Category Archives: Regeneration, Renewal And Resilience
A Civil Society University For The U.K.?
The place where non-state, non-business public activities challenge the assumptions of wealthy organisations and the ruling classes or prevailing consensus is often referred to as ‘civil society’. A proposal that this place have its own university in the U.K., to scrutinise and develop the core skills and specialist knowledge base of the ‘third sector’ of the economy, is now being taken seriously.
PrimeTimers is a London-based social enterprise promoting cross-sector transfers of people, ideas and methods. In Autumn 2005 they held a conference, Agenda for Change, from which emerged the idea of a ‘Civil Society University’. This idea is also a response to the UK Government’s review of the Future Role of the Third Sector in Social and Economic Regeneration.
A key concept underlying the idea is that third sector values and practices should be submitted to rigorous testing in terms of intellectual integrity, reasoned debate and scientific research. Such an approach has welcome and important implications for how civil society might develop over the next few decades and beyond.
Multiple conceptualisation, multiple benefits
Like many other good ideas, the Civil Society University concept
has also emerged in other places – for instance, at a Council of Europe conference in September 2005 and in a submission dated December 2005 to the Organisation of American States from the Permanent Forum of Civil Society Organisations.
Civil society is the arena where the right of free speech and association is exercised to promote many and diverse causes for what their proponents believe to be the greater good. Often these beliefs challenge the prevailing or most powerful consensus; yet rarely is attention given to the skills and knowledge which could best support such a challenge.
The benefits which might accrue from rigorous scrutiny by the academy, by those who practise their skills in higher education, are what make the idea of a Civil Society University appeal to many involved in widely diverse parts of the third sector.
Education, not ‘just’ training
There is a real need for parts of the third sector to move away from its historic philanthropic roots towards a sharper professional focus. Volunteers (nonetheless, preferably trained) will always be at the heart of at least some third sector activities; but they usually cannot provide the hard headedness which is required in running large-scale or complex modern organisations.
Indeed, thus far it would be difficult even to estimate what added value (or not?) would derive from a more fully functioning and defined third sector key skills ‘toolbox’. And the same applies to issues around third sector career structure and professional development. This is where the Civil Society University fits in.
Challenge and opportunity
For some the proposal to subject the third sector and its operation could pose a perceived threat, but that does not do the idea justice.
Those who share a concern to ‘make things better’ will more likely welcome the chance to support a move to do exactly that, to ‘make good things more effective still’.
What could be better than to subject our ideas and practices to a form of scrutiny – always itself open to scrutiny and challenge – intended to make the very best of the resources, people and commitment available to effect a more equitable and civil society?
Contacts
The Civil Society University is proposed by Professor Martin Albrow, Dr Mary Chadwick and Brent Thomas, all of PrimeTimers.
They can be contacted at info@primetimers.org.uk.
Seven Reasons For Optimism In 2007
The cynics will always be with us ;and they have a point. Nonetheless, for many people things are as good as, if not better than, they have ever been. We can – and should – take a responsible view of events, but without denying that in many ways 2007 could be very positive for almost all of us. Here are some reasons to be optimistic as we enter the new year.
The media, as ever, is full of reasons to be gloomy as we enter 2007. But in reality we all know that looking on the bright side at least some of the time is good for us.
So here are some reasons to be optimistic in 2007:
1. The Environment
Global warming and climate change are at last receiving the attention they should – and most commentators still reckon we have a good chance of doing something about it if we all make the effort, right now. [And in the meantime, the weather in Britain is being very kind at a time of year when freezing fog – ‘pea-soupers‘, remember them? – used to be the norm.]
2. Health
Life expectancy (in the U.K.) is the highest it has ever been, and people are healthier than ever before. 60 is the new 40, so it is said; and you won’t have to retire at a set age any more if you don’t want to. [But if you do retire early, you’ll still have lots to do, now that expectations have risen so much.]
3. The Economy
Inflation and interest rates are still relatively low (remember 18% mortgages?) and employment is still high, after a long period before the Millennium of horrendous worklessness for millions. [And wages are going up, or have been levelled out more fairly, for many ‘ordinary’ worlers now.]
4. Life-long Learning
Opportunities for education and training for everyone have never been more wide-open and accessible. [You may need to take a student loan, but in many countries that’s how it’s always been – and the loan interest rate is amazingly low, plus you don’t have to pay at all if you don’t earn a reasonable wage; and for many vocational courses there are no fees – so everyone can benefit.]
5. Housing
Houses are warmer, more energy-efficient and better designed
than at any previous time. [And more people in the UK own their own homes than ever before.]
6. Open Society
If you need to find something out, the chances of doing so have improved greatly with Freedom of Information. [And the internet gives you a view of the world which can open doors on cultures, knowledge and ideas which previous generations couldn’t even dare to dream about.]
