Category Archives: Politics, Policies And Process
Towards a Strong Urban Renaissance (Urban Task Force)
The latest report from Lord Rogers and colleagues makes an interesting read. There’s an enormous amount of urban and infrastructural renewal still to be undertaken, but we now understand the challenges much more clearly, and this is obviously a good starting point for further endeavours.
It’s been an interesting experience today, travelling (again, again) between London and Liverpool, and reading The Urban Renaissance six years on, published in November 2005 by Lord Rogers and his Urban Task Force colleagues.
As we whizzed past towns, villages and fields, packed like sardines in our Pendolino, I mused on the messages of this report:- people who can and who have families are moving out of towns, neighbourhoods are neither well-designed nor well-served, transport provision is too dislocated, environmental issues abound, there is confusion at the macro levels about who leads economic development, and who regeneration, and so forth. To see that much of this is true I had only to look around me, out of the window or at my fellow travellers, most of them self-evidently long-distance commuters.
Not all bad news
But it would be unfair to suggest that Rogers and friends simply criticise. They point to impressive areas of development over the past few years, such as the ‘measurable change of culture in favour of towns and cities, reflecting a nationwide commitment to the Urban Renaisance’, and to the much larger numbers of (mostly younger) people now living in city centres.
And that’s before we get to the significant increases in investment in transport infrastructure, brownfield site development and the huge amounts of money (£39bn) allocated over the next five years to the Sustainable Communities Plan across England.
Why then so glum?
This is an issue which no doubt repays much further thought by us all, but the one thing which comes to mind immediately is, why are people in the U.K., one of the most wealthy countries in the world, so pessimistic about the future? There’s a will from the very top to address many serious issues (though we may all have views on the exact hows and whys) and there’s a demonstrated capaibility to achieve this.
What’s needed next is a wider commitment to excellence and a genuine engagement and determination to tackle identified problems energetically; that’s presumably what this latest Urban Task Force is all about. Of course there are enormous problems on the ground, and of course no-one has all the answers, but what I experienced first-hand today was a very different train ride from those I used to take between my home city and the metropolis, in grim, slow and meandering style, and often with little company.
The renewal has started
It’s difficult to remember this at times, but that crowded and fast train today should be a sign not of resigned despondency but of hope. There were lots of people on it, and they were obviously busy and successful folk – which seems as good as any a confirmation that we have arrived at the starting point for the social and economic renaissance we all seek.
Musicians in Many Guises
The music profession is amongst the least clearly defined of occupations. Neither within the profession nor amongst the wider public is there a proper understanding of how everything functions and fits together in this apparently most abstract and etherial of worlds.
I went to a very interesting session with musicians across the northern part of England today.
We were discussing how to bring diverse people in diverse parts of the music profession together, to support them and their work. This as an end point is obviously a challenge too far for one day’s debate, but there are a few things I suspect struck everyone as we got into our allocated task.
Avoiding division in diversity
One of the most difficult things about being ‘a musician’ is that on its own it doesn’t mean a great deal. Some musos work a full week, every week, in a contracted, salaried (but often very poorly paid) job, whilst others wing it in free-lance, or maybe just do the occasional weekend gig for a local pub or whatever… in which case they are probably either also in another job, not as a musician, or are perhaps retired or a student.
Add to that the obvious range of ways in which one ‘can’ be a musician – everything from banjo strummer to band vocalist, to jazzer or church organist, to a player in a major orchestra, or an opera singer, composer / arranger, conductor or, of course, educator / teacher – and it’s easy to see that people in the same ‘trade’ often appear to have little in common. And that’s before we acknowledge properly that amateurs and, say, students – both groups eager to perform in front of an audience for the sake of the experience as such – will have a very different take on things from (relatively) hard-headed pros, determined as ever to make a living of sorts from their skills.
