attitudinal senses.
We can make simple e-tech equipment for young children; why not also for people (some of them older, some with physical difficulties, or whatever) who have difficulties or concerns about using it?
We can ensure that what children read is acceptable and generally valid information. Can this not be done on some level, in terms of public information for everyone, about how to check what you are reading has some substance? Libraries on the whole manage to do this for the books they stock. What about a ‘Library on the Web’ of some sort, maybe at varying levels of provision?
Employment opportunities and training are quite rightly becoming much more accessible on line; so should opportunities for people to seek help with their health concerns, citizenship concerns and much else. These things do exist, but by no means as accessibly as many of us would like.
There is a widespread need to engage people who DON’T understand new technology in its production, when this is for general use, and especially when it’s intended as a public service. (We all pay for public service information; and there is anyway an irrefutable case for making sure we can all, or as many as will benefit from it, have genuine access to it.)
Much of e-tech is produced by people who find it difficult to see how perplexed many of the rest of us are by their language and modes of communication. The real challenge which faces them is to use their skills, at least for pubic domain e-content, to achieve the same level of presentational simplicity as that required, say, to operate domestic appliances or read a popular newspaper.
Social inclusion and entitlement continue to be pressing issues as the internet grows apace. Where is the equivalent of the Plain English Campaign, when it comes to the new technology?
Amateur Performers, Professional Artists And Conflicts Of Interest In The Community
Amateurs by definition are able to produce cultural events more inexpensively than professionals; yet both sorts of performers / promoters are necessary for community cultural (and wider) development. How can these conflicting interests be resolved?
There are inherent tensions in bringing together the ‘community’ and professional artists and performers.
Whilst community engagement is literally bread and butter for some professional arts practitioners (and must be warmly welcomed as such), parallel free / amateur performances may reduce the likelihood of support from audiences for professional performances – which of necessity have much higher overheads. But both are surely needed.
A conundrum
The very activities which give some professional artists a measure of income when they work with amateurs, and which give a first taste of the arts to some members of a community, are also likely to be in direct competition with fully professional performances in that same location / part of town.
Audience time expenditure
It may be worth looking at this issue in terms of time-expenditure on the part of potential audience, and of grant / investment in respect of funders. An example is recitals of classical music by fully professional musicians working in non-conventional locations.
Many more people who are unfamiliar with ‘live’ classical music are willing to give their time to try ‘classical’ concerts if complimentary tickets are available, than if they are asked to pay. And if costs are kept very low, they are likely to want to come again.
This behaviour on the part of audiences may seem unsurprising, yet still funding bodies insist that professionals build large box office income into their bid budgets . Indeed, if the performing group is a ‘business’, it is often not even eligible for grant aid.
Different rules for amateurs?
But the rules are different for amateur / community-led productions. This makes for a very up-hill and unrewarding experience for community-inclined professionals, and is almost a total disincentive to cultural entrepreneurship on the part of these performers.
How can professionals compete against the subsidy available to community groups, especially if they wish to serve the same less-advantaged communities? It’s a challenge, yet public service arts officers still insist they want professionals to work harder at audience-building.
Professional quality, community investment and capacity-building
There are often claims that high quality arts increases the likelihood of inward investment to an area. but this is rarely part of the equation when funding for professional arts groups is considered. How should we build genuine partnerships between the professional cultural community and any given local area?
Qualitative differences
The issues need to be examined carefully in terms of the micro-economics of expenditure of time (professionals’ and amateurs’) and resources (private and / or public investment). What are the best ways for cultural events ‘in the community” to be supported, managed and presented?
This is an issue of investment in the arts, and in communities. It’s about how long-term sustainable community-embedded arts can be, if the professional practitioners are not supported realistically, and are effectively set in competition ‘against’ much less costly amateur activities.
Aspiration and achievement
The arts offer one of the few examples of ‘visible’ aspirational routes for anyone with talent, but who in a community would aspire to a professional level of skill if it’s quite evident that doing so is not the way to earn a living?
Both are very valuable, but amateur artistic activities are qualitatively different from those of professionals. For the sake of communities and practitioners, the ways in which they are supported need also to be much more clearly differentiated and defined.
Cultural Gentrification Is inevitable; Displacement Is not!
Gentrification as a result of ‘cultural development’ is often perceived by locals as unwelcome; but does it have to be that way? It may well be possible to cash in on the newly acquired wealth of an area, to bring decent jobs and opportunities to local people, including the ‘creative community’ whose work may have brought about that very gentrification. There is a clear role here for entrepreneurs, social and otherwise, and for proactive planning and training.