7. Laughter
At long last, it is being recognised that it’s OK to enjoy yourself – laughter and fun are now officially good for you!
The glass is half full
Yes, I know each of these points has downsides, and it’s always easier (and less effort) to see the glass as half empty rather than
half full. But I bet there are few people who recall life as it was many years ago who would actually choose to turn the clock back on a lot of things. And there remain, sadly, many people in other parts of the world than the West to whom our way of life seems to be unimaginably privileged.
Let’s make 2007 a year when we explore how much better still things can be if we perceive what’s good about our lives, as well as what’s in need of improvement. Why not ‘count our blessings’, if we’re lucky enough to be able to? Then we can concentrate on helping to make things good for other people too.
Maybe it’s time to be brave, to stop the criticism from the sidelines and to start having the courage to take active responsibility for at least some of what happens. Let’s try being positive, and see where it takes us.
Science And Regeneration
Science may sometimes be difficult for people in regeneration to understand; and perhaps this doesn’t always matter. But we do all need to see what science in its operation and applications has to offer. For optimal outcomes at every level dialogue between scientists and regeneration practitioners is critical.
Why is science important in regeneration? And why, if so, is it invisible?
There are many answers both these questions, but three of the most straightforward are:
* Science is a huge part of the knowledge economy, which in turn is a critical part modern western life; we have moved on from standard production to an ideas based economy.
* Science in its applications is both a ‘cause’ of and a ‘cure’ for the environmental issues which are by the day becoming more pressing.
* Science is often invisible because many of us find it incomprehensible and, in any case, it tends to be tucked away in universities, industrial laboratories, business parks and at the more daunting end of the quality media. (We won’t even think here about science and the popular press…)
Plus of course science is as incomprehensible to significant numbers of journalists and politicians as it is to many members of the general public.
Science policy
But science is not the same as science policy. The former tends (though probably less so than in the past) towards more theoretical research, even if often externally funded; the latter is about the intentional influence and impact of scientific (and technological) knowledge on our lives.
The incomprehension of many about science is unsurprising. But impressive scientific knowledge in itself is less important for regeneration strategies than is an understanding of where the application of science can take us, and how to get there. I can drive a car, and I know where I would like it to take me, but I would be hard pressed to construct one.
And science can offer not one destination but several if it is ‘driven’ well…. How about large-scale construction and investment opportunities, enhancement of the skills base, graduate retention and synergy with existing enterprise, plus the kudos of internationally significant research, for a start?
Is there a downside?
It would be foolish to suggest that all science is ‘good’. Publicly contentious work is another reason why understanding what science can do is important – the GM food and MMR vaccination debates, however well-informed or not, come to mind and are frequently confused issues for the non-specialist. But even disallowing for these sort of concerns there are still costs to the advancement of science and technology, not least environmental.
What science and technology ‘cause’ they can also however often mitigate. If we know, say, how ‘expensive’ in carbon terms a particular innovation or development is, we also usually know what to do to mitigate or turn around that cost. Planning and design, for instance, are frequently critical. to best practice.
In a regeneration proposal, has economy of energy been a major consideration? Is the infrastructure connected in ways which reduce negative environmental impact? Are the plans sustainable in all the ways, environmental, economic and at the human level, that they should be? Science of many sorts can help us towards the answers.
Moving away from traditional perspectives
Science and technology are not respectful of the public-private boundaries which have traditionally shaped regeneration. Knowledge, once that genie has emerged, cannot be put back in the bottle. Like water, it will flow wherever it meets least resistance or most encouragement.
Given the gargantuan sums of money which some science and technology require in their developmental phases and application, it is surprising that so little public attention is generally given to where Big Science facilities are located. (The Daresbury Laboratory in the North West of England is a good example of enhanced regeneration when world-class science is secured by active regional lobbying.)
It’s time to move away from the idea that all regeneration requires is a science park tucked away in a corner of our strategic plan, and we need also to think big about what it all means. For the best regeneration outcomes scientists and regeneration policy makers must to be in communication with each other all the time – even if they need an active ‘translator’ to achieve this. Neither is likely to procure the very best opportunities from the other, if no-one is talking.
A version of this article was published, as ‘The appliance of science affects us all’, in New Start magazine on 24 November 2006.
Conference Diversity Index: The Sustainable Development Of The Liverpool City Region
A conference supported with public money on the sustainable development of a city region is obviously a matter of considerable public interest. It needs, therefore, also to be a conference in which deliberative democracy plays a part, and in which the diversity of all those ultimately involved is acknowledged. It also needs to support easy accessibility in terms of attendance and recorded output.
A Conference Diversity Index is being developed on this website to see how well these requirements are met by conferences such as this.
I have already written on this weblog (and in New Start magazine) about my intention to develop a Conference Diversity Index. I have also shared my concern on this site about how Liverpool, perhaps even more than other places, is a location where local women in visibly influential positions are not the norm.