Musicians’ training takes years, but life as a pro is a helter-skelter
The problem for many serious professional musicians, whatever their genre, is that they’ve probably invested most of their conscious lives in developing performing and / or other musical skills. But they are going to spend the rest of their lives ‘competing’ with non-professional musicians who are willing to perform for nothing or next-to-nothing, albeit at usually significantly lower levels of skill.
Amateur and semi-pro groups can take months to prepare a performance; full professionals, if they are to earn their crust, often have to get a concert or show ready, at higher levels of skill, in just a few hours. No wonder then that different parts of the musical community don’t always see eye-to-eye.
The answer is in the image
The public at large has a fairly vague idea about the who and how of life as a professional musician and performer. Most musicians hear quite frequently the view that they are ‘lucky’ because they must ‘love’ what they do.
Well, probably yes, but not to the extent that they don’t need a living wage and a bit of time to themselves, or for their families. (No doubt, just as many amateur performers enjoy the buzz of performance, there are times when the professionals, conversely, would appreciate simply quietly being themselves.)
So here’s a connundrum: Music is a very visible activity, usually done in full public gaze. But it is not an activity which just ‘happens’; it’s one which done properly has demanded years of hard work and determination.
Educate the audience as well as the performer
How then do we square the reality of life as a professional musician with the idea that anyone can do it? Can there be any doubt that the answer to this question, (and to the conflicting interests of different sorts of musicians as such) has to lie in education?
Much more money than before is now going into music education in schools, youth groups and the like; but let’s ensure that at least some small part of this and other available resources is invested in telling people about what the lives of musicians of all types offer and demand.
There’s room for every sort of musician, doing different things in different ways, but confusion exists both within the profession itself, and in the wider public, about quite what it all entails. No surprise then that misunderstandings and misapprehensions can become the order of the day, with performers often the first casualty of this failure to connect image and reality.
See also: Orchestral Salaries In The U.K.
Life In A Professional Orchestra: A Sustainable Career?
The Healthy Orchestra Challenge
British Orchestras On The Brink
Where’s The Classical Music In The Summer? An Idea…
Unsure Start For Sure Start?
The idea of ‘joined up’ services and support for babies and young children and their carers is excellent. The delivery is of course more complex. Sure Start may not as yet be a complete or fully accessed programme, but it is already showing us ways forward which hold promise for the future.
Sure Start’s a great idea. It’s intended to bring together all the support and services required by parents and carers of young children (up to their fourth birthday), so that those perhaps otherwise at risk will be able to flourish alongside their more fortunate classmates-to-be.
A National Evaluation of Sure Start report out this week from Birkbeck College, London, suggests however that at best the impact of Sure Start so far is ‘patchy’. Well, just three years from inception, I’d be rather surprised if it were anything else.
Grounded research
This, of course, is also what the evaluators say. Sure Start is a programme to reverse unconstructive or unfocused cultural patterns of behaviour which have sometimes now been embedded for decades. This is quite a challenge; and at present the programme still struggles to reach some of its target ‘audience’.
It may feel difficult to say this so starkly, but children may have very little chance unless they are offered more care and encouragement than some parents and carers can give. Fortunately, the very large majority of parents love their children; but that, without a synergy between positive examples of how to conduct onesself in adulthood and the opportunities to do so, is a tough call. This I think is what the evaluators are seeing thus far.
Tying future prospects into current contexts
It’s not just provision for small children which is on the agenda here. There’s also the whole question of how adults with the care of these children perceive and respond to their own world.
The message is not necessarily that new mothers (or indeed fathers) need to work full-time right now, but rather that they need to feel engaged in and connected with their communities and the opportunities which are there and on offer – whether joined up services, voluntary and social activities, education and training or whatever else.
Adults who themselves thrive in the world they inhabit are also adults who can care more confidently for their children. If we can help those currently engaged in caring for their young children to see a promising and potentially more prosperous future, then surely these adults will be more comfortably able to enjoy and nurture their small charges now.