‘Gentrification’ as a result of cultural innovation is a complex process which carries with it a whole range of processes and concepts not often examined. ‘Gentrification’ is seen as a pejorative term in some quarters and this does not recognise the fluid nature, over time, of development in its wider sense (including economic and physical renewal). History tells us that areas within towns and cities change use, shape and value over time. It would be more sensible to regard cultural matters within this context.
Whilst artists, musicians etc are certainly a ‘creative class’, unless perhaps they are in niche design, they are also often far from wealthy. This is the converse side of the complaint that gentrification makes it impossible for artists to stay in an area. So do consistently low wages, which are a deflator of the local economy.
There is a risk in looking only at direct socio-economic outcomes that we will forget highly skilled artists can, like other professionals, become part of the ‘brain drain’ which some parts of the UK still experience.
So whilst artists’ ‘creative’ needs may be being addressed, along with those of the wider community, it is often the case that their normal economic ones are not. On a wider scale, this sort of economic marginalisation can have serious implications for the cultural development of an area. Like other working professionals, artists and performers may choose to move away, to locations and jobs where it is easier to raise a family and plan for a comfortable future – resulting in the opposite of gentrification for a given place. Similar outcomes may occur if there is no feeling in a given ‘community’ that art and culture are significant. It is not only expensive accommodation which may drive creatives away from particular locations.
It will be important in the future to bear in mind that those who lead culture are themselves, as people, part of the equation, and probably have the same basic aspirations as other diverse partners in the exercise. Gentrification or its opposite doesn’t just happen; it’s predicated on the actions of individuals, some of whom will be artists…. Culture is never passive!
Nor are artists necessarily advantaged in their original backgrounds and education. Many fine artists and performers have experienced serious hardship on their way to a professional standing in their field.
Gentrification doesn’t necessarily mean that people who have previously lived in an area will have to leave it entirely. The situation can be handled proactively, not passively, as an opportunity to set up services of all sorts which cater for the requirements of the newly gentrified, through commercial, social and cultural enterprises. There has to be an ‘art of the possible’ in terms of building up expertise and knowledge to deliver businesses and facilities which offer employment at decent rates to the newly gentrified; and this in turn can offer decent work to local people. But whose responsibility is it to plan for this?
Do Regeneration Plans Acknowledge Culture Enough?
‘Culture’ often appears to be the optional add-on in regeneration. There may however be ways in which the arts and cultural community could do more to ensure that the benefits of embedding culture into regeneration are understood by those who lead development.
Is it important to encourage developers and planners to include culture in regeneration strategies and programmes?
Much of the physical context of regeneration and development is on or surrounded by publicly owned space. This leaves an important opportunity for local councils to insist from the outset on engagement with developers about the possibilities for public art. Perhaps more could be done to ensure that this engagement is assured, through training and awareness-raising of local government officials and elected representatives.
Awareness of the need to include ‘cultural space’ (flexible small theatre / gallery space, etc) in community regeneration programmes, e.g., alongside provision for / within the plans for schools and other essential public service buildings is also important. Are public guideline on these requirements and on their technical aspects easily available? Are they now part of planners’ and architects’ training? (The specific technical requirements of ‘arts space’ are rarely articulated or understood in dialogue about regeneration.)
On another level, what is being done to ensure that ‘culture’ is actually understood – or indeed appreciated – by developers and planners? It may be difficult to insist formally that private developers are acquainted with what culture has on offer (though project specs could include this), but at least it could be required that planners involved in cultural decisions actually attended or observed the sorts of ‘cultural’ phenomena under debate, before decisions are made….. The National Campaign for the Arts (NCA) recently pointed out that invitations to ‘new’ Councillors to attend cultural events tend to have a very positive impact on their thinking. Can arts and cultural institutions put their hands on their hearts and say they issue regular invitations to Councillors, planners and other decision makers to come and see what’s on offer?
And, once developments have been identified, what about encouraging local artists (performers, community activists, whatever…), equipped with appropriate info and guidelines, to become part of planning teams and community consultation processes, perhaps ‘adopting’ particular programmes of development? There is nothing like a real physically present person who represents a particular ‘take’ on a project, for ensuring that this aspect of the whole development is acknowledged.
This does not however mean that artists, unlike other professionals, should simply ‘give’ their time. Lead bodies could set up an identified fund to support artists of all sorts who are willing to give thought and expertise to ensuring ‘culture’ plays an active part in the thinking of regeneration decision makers.
Dreaming Realist 