How can organisations, conferences, presentations which concern public life and which involve public money (for instance, public sector attendance or speakers) offer maximum value when those actually involved do not at all reflect the composition of the population they seek to consider?
Is diversity essential for policy-making?
* How can genuinely wider engagement occur at a meaningful level when those most visible all reflect the power and influence
of only one part of the population?
* How can the understandings and experience of everyone be seen to be respected in such circumstances?
* How can we be at all sure that the decisions taken in the wake of these events offer best value for money when only small parts of the diversity even those well qualified to speak whose lives will be affected have been visibly involved?
What follows is a first attempt at a case study to arrive at possible answers to some of these questions. In it I have tried to establish the extent to which the conference addresses matters of public interest, and compared that with the extent to which it acknowledges issues of diversity of experience and accessibility of outcomes, awarding up to five ‘stars’ for good value.
Conference themes
The Sustainable Development of the Liverpool City Region event is a one-day ‘strategic’ conference organised by the Waterfront Conference Company of London, at the Radisson SAS Hotel in Liverpool on 5th December 2006.
The conference concerns ‘how Liverpool and Merseyside can develop sustainability’, discussing strategic development issues, removing the barriers to development, gateways to Liverpool and Merseyside and transport links, and getting the most from leadership structures.
>> Merseyside remains an area where there is considerable poverty, where fewer women , working class males and people from ethnic minorities have high educational qualifications and /
or well-paid employment, where public transport is a critical issue (fewer car-owning families), where health is a challenging issue, where there are very few women at the most senior levels of local public life and decision-making.
>> Diversity of experience and role models is therefore a central concern.
Score for relevance to public issues: ***** [5 stars out of a possible maximum of 5]
Speakers
13 speakers, all well-known in their fields, are listed in the brochure. 12 of them are male. Liverpool is not the professional base of the only female speaker.
>> This gender distribution does not remotely reflect the
distribution on men and women living and working in the ‘Liverpool City Region’ – or, indeed, the country as a whole. Nor does the list of speakers reflect any evident ethnic or community diversity.
>> Discussions of sustainable futures, encouraging businesses, transport, environmental ‘friendliness’, ‘barriers to development’ and the like are all issues concerning everyone. These are not issues which can only be addressed at high levels by white males, however impressive their particular expertise.
>> The list of speakers (as opposed one hopes to the content of the speakers’ talks) offers no positive role model, or encouragement, for most people in Liverpool, to the view that their experience and opinions count.
Score for diversity of speakers: – [No stars out of a
maximum of 5: fewer than 20% of the speakers are not white males.]
Attendees and fees
Those who ‘should’ attend include private investors, local authority, regional and national public servants through to ‘environmental and other pressure groups’. Fees for these various categories are respectively £468.83, £351.33 and £233.83. It is however possible to purchase the CD-Rom of the conference papers alone for £179.19.
>> Large numbers of those attending can be expected to be public officials, or involved in financial dealings in the public domain. They must pay quite a lot of money frm the public purse to attend (and to be paid their publicly-funded salaries for their day’s work as attenders).
>> The reduced rate is too high for most local and community bodies to become involved; and the cost of the CD-Rom is, frankly, exhorbitant.
Score for accessibility: ** [2 stars out of a maximum of 5 : There is a reduced rate for voluntary bodies, and at least a CD-Rom is available, and therefore potentially accessible somehow.]
Overall score
We have seen that this conference is about issues of central importance to Liverpool and Merseyside. It addresses matters which concern everyone. Yet it offers no acknowledgement of diversity of experience, and little in the way of accessibility in respect of outcomes. Significant opportunities to lead by engagement and personal example have here been lost.
I therefore award this conference an overall diversity value score of ONE STAR out of a possible five.
Impressions Of Prague
Prague is much more than a ‘great city’; it is testament to a people who have within easy living memory overcome enormous odds. When this is combined with the depth of history and the spectacular cultural vistas of the city, Prague becomes irresistible. Yet, to thrive in the twenty-first century Prague must also take in its stride challenges of a very contemporary kind – the influx of a myriad visitors and of modern investment capital. Perhaps lessons might be learnt from experience elsewhere.
I’ve been to Prague quite a few times in the past decade or so.
My first few visits were in the company of musicians in the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, who have a very real relationship with that city – the Orchestra’s Conductor Laureate is Libor Pesek KBE, the feted international maestro who over the years has done such great things with his Liverpool colleagues. The RLPO, with Pesek, was the first-ever non-Czech orchestra to open the famous Prague Spring Festival.
And then, more recently, I have visited Prague on my own as part of my work with European Renaissance, which of course brought a whole new perspective to my experience. So I’ve now seen a little of Prague through the eyes both of artists and of business people. What good fortune.