Prioritising The Health Priorities
The messages of health promotion are universal; but are they coming over sufficiently effectively to the person in the street?
There are a number of things which anyone can do to enhance their chances of good health – don’t smoke, don’t drink too much, get some exercise and eat sensibly are the main bits of advice; and we could add to that, try to live in a physically healthy environment, make sure you have your immunisations, check ups and the like, and give your kids a good start in life (breastfeed, cuddle and talk to them, etc).
Not really rocket science, is it?
Why local priorities?
Given these universal priorities, the way healthy living is often promoted sometimes puzzles me. The messages are simple, and can I suspect be targeted quite straightforwardly where they have most effect. So why the huge plethora of leaflets, people and campaigns?
Of course some individuals will always want more than the generic message, and that’s good – if they know, they’ll probably tell others – but I suspect that the huge amount of ‘individually packed’ info which comes into play at the level of single primary care trusts is sometimes more confusing than helpful.
There are of course some priorities which apply more to certain places and people than others – smoking and unhealthy eating are two examples – but the wider the campaign, the more effect it will have.
Health promotion is often marketing
Perhaps I’ve got it wrong, but marketing is a specialist activity, and lots of health promotion boils down to marketing. And marketing often seems to work best when the message is simple.
By all means have more info ready in the wings, but perhaps more visible messages from the ‘centre’ would be helpful too. It’s beginning to happen, but it’s not yet connected for everyone.
Sunday Opening Conundrums
Sunday trading laws are antiquated in England, but surprisingly liberal in Scotland. Is there really any sensible rationale for stopping market forces from deciding when shops should be open and closed?
My computer decided to go on strike yesterday evening, so it was up and organised this morning to get down to PC World for a spot of techno-chat…. hardly my favourite way to start Sunday, but better than not getting on with it and thus risking an on-going problem during next week, when I’ll have no time to visit computer megastores.
Anyway, there we were at just before 11 a.m.; and the car park was full, with huddles of folk (mostly chaps) no doubt swapping e-tech tales around the bolted entrance to the shop.
Strange, isn’t it, that we in England are not allowed to do our own thing on the day which is for most of us likely to be free? We have but six hours on Sundays to get our groceries (unless we use the corner shop), go to the garden centre, buy the Christmas presents, or whatever else we fancy.
The Scottish way
But even stranger is that, in Scotland, that place of the Sabbath and the Puritan streak, shops can open whenever they please. None of this ‘no garden centres open on Bank Holiday Sundays’ and so forth. If the shop thinks it will get custom, it can be open as far as I can see.
So why the miserable hours on English Sundays?
One reason is undoubtedly that the Unions have been uncomfortable with Sunday opening. They fear it will intrude on family life and maybe on church attendance (it’s apparently hard luck if your religious observance doesn’t fall on Sundays) or whatever.
This general argument I have some limited sympathy with, but it could easily be addressed by a rule which allows employees currently in retail (but not those entering later on) to refuse to work on Sundays in the future, if it’s so important. I’m not at all sure however that this caution is actually necessary; big stores have a large workforces to call on, and are usually quite flexible towards individual employee preferences for rotas etc.
The English idyll?
Maybe it’s all part of the nostaligia which seems to afflict certain aspects of English life…. misty lanes, bicycles, autumn leaves and cream teas. Change is always threatening to some.
I don’t know for sure that flexible, market-responsive Sunday opening would affect local businesses much one way or the other, but I do know that for lots of workers (health, law, entertainment, catering and much else) the choice to limit their own professional services on Sundays just isn’t there anyway.
These workers apart, people generally have time on Sundays to go out as families, and to catch up on chores and so forth. Constraining unnecessarily ways in which most of us can spend our precious free day / weekend is pointless. If you can buy alcohol till all hours now, why not also bits of computer?
Sunday trading is one commercial area where the Market alone really should be allowed to set the pace.
