Hutton Hall community centre, photos by Podnosh
A year ago it would have been pointless painting a mural on the wall of Hutton Hall; it would have been covered in grafitti within a day. But after the building was transferred to community group Comm:pact by Birmingham city council in April, youngsters treat it – and its new exterior artwork – with pride. Read about how to make community asset transfer work in my Guardian piece today.
Category Archives: Third sector
Is Cameron’s ‘big society’ reserved for the rich?
Local philanthropy and volunteers have driven the ‘big society’ in Surrey for years. So is David Cameron’s flagship project only viable for affluent communities? England’s well-heeled home counties are the natural habitat of Cameron’s “big society”. The combination of a time- and cash-rich population and minuscule pockets of deprivation is more conducive to citizens becoming involved and running services than in more deprived areas. Click here to read the piece in Society Guardian today.
What no big society?
Amid the vibrations of doom and whiff of ennui surrounding anything stamped with the politicised big society seal, a new campaign tagged in plain terms as a grassroots effort to improve a neighbourhood is a bit of an attention-grabber.
Shockingly, no one’s claiming it’s part of some shiny new renaissance in volunteering that will allow the state to retreat on the sly, but a tried and tested idea, backed by an organisation that’s been doing similar, citizen-led work for years.
Quick – Dave’s on the line – he wants his big society back!
Today’s launch of Shoreditch Citizens – part of well-established community organisers programme London Citizens – follows an audit of 200 organisations in the east London area, plus 500 meetings to identify local issues that matter and train community leaders.
The Shoreditch arm is the latest chapter for London Citizens, an alliance of 160 groups representing faith institutions universities and schools, trade unions and community groups; the founding member is The East London Communities Organisation (Telco), the UK’s largest independent community alliance launched in 1996.
Shoreditch Citizens has high hopes in aiming to join forces to impact on poverty, poor housing and gang crime – around 75% of the area’s children live below the poverty line and four in 10 adults are unemployed. The campaign, funded by the Mayor’s Fund for London and £270,000 over three years from the community investment arm of Barclays Capital, also wants an alternative to the education maintenance allowance (EMA) to encourage young people to stay in education. There is also a plan to make Shoreditch a “Living Wage” zone, where everyone who works in the area can be sure to earn a decent amount to live on. The Living Wage campaign was first launched by London Citizens in 2001, which says it has won over £40 million of Living Wages, lifting over 6,500 families out of working poverty.
By December 2012, the Shoreditch engagement programme aims to train 300 community leaders from 30 civil institutions and hopes to impact on up to 15,000 families. All this is nothing if not ambitious, but if you don’t have goals…
Midlands movers shaking up the arts scene
It’s not unusual to view art as an escape from daily life. It’s more rare for the audience to be transformed from observer to participant and to feel so immersed in a theatrical event that they feel like the only world they inhabit is the one on the stage.
I’ve just come across what promises to be a uniquely interactive drama experience, Visitor, by the East Midlands-based theatre company Movers. The installation-style performance, designed with disabled children and their families in mind, takes place in a dream-like, enchanted forest with “hidden activities” for the audience to participate in, a multi-sensory environment and the intriguing promise of some “interactive pods”. Audience members sit in a clearing in the “magical forest world” for the performance and, if they feel like it, interact with the characters, technology, materials and colours.
For some reason, I’m imagining A Midsummer Night’s Dream minus the foliage-related trip hazards and The Bard’s English…but the performance promises much more than this.
Movers, a company of learning disabled actors, is part of the 15-year-old Speakeasy participatory arts company based on the Saffron Lane Estate in Leicester. Speakeasy works in schools and youth theatres to create an accessible environment, which can be safely and freely explored. The group has developed a non-verbal, movement-based style, which audience-goers report to be quite mesmerising.
Movers performed in front of an audience of 25,000 at the opening ceremony of the 2009 Special Olympics hosted in Leicester (check out the amazing costumes). Formed by Speakeasy in 2004, the theatre company’s aim is to create professional quality touring performances which are inspired and created by the learning disabled adults involved. The company, which includes 11 adults aged 19 to 60, creates at least one new performance a year, and its recent work has included commissions for the Leicester City NHS Primary Care Trust – Make my stay, about experiences of healthcare from a learning disabled point of view – and an educational play about personalisation and the changes to the benefit system.