So much to see and learn
This is a city I could never tire of. As I’ve learned to navigate Prague’s historic heart I’ve realised you could explore forever – always the mark of a great capital city. First, one finds the physical place, where things lie; and then the depth of history and culture starts slowly to unfold. Why is that statue there? Why did that building survive, but not the one next to it? What’s the story behind this type of trade or that kind of cultural offering?
There are things which will always stay in one’s mind: The enormity of Staromestske Nam, the beautiful cobbled old town square, which has seen such extrordinary events over the centruries. The dramatic beauty of adjoining Tynsky Chram, the Church of Our Lady before Tyn, backed by its intimate piazza cafes and boutiques. The fact that Vaclavske Namesti, Wencelas Square, scene of the Velvet Revolution, is in reality a central shopping boulevard with Narodni Muzeum, the striking National Museum, towering above that boulevard at its furthest point from the river.
Then there’s the majesty of Katedrala Sv. Vita, St. Vitus’ Cathedral, and the attached area of Prazsky Hrad, the Castle, approached from the old town via the Vltava River (Moldau) over Karlov Most, Charles Bridge. How could one not be
eternally taken with all this?
Living heritage
All these splendours unfold before you even get to the ancient Josafov (Jewish Quarter), huddled, heart-achingly small, down near the river and the Rudulfinum with its Dvorakova Sin, the Dvorak Concert Hall, home of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra.
Nor, on this ‘virtual tour’, have you yet seen the great triangular Obecni Dum (Municipal House, with its concert halls, including the Smetana Hall, home of the Prague Symphony Orchestra), at the other end of the historic quarter.
Nor indeed, until you have crossed back across Charles Bridge with its painters and jewellers, then travelling on high up to the Castle once more, have you viewed the contrast from the mighty symphonic halls which is found in the tiny, ancient, craft workshops of Zlata Ulicka (Golden Lane).
All these venues are alive with artists and artisans exercising their skills much as they might have done some centuries ago.
Big changes
Prague is nonetheless a modern city, changing all the time. It has lost its grey, concrete sadness, imposed for so long by the Soviet authorities, in favour of a cosmopolitan , almost festive, demeanour. Now the city centre is bedecked by art works of all sorts, some of them huge and eye-catching if not always demure.
Nothing illustrates these changes better than Duta Hlava, the Architects’ Club situated by Betlemska Kaple in Betlemska Nam (Bethlehem Chapel and Square) in the Stare Mesto, the Old Town. The first time I encountered this underground cafe-restaurant was a decade or more ago; the best way to descibe it then would have been ‘bohemian’.
When we last dined there, fairly recently, it could have been described, instead, as suffering from its own success: it was much smarter, heaving with well-heeled people (the students seemed to have migrated elsewehere) and the serving staff were stretched to the limit.
Commercial vs. nostalgia?
And much the same applies to the commecial and retail centre of Prague, based around Wenceslas Square. More cyncially savvy commentators may deplore the arrival in the Czech Republic of Marks and Spencer, Debenhams and Tesco, but these surely are seen by others as indicators of the business coming-of-age of this extraordinary country.
To compete and develop in the international market Prague needs these stores, as indeed they need Prague. There is no doubt that the citizens of Prague will need to keep their wits about them as they emerge even more into the gaze of international capital and all that comes with it. But the costs of not doing so, especially in a state where until so recently the autonomy of the market did not (officially) exist, would be unthinkable to most.
Here is a city on the move but with its heritage very largely still intact. Long may it stay so.
Challenges and opportunities
Much of what Prague offers is priceless. With care, even more of it could be. As in other cities – Liverpool in the U.K. amongst them – there are opportunities which as yet have not been fully grasped. These include a reliably consistent level of delivery, especially in some public services.
But Prague has the huge advantage of having seen how other European cities have dealt (or not) with such challenges. No two situations are identical, but there is enough commonality in the scenarios to learn the lessons, one city from another.
The uniqueness of Prague lies elsewhere, in the very heart of this capital city. That is what Prague must defend and develop for itself.
This article is also published (as ‘Prague: The Must-See Western European City’) on the European Renaissance website.
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Free Enterprise Moves East: Doing Business from Prague to Vladivostok
Liverpool 2007 And 2008 – Different Emphases, Similar Opportunities?
Liverpool is excitedly preparing for its big years in 2007 (the city’s 800th anniversary) and 2008 (the European Capital of Culture year). With such a long and dramatic history of diaspora, who knows what the city will be like by the end of the celebrations? The scope for enterprise – both in Liverpool and by other cities and regions – to build relationships across Europe and beyond is enormous.
BBC Radio 3 hosted a fascinating Free Thinking event in Liverpool’s FACT building last weekend, with presentations, discussions and performances by an impressively eclectic array of debaters and artists. And, perhaps appositely, the very next day the City launched its initial plans for the 2008 European Capital of Culture year.