The Politics Of Aspiration For All
Tony Blair has been unwavering in his determination to tackle low horizons head on. This challenge lies at the bottom of all his thinking on schools and how to improve them. But maybe the voluntary, faith and business groups the Prime Minister so wants to see become involved in schools should ask themselves first what they could do to raise ambition and opportunities for the wider families of the children who most need support.
Education, education, education…. and never conceding the politics of aspiration for all. The two things are, as Prime Minister Tony Blair rightly says in his Guardian article (18 November ’05), intimately connected. For almost all of us, and never more so than for those around the centre-left, this truth is both self-evident and compelling.
Perhaps however the Prime Minister’s idea that ‘there is a huge untapped energy in the private, voluntary and charity sectors for partnerships to help state schools’ is only part of the truth.
From where I look – in Merseyside, as someone who has seen quite a bit as a teacher, social worker, researcher, evaluator, entrepreneur and so on – I’m not sure this hits all the nails on the head. It may hit some; but not all.
The options for partnership action are wider
I’m still unconvinced that Tony Bair’s wished-for partnerships are most urgently needed in schools as such. For me, working on the ground, the politics of ambition has to be much broader than ‘just’ schools – though this is a part of the equation.
Ambition simply inside the school gates is not going to take many children very far. I accept that the Prime Minister’s idea of education-other sector partnerships is (at least for now) a matter of choice; but many of the least blessed parents who, like everyone else, want the best for their children, are less concerned with well-meaning voluntary and faith groups or businesses getting involved with their kids, than they are with getting themselves into work.
For lots of people on Merseyside the main objective is just to get a job – and preferably a decent one. If voluntary and business interests, for instance, want to support disenfranchised people, perhaps they could begin by finding ways to employ them.
There are plenty of currently almost-trained adults on Merseyside whose future trade registration depends on work experience which is very hard to find. (Small businesses say they can’t afford to provide this for apprentices; and most of Merseyside’s economy is small businesses….) So how about starting with opportunities for less privileged parents and carers to show their children what ‘real work’ is, by being able to actually do it, for pay?
Ambition is a cultural thing
I don’t doubt for a minute that Tony Blair genuinely wants to see progress and improvements for our children and their futures. He’s absolutely right to throw down the gauntlet to us all. If we, voluntary, faith, business and other communities, want the best for children, we do indeed need to think hard about where we can best support and encourage.
And we need, too, consistently to challenge complacency, incompetence and / or narrow comfort zones, whether in local communities, schools, hospitals, industry, churches or indeed politics itself. If there are employment, educational, medical or other practitioners who don’t cut the mustard, they need to understand just why this is not acceptable – though not at the (perceived) expense of people ‘at the coalface’ who are in fact doing a good job.
I still wonder however whether we have the right ‘mix’ in all this, as yet. Tony Blair has identified and articulated an important, probably fundamental, problem, in that he sees (and always has seen) education and ambition as key elements of a successful future for everyone. But I’d like to think that all those sectors apparently so keen to go into partnership to support children can grasp the aspirational challenge outside the school gates, as well as inside.
‘Lifestyle’ Versus Value Creation In Merseyside’s Economy
Merseyside’s economy is often criticised for being too public-sector driven. And now the critque has extended to some sharp observations about the type of businesses which are here, as well as just how few of them there are. Maybe a bit of ‘experience swap’ would help us to get a wider picture?
There has been a lot of comment in recent years about the over-reliance of the Merseyside economy on the public sector, over the private one. It’s not so much, we are told, that there’s too much of the former, but rather that there’s not enough of the latter.
But now it seems even that defence is blown. At his quarterly report to the Liverpool Society of Chartered Accountants, corporate financier Steve Stuart has criticised Merseyside’s private sector for being ‘life-style’ at the expense of ‘value creation’.
This seems fair comment. Apparently, of 27,000 VAT-registered businesses in the area, 26,000 employed fewer than five people – and less than 700 had a turnover of more than £2m.