Speakeasy, which costs about £30,000 a year to run, relies on commissioned projects to make its work possible and, through Movers, has worked with roughly 20 learning disabled artists since 2004.
Speakeasy artistic director Andy Reeves says of Visitor: “We’re trying to make a piece of theatre which, though it’s imagined, devised and performed by learning disabled artists, will be a great audience experience for everyone. Visitor gives the audience the chance to get closer to the action, interact with characters and technology in a dream-like, woodland setting. Our goal is for everyone- disabled, non-disabled, young, old- to come out with a smile on the outside and a warm feeling inside.”
Movers actor James Langley adds: “It’s not going to be your average performance,it’s going to be completely different to what you’ve seen before, because it’s going to be by Movers, who do things differently to everyone else.”
Langley’s fellow actor Emma Shuttlewood says she wants to provoke an amazing response in the audience: “I want them to say ‘wow’!” Based on Movers’ previous successes, I’m sure they will.
Visitor premieres on Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd June at Embrace Arts, Leicester, as part of the Spark Children’s Arts Festival.
How the law stops young people using advanced wheelchairs
Like most 13-year-olds, Jenny Wilson likes to go shopping with friends. Her athetoid cerebral palsy means that she has used a wheelchair for almost a decade, but she is capable of negotiating busy high streets. Yet Jenny’s independence is under threat – not from her disability per se, but by a legal anomaly that means she breaks the law if she uses the wheelchair that best meets her needs. Read my piece in Society Guardian here.
Illegal immigrants:not as simple as sending them all home
Peter Solomon, 46, is a former trade union representative who spent 17 years in the transport sector. He is a hardworking taxpayer and father-of-three who, until recently, worked as a security guard in Manchester where he rented a flat. He is also an illegal immigrant.
Some illegal immigrants should be returned home, according to an IPPR report seized on by the government to support its hardline stance. But it’s not that simple, as I explain in this piece in Society Guardian today.
Being visionary about sight loss
A new exhibition aims to challenge prejudice about sight loss and explore notions of sensory perception by showcasing works by visually impaired artists inspired by the sense of smell.
The two-day pop-up exhibition, Scents and Sensibility, is organised by sight loss charity RNIB and opens at central London’s Vaad Gallery on Monday. The theme is fragrance expressed through exhibits including painting, sculpture and photography. Read about it in my Society Guardian piece today.
60 reasons to be cheerful
Need a reason to smile amid the cuts? How about 60? A bold new exhibition which opened last week presents the 60 bright young things making a difference by volunteering in schools across London.
The exhibition, Full of Purpose, was lauched last week and presents portrait shots, as shown above, of members of City Year London, a project that involves 18-25-year-olds mentoring and supporting primary school pupils.
Based on a successful American model of civic duty that began in 1988, you can read more about it in this post written for The Social Issue by corps member guest blogger Alex Scott. Founded in 1988, more than 12,000 corps members have helped millions of children in 20 US cities and in Johannesburg, South Africa.
The shots by documentary photographer Katie Higson are exhibited at City Year London’s offices in north London until Thursday. As well as the images, the exhibiton includes information about the young people’s work and their motivations for giving a year to serve in schools and communities.
As volunteer Alex says: “I joined City Year because I wanted to spend a year doing something more challenging…as my long term goals lie in entering a career in counselling or therapy, a mentoring role was something that excited me. City Year has proved to be both challenging and incredibly fulfilling. Often it is hard to measure the effect you are having on a day-to-day basis, but every time I am able to see progression in one of the children it makes the long hours worthwhile.”
For more information, contact City Year London.
The cuts: the worst is yet to come
An authoritative analysis in today’s Society Guardian of the deepest spending cuts in a generation, which start from Friday. The special issue inludes some sector by sector breakdowns of savings and job losses, including pieces I contributed to the in-depth coverage.
The cuts – an alternative
For those who’ve not already seen it, this powerful film presents an alternative to the government’s devastating cuts agenda. It features community groups and anti-cuts campaigners along with Bill Nighy, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Zac Goldsmith MP. Worth watching ahead of this weekend’s demo in London against the cuts.
It Cuts Both Ways…The Alternatives from Oonagh Cousins on Vimeo.