One of the sessions at the BBC event focussed on the question, ‘Is Liverpool an English city?’. ‘Everyone in the country knows Liverpool is special – and unique,’ says the blurb, ‘but do they secretly mean it’s “unenglish”?’
Sadly, I couldn’t be at the debate, but it’s an interesting question – and one that, although I’ve lived in Liverpool for over three decades, I’d find difficult to answer. All of us have only one shot at life, so comparisons are difficult, but is it usual for people who have been resident in a place for over a third of a century still to be asked where they ‘come from’?
Ports are meeting places for the world
Working up the hill, away from the ports in the education and cultural sectors, it actually took me a while to realise that for some of my fellow citizens, Liverpool’s maritime history is the city’s autograph feature. Indeed, until the Heseltine interventions in the 1980s it was not even possible really to see much of that history. At least the reclamation of the southern docks for retail and leisure use (the Tate Gallery and Maritime Museum are situated there) helped us to see what an important port Liverpool was – and in fact still is, for freight rather than passengers.
So Liverpool is cosmopolitan in a particular way. In the mid-eighteenth century that one port was involved with 40% of the world’s trade. Liverpool is therefore home to many whose predecessors reached the city by sea, or who in some cases had intended to travel onwards, but halted when they got this far.
We have communities of several generations from the Caribbean and parts of Africa, from China (Liverpool’s China town is a large and important feature of the city) and the Indian sub-continent, who travelled from the West; and, from Eastern and Central Europe, reached us from the East. With these historic influxes has come of plethora of religious and cultural understandings – Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Orthodox and many others.
Ireland and Continental Western Europe
What is less evident in our overt cultural mix is the direct influence of Southern Europe – though it is certainly there, especially in the sometimes overarching ethos of Roman Catholicism and Southern Ireland (Eire). And then there is the strongly Protestant Orange Order influence of Northern Ireland (Ulster), whose descendants in Liverpool, like their southern counterparts, have traditionally lived siloed in tight-knit communities with little knowledge or tolerance of other ways of seeing the world.
As is well known, the clash of Southern and Northern Irish influences (Catholics ‘versus’ Protestants) was only be resolved when, in the 1980s and ‘90s, the leaders of Liverpool’s two great cathedrals (Bishop David Sheppard and Archbishop Derek Worlock) by their personal example called time on this damaging friction.
Liverpool 2007 – 800 years and proud of it
Given the particular diasporas from which Liverpool has benefited historically, it will be fascinating to see what the city can make of its opportunity to shine on the world and European stage in 2007 and 2008. There are a number of factors here, even apart from the celebrations as such, which should enhance the opportunities for Liverpool at this time – amongst them, the massive privately funded Grosvenor ‘Liverpool 1’ commercial development (at £950 million reputedly the largest project of this kind in Europe) which is currently taking root in the heart of the city centre.
The 2007 event will celebrate Liverpool’s 800th Anniversary. (The city’s charter was signed in 1207.) This surely is the opportunity of a lifetime to acknowledge and embrace the rich and diverse cultures and traditions of the city, to look back at our past but also forward – not only to what follows in 2008, but also much further into the future.
This is in a very real sense ‘Liverpool’s year’, a ‘birthday’ (as the locals insist on calling it) worthy of pulling out the stops. 800 years as a city, even if others can also claim it (Leeds’ charter is also dated 1207), is an important milestone.
The birthday party will be for the people of Liverpool. Others will be very welcome to join us – what’s a party without honoured guests? – but the style, the scene itself, needs to be determined by those, the citizens of Liverpool, whose ‘birthday’ it is.
Liverpool 2008 – European Capital of Culture
But what does Liverpool’s history mean for its year as European Capital of Culture? It has consistently been said that it was ‘the people’, Liverpudlians themselves, who won this award. Is there a danger that 2008 could be ‘more of the same’, an extension of the scenario for 2007?
If we return to our first question, is Liverpool “unenglish”?, we need to note that, so it is said, some 60% of Liverpudlians have never even been to London (and I’d guess that maybe 90% of people living in England outside the North West have as yet never been to Liverpool).
Given this situation, we must ask how many of the citizens of Liverpool so far have a real knowledge of Europe outside the influences we have already noted? How many are fluent in other European languages? How many have business or other formal connections across Europe? The answer is surely that here is a city at the start in every way of its journey into the twenty-first century.
Unique opportunity
Liverpool 2007 / 8 offers a unique opportunity to establish two-way connections with the city. The very next day after the BBC debate on Liverpool’s ‘englishness’ or otherwise, the city launched its initial programme for the 2008 year with a grand civic event in St. George’s Hall, and another one in London for the wider world. 2007 is for Liverpool; 2008 is intended for the world,
2008 offers business and cultural entrepreneurs from around Europe and beyond a real chance to establish themselves in the city, whilst Liverpool’s eyes are firmly fixed on the global stage – and, we hope, theirs on us.