Too cosy or too costly?
The problem seems to be that most local businesses are averse to interference from outsiders, and like to do things their own way. This is a situation for which Mr Stuart holds local business advisers in part responsible.
Given the choice of external ‘interference’, or keeping things within the family, nearly all business people in these parts chooses to stay cosy. Not many want to take on the extra cost of private equity funding.
Well, I’m not surprised. Who around here has even heard of private equity funding? Of course, those in the world of banking are familiar on a day-to-day basis with this sort of arrangement; but you don’t bump into equity financiers on every corner in these parts.
This is, sadly, a part of the country where having A-levels is quite a considerable achievement for some folk… and where the difference between a pass degree and a doctorate is often seen – if it’s understood at all – as an irrelevant distinction. So not many of our home-grown entrepreneurs are bothered about the fancy stuff.
Who’s responsible for the Merseyside economy?
But before we ‘blame’ anyone too much for this unambitious state of affairs, for inhabiting such cosy comfort zones, it might be interesting to ask exactly who we think is ‘responsible’ for the health of our local economy. And my answer is, I’m not sure anyone really knows.
For my part, I regret that local people seem to need to be so cosy; but I don’t think it reasonable, given the claustrophobic and stultifying circumstances in which they survived until quite recently, to expect everyone in Merseyside who owns a business to want to go Big Time.
Before we see too much progress here I suspect we shall have to shake things up a bit – and one way might, dare I say it, be to bring in business ‘advisers’ from other parts of the country… and invite our home grown ones to work in differently-challenged business environments elsewhere, for the experience this would bring of other ways of doing things.
Then we’d all get a view of how green the grass is (or, depending, isn’t) on the other side of the fence. And that might really make some of us take ownership of pushing our local economy forward.
The Eco-Community is All of Us
Building sustainability into community life will take a real shift in how we do things; but, just like weight-loss diets, it will only work for most of us if it’s something we find enjoyable and actually want to do.
It’s been very interesting to see how everyone has responded (on- and off-line) to recent postings here on Eco issues.
I started with a piece on ‘allotments for all’, wandered through some thoughts on Tesco and the other superstores, and have so far ended up with ideas around building communities in which sustainable living becomes part of the common, shared experience. (All these postings are listed below, if you want to have another look.)
The theme which is emerging for me is that we (literally) can’t afford to make sustainability into a ‘do it because it’s good for you’ exercise. It’s too important for that. And evidence elsewhere (e.g. with weight-loss diets) shows that people simply won’t carry on doing what they should unless they really believe it’s for the best and, critically, it fits into their pattern/s of living.
So, we can get a little way with house-to-house collections (Liverpool does these too; and it still has almost the lowest recycling turnover of any place around), and we can indeed troop up to Tesco or wherever with our recycle bags, when we go shopping (one lot of petrol, two missions). But some people don’t have cars, though they may have babies, or no job, or boring, isolated days…..
Fitting the practice to the people
This is why the ‘little but often’ approach might work for certain folk. It’s nice to have places to go, especially if in a good cause (i.e. recycling and community-building, in this case); and it’s nice to have things to grow, as people would if they had back-yard allotments – which is of course also where the green waste would be composted.
I strongly suspect – though we’d need much more evidence to be sure – that giving people reasons to get out and about, even if only to recycle stuff and meet up with neighbours (see Eco-Inclusion), would help to develop local relationships, and thus the community as a whole. In some ways, it’s like parents waiting at the school gates – but in this case it can be everyone, not just carers of small children.
And, if previous experience serves me right, meeting up informally but for a purpose also gives everyone in a locality reason to become more invoved in their community, and to make this more of a reality in terms of common interests and ambitions for the future.
A new sort of community?
Get people to relax and talk to each other, and you never know where it will take them (or you). Giving them an excellent reason to do this (recycling) adds impetus to the process.