The full extent of the outward-facing Liverpool ‘offer’ for 2007 and especially 2008 remains to be seen – there is increasing confidence that something interesting and worthwhile will be made of these unique opportunities.
The scope for inward investment, connection and synergy with elsewhere is however already established as truly enormous.
Here is a city ripe for growth of every kind, and increasingly ready to jump at the chance. This is a virtuous circle for anyone enterprising enough to recognise it.
Global players
Whether Liverpool is “unenglish” we must leave the BBC debaters to determine. Whether that same city is now positioned once again to take its place as a major player at the European and global levels we can answer for ourselves.
The answer is Yes.
And, in contrast to the last time Liverpool was a great trading city, when the odds were stacked against ‘outsiders’, this time Liverpool will be trading on an even playing field with its external partners.
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This article is also published (as Liverpool: Ripe For Growth in 2007 And 2008) on the European Renaissance website.
The BURA ‘Futures’ Debate
The 2006 British Urban Regeneration Conference (BURA) conference ‘Futures’ Debate raised many important issues. Critical to all these, if regeneration is ultimately to be effective, will be increasing focus on (1) the implications of global warming and sustainability, and (2) the challenging task of mutual ‘translation’ between the many stakeholders in any developing programme, to ensure that understandings and ideas are shared and can evolve.
I went to the ‘Futures’ Debate at the British Urban Regeneration Association (BURA) Annual Conference in Milton Keynes, on October 11th. The debate was a vigorous affair, chaired and led by BURA Director Jackie Sadek, a woman who knows how to keep the exchange of ideas flowing.
The format comprised an introductory address by Government Minister Richard Caborn, two minute slots each for six leading regeneration practitioners, and responses from a ‘jury’ of expert witnesses. Then the discussion was opened to the floor – more than a hundred practitioners and attendant media representatives from around the country and beyond.
The central issue under debate was how we all perceived the future agenda of regeneration in the U.K.
The event was, as Jackie Sadek herself said, a ‘rollercoaster’ of deeply informed give-and-take, covering matters from the micro and to the massively macro. No single brief report could do it justice, but I will try here to give a feel for the ideas which in retrospect caught my attention, at least.
Keeping the Government’s attention
Leadership and ‘guidance’ from on high were felt by several speakers to be missing from the regeneration agenda. There’s plenty of regulation – to judge from comments, some of it outdated – but too little real enablement. Some said that governmental attention spans are too short; regeneration is a long-term proposition. Others criticised the ‘constant’ changes which they saw in regulation and funding, and wished for more attention to large-scale infrastructure.
No-one, however, suggested that the government is not committed to regeneration as a seriously long-term venture; and most speakers thought it can be demonstrated by ‘real’ examples that regeneration does work. There’s scope here for dialogue at the highest levels, if common positions between protagonist practitioners can be elucidated.
Silos and scale
Regeneration still is not joined up, if we are to believe the comments of many speakers. We continue to operate in silos (including fiscally; no
Where’s The Soul In Regeneration, Renewal And Renaissance?
Are ‘regeneration’, ‘renewal’ and ‘renaissance’ different? Perhaps they are. Regeneration is predominantly a physical thing, whilst ‘renewal’ and ‘renaissance’ are increasingly about the real meaning, the ‘soul’ of the regenerational process. The journey from one to the other is a transition from the literal to the artistic and cultural. But how best to get there?
How can regeneration work so that it is in the end more than just developing markets for investors, important though that financial interface is?
Experience of regeneration and renewal in the UK tells us that it is a mixture of positive and negative. As numerous reports (including Lord Rogers’) have shown, there are things which have been done well, and things which have had seriously unfortunate outcomes. Both sorts of experience need to be recognised for the valuable lessons they offer.
The different ‘voices’ of regeneration, renewal and renaissance
There are several perspectives here: those of the community activist, the politician, the business operator, the planner, the economic strategist. Only rarely however is the voice of the artist heard; and this is where it may be possible to make a difference. Arts and culture, ‘high’ or less so, can give people common cause, something in which, if presented positively, they can all share and become involved.
From that can arise also a common sense of purpose and direction. People who feel involved feel a stakehold and ownership. This is what makes regeneration into renewal, and then into renaissance. This is the essence of the journey from bricks and mortar to genuine community.
Hope Street Liverpool
An example of this approach is the renaissance of Liverpool’s Hope Street. This process, over more than a decade, evolved from a deeply held ‘grass-roots’ conviction that Hope Street deserved the very best of public realms, to give everyone a sense of pride in what was slowly estabished as the Hope Street Quarter. Hope Street is home of the city’s two great cathedrals, two universities and of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and the Everyman Theatre, not to mention the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA), Blackburne House and much, much more.
Yet on first acquaintance Hope Street looked tired, dirty and possibly unsafe. Hardly an appropriate ambience for world-class cultural institutions which are found from one end to the other of this historic thoroughfare. HOPES: The Hope Street Association, a voluntary ‘arts and regeneration’ charity, was therefore formed to change this sad state of affairs.
Nonetheless, it took enormous focus and years of hard work by volunteers to move the authorities (and even some of the major institutions) to perceive what was evident to those with eyes to see: Hope Street is a place with soul, a place for creative and exciting people with ideas. In other words, it was and is the ideal place from which to nurture renaissance and renewal, to the benefit of both local people (more visitors and customers, more jobs, more fun, more sense of community…) and the city’s wider economy.
The soul of renewal
There has to be a way to get to the ‘soul’ of renewal, to its ownership by people in a way that enables economic benefit but does not preclude the human reality which lies behind the more formal contexts of the action.
Again, Hope Street offers a (cautionary) example. The Summer of 2006 at last saw the completion of the long-sought £3 m. public realm works programme. Everyone was delighted and, after delays on the part of some authorities, eventually there was the opportunity to celebrate in the biggest street festival since the Silver Jubilee visit of H.M. the Queen in 1977. But at the very same time those who had worked so hard as volunteers to bring the transformation about found they had in many ways been displaced by new commercial and corporate interests who now at last saw the potential of the Hope Street Quarter.
The immediate parallel which springs to mind here is with Hoxton and Shoreditch in London, where many creative people say they have been driven out, ‘displaced‘ by high prices. The parallel, though valid, is not however exact. In this instance it is those who who give their activities voluntarily who are at risk of displacement, perhaps at least as much as individual artists and non-corporate creative professionals.
Regeneration for whom?
The jury remains out on the extent to which those grass-roots visionaries who dreamed of a great future for Hope Street Quarter will continue to be central to the area’s destiny. What sort of ‘community’ involvement there will be in years to come remains to be seen.
How often do regeneration proposals move beyond the physically visible in any real way, to what it actually means to everyone concerned – whether those who live in the area, those who work or visit there, those who invest there, or those who are concerned for its conservation, historically or environmentally?
And, if the claim is made that getting to the real soul of renewal does happen, why are the people entrusted to do it so often the same team who draw up the physical plans? This is a hugely different task.
Is it business-like?
But the question of soul alone is not enough. It is also necessary to demonstrate actually to those who invest large amounts in regeneration (a) that ‘soul’ is critical to meaningful renewal, (b) that it makes business sense in the best meaning of the term, and (c) that it is of itself business-like, that it can create value for the people who talk about ‘soul’, as well as for others.
Without evidence of these things, it is difficult to ensure this deeper aspect of renewal will ever happen at all.
For this is a far cry from the way that most regeneration and renewal is conducted, and it requires a constructively critical approach of a kind only rarely encountered, the courage to articulate vision and show leadership in facing up to difficulties and opportunities openly.
Case studies, honesty and imagination
One challenge for those who believe in this wider vision, collaboratively, is to find a way to nurture such a new emphasis, probably through a combination of case studies, disarming honesty and imaginative leaps. Perhaps this is most importantly where that artistic voice is needed.
What certainly won’t work on its own in sharing this ‘message’ is the conventional conference, addressing the usual suspects…. But neither perhaps would suddenly challenging everyone’s expectations in too dramatic a way.
The next question is therefore, what balance in the greater scheme of things can be made between strictly ‘regenerational’ activities and more meaningful, longer term, ‘renewal and renaissance’ ones?
And should we expect that balance to change over time?
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This article is also published (as Regeneration, Renewal And Renaissance: Where’s The Soul Of The Enterprise?), with Jim Greenhalf’s response, on the European Renaissance website.
Will Merseyside Miss Out? The Gormley Statues And The Theatre Museum Are Must-Haves.
Sefton Council says Antony Gormley’s Iron Men may soon leave Crosby Beach. The national Theatre Museum, which it has been mooted should come to Liverpool, has yet even to be considered by the City Council. Where’s the cultural leadership and vision which could mark Merseyside as a fascinating place to visit?
Here we go again. The cultural drag, if I may call it that, which afflicts so many places is once more theatening to relegate our sub-region to the ‘might have beens’, a place which could have been braver and better.
In just one evening last week (on Wednesday 18th October ’06) Liverpool City Council took the extraordinary decision not even to discuss a motion about how the city might acquire the national Theatre Museum, whilst on the same evening Sefton Council voted not to keep Antony Gormley‘s one hundred Iron Men on Crosby Beach.
There is a real danger that we on Merseyside will end up looking as though the last thing we want is to support culture, just at the time when the mantle of European Capital of Culture is about to be ours.