I’m trying to think out new ways to connect, which also take account of eco-considerations – without adding further rules and constraints to people’s everyday lives.
It would be impossible to persuade everyone to give up cars and all the other things we’ve grown to think of as essential for our lives; but adding a bit of community spirit might ‘include in’ more, and more varied, people of all kinds to the very necessary task of tryng to sustain the eco-communities in which we, everyone of us, have to live.
Eco-Inclusive?
Why is recycling so often seen as something to be conducted only in grim carparks? Why can’t it (at least in the case of small amounts of material) be viewed as an opportunity for people actually to get together in their communities?
There have been some very interesting debates buzzing around this week. Not only have we (some of us, anyway) been hearing about Enterprise in all its manifectations, social and otherwise, but there have been big debates about how we should get a grip on environmental issues such as emissions and sustainability.
Mulling these things over, I also happened to come across some stuff on how difficult things currently are for towns and ports dependent on farming and fisheries. It strikes me that’s not really too much different from some of the issues in the disadvanatged areas I sometimes work in. They all need ‘new’ ways to build their economies, and to enhance their social and business connectivities.
Which led me to think more about the Eco- aspects of Enterprise.
Let me ask, why do we make our domestic recycling facilities so grim? Do they really all have to look like blots on the landscape? Isn’t there some way that at least some local recycling facilities could be part of the community ‘offer’?
The joined-up alternative
What would it look like if some recycling became a feature of community connection? Somewhere where people could pop in as they pass to the shops or park, and where you could at the same time join friends for a coffee, let the kids play, or visit the library?
In the past few years bookshops have at least twigged that people who buy books also like tea and cakes; it’s proved to be good for custom. Why isn’t the same applied to the idea of recycling? (I’m not talking here of the mega-visit with the car full of all sorts; that’s still a superstore carpark job.)
If the theme were ‘little and often’, and the facilities alongside recycling permitted, recycling points could become community hubs which local people visited becaue it’s a good place to go – recycling to one side (preferably covered), playspace and coffee shop / library / community facility / adult education venue of whatever sort at the other…. with the feelgood factor guaranteed, as we do our eco-duty.
The imaginative entrepreneur
Maybe the ‘problem’ is that eco- / recycling is perceived as a green wellie activity; not something for entrepreneurs, unless they’re of the ‘social’ sort. Let’s move from the vague notion that only Environmental Officers – who might be thought of (doubtless unfairly) as a pretty puritan lot – should have a remit for recycling.
Let’s see if this whole activity can become a central part of community life. If it gives people with their small bags of recyclable material, their pushchairs and their shopping an opportunity to enjoy half an hour’s chat, that would be really great.
Then maybe people can find out more about how they all connect and what in common they have or would like…. never underestimate the importance of actual person-to-person encounters when thinking about capacity building in communities!
And if local entrepreneurs can use any of this to develop or tempt business, that’s better still.
Social Enterprise Day – Today!
Social Enterprise is a bit of a mystery to some people… so today is a chance to find out more.
Today is Social Enterprise Day. Perhaps you knew that already, or perhaps you didn’t; but it’s also Social Enterprise Week, focusing primarily on young people, so there is bound to be a bit of media activity.
So what is Social Enterprise?
The Government’s definition of it is ‘a business with primarily social objectives whose surpluses are principally reinvested for that purpose inthe business or the community, rather than being driven by the need to maximise profit for shareholders and owners.’
In other words, social businesses are set up to ‘make a difference’ for society or the environment.
More of them than you think…
Recent research has shown that there are some 15,000 UK businesses which are social enterprises. That’s about £18 billion per year generated in the economy, and around 475,000 jobs. This includes activities as varied as Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant, Cafedirect, and the Eden Project, or Liverpool’s own Furniture Resource Centre.
You can find out more about all this from the Social Enterprise Coalition or from the Enterprise Week website.
Dreaming Realist 