Time is short
The Daily Post and others have already started a campaign to reverse the Gormley statues decision, with some success already. It is now necessary for others to ensure that Liverpool Council does the same, and makes a real effort to bring the national Theatre Museum to Merseyside …. of, if they can’t, for someone esle to do so The benefits of doing this are clear and have already been discussed on this website.
The reputation of Liverpool and Merseyside in 2007/8 rests on imaginative and forward-looking leadership and real vision in culture and the arts. It’s time everyone in Merseyside pulled together on this.
Read more articles on the National Theatre Museum.
Planners Block Roads And Waste Energy
Over-enthusiastic urban traffic control is not just irritating; it blights communities and probably adds considerably to environmental damage. Unnecessary vehicle miles because of one-way systems and artificial no-through roads probably add considerably both to community disintegration and to local and global pollution.
Redditch is a ‘new town’ created by planners. Of course it existed many years before town planning had ever been invented, but in its contemporary form it is testimony to the diligence of urban planners. Rarely can there have been a more elegant design on paper which causes more motor fuel to be consumed in the name of separating vehicles and people.
I am surprised that anyone approaching Redditch in a vehicle ever reaches the town centre. The main civic and shopping area (or what remains of it; Tesco and Alders recently pulled out, which is perhaps telling) lies within a cordon of formidable highway more complex to negotiate, it sometimes feels, than the M25. Of course there are multiple car parks, concrete towers in celebration of the modernity of forty years ago, but one is left somehow to guess which stopping point is best for what – always assuming there are available parking spaces, and that the appropriate exit lane from the cordon can be negotiated in order to reach them.
A maze of dead ends
Much harder still is finding one’s way around the Redditch hinterland. This is negotiated by roads modelled on what could perhaps be described as a double figure of eight – think four leaf clover – with the main town area at its centre. The entirety of this vast expanse of roadway is blanketed by trees and bushes in abundance (no problem about this, they absorb carbon dioxide; except that every mile of the highway looks exactly the same as every other mile) interspersed by occasional glimpses of roofs and other signs of habitation.
The real challenge starts when one tries to reach any of these habitats, places where real people lead their real lives. We tried to do just that not long ago, and found ourselves tantalisingly close to the given address, but quite unable actually to get to it. We could look and see, but not touch…. Every likely-looking route (we even had the local street map) ended in a one-way system or an intentionally blocked route, negotiable only by cyclists or pedestrians.
Cul de sacs and cars
Good, you may say, making areas near a town centre people friendly, not car friendly, is just the thing. But is it? We saw not one bicyclist, and precious few pedestrians, friendly or otherwise (and this barren landscape was in what elsewhere might be called the rush hour). What we did see was row upon row of street-parked cars. And it took us five attempts, even with perfect map reading, actually to reach our already visible destination.
So how do all the urban motorists of Redditch negotiate their way as they go about their business? My guess is, by travelling many miles every week more, perhaps at speed, than they would need to were the road system not so extravagantly complex. And thus is wasted an enormous amount of vehicle fuel, at significant cost, personally and environmentally.
Not just Redditch
This is not just a problem in Redditch. Princes Avenue in Liverpool, the genteelly faded dual carriageway from the South into the city centre which was the location of the 1980s riots, has almost no side streets which can be negotiated from the main thoroughfare. All smaller roads were blocked with concrete barricades at that time of strife some twenty years ago, by the authorities, the more easily to ‘control’ the situation. So every day even now there are long queues of traffic trying to negotiate the few available points of access and egress for this major road in and out of Liverpool.
And, as I suspect is the case in Redditch, large parts of the urban environment are inhabited by people who find it very difficult to move out of their ‘enclaves’ because almost all routes to the wider world are blocked. Wide, fast, urban roads might as well be rivers without bridges if you live surrounded by them.
These examples can be multiplied many times over across the nation. There may well be a special case for intervention of this sort in central London and perhaps a few other specific places with excellent public transport, but does it make sense elsewhere?
Wasting fuel, worsening the environment
A re-think is required. By all means encourage traffic calming; and please do improve the visibility and viability of public transport. But don’t unnecessarily block roads and lengthen car journeys.
The local environment suffers (and so, for instance, do asthmatic children) when car journeys are longer than needs be; and the costs in terms of global warming are as yet to be determined.
Measure it and change it
We need an urgent audit of what damage these urban vehicle blockages inflict. If the costs are anything like as enormous as I suspect, planners and other will need to reconsider their strategies pretty quickly. Removing obstructions and calming traffic, if these measures prove to be required, are not costly changes in the greater scheme of things. Public transport and sensible home to work distances are probably the best full solution, but they take longer; sensible interim measures are required.
Town planners and civic authorities today are not responsible for the (usually) benign misjudgements of their predecessors. But we are all responsible for the sustainability of communities and indeed the planet. The time for action on this is now.
Dreaming Realist 