Streets Alive? 5, April, 2007

Well, that’s the end of the first week of the project, foreshortened by the bank holiday. At this crucial start-up stage it feels like every day counts! As of Monday, QSA had five projects and Knees Up had to begin happening. Making something which you’ve got to know well as an idea into a messy reality is as exciting as it is daunting. There’s lots happening and changing right now for QSA – it’s a great time to be part of this organisation.

Today I met with Chris Gittens of Streets Alive, a Bristol based organisation which specialises in running street parties. There is plenty of common ground with what Chris and his team have done before but plenty is new. We began to think about what the markers are that will make this project a success or a failure? What are the risks of such a project? How will we work with the physical spaces that we have? What can we offer if we’re going to be around for a year only that doesn’t raise expectations only to dash them? Who are the people in any given estate or street or block who can make something like this happen? Can we bring alive streets which have been depressed by years of ingrained poverty?

Week one is up before it has started and it feels like there are more questions than those with which I began! It’s liberating, though, and a key part of this project to acknowledge that I don’t have the answers – the project will only work if, along with the residents, we find them out together.

A lively Bow community 4, April, 2007

At lunchtime today I had coffee with Philippa Boardman and Karen Diss. They are, respectively, the vicar and bookings manager of St. Paul’s Church, Bow. They’ve worked really hard revitalising a derelict Victorian church in what is becoming “our area”, enabling it to contribute to and thrive within the diverse community it serves. St Paul’s Bow won the RICS Community Benefit Award 2005 for the London Region, and was Highly Commended nationally. They run tea dances and various other initiatives which may help provide some momentum upon which we can capitalise. They were both very enthusiastic about Knees Up and gave me a number of leads I can use from here.

They were particularly interested to hear that we are part funded by the Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund. This is a stream of government funding which is aimed at faith groups to do non-religious work in making connections with groups of other faith traditions in order to work together for the development of the community. Knees Up is an exciting intervention because it is so “bottom-up” – it is all about listening to what residents have to say and introducing them to options they can take for their own development. The more people I talk to, the clearer it is that distrust between different ethnic and religious groups is a far bigger problem than anything more concrete. Finding gentle, respectful opportunities for people to mix will be a challenge. In a previous incarnation I worked for a year as a volunteer youth worker. Two or three schools would use our centre at any one time. We were really proud of the four day programme we offered which was imaginative and interesting and had a great effect on the young people we worked with. But the best thing was always what they brought with them. I well remember the best week I worked there: a private girls school had come from Ascot (all white) on the same week as an all-boys comprehensive school from Camberwell (virtually all black with some mixed heritage young people) which specialised in working with lads with behavioural difficulties. On the first night in the vast common room their was a palpable tension as they eyed each other up, both full of misconceptions and stereotypes about what the other might be like. The prospect of a disastrous few days seemed likely. But as they got to trust one another and see that the other group was made up of individuals with whom they shared more than divided them what was palpable was not that initial distrust but how exciting it was to discover a whole new world of possibility. Finding ways for this to happen on Bow estates where one of the things connecting groups is ingrained poverty and generations of distrust will be much harder, but it’s an exciting challenge.

Surveying the scene 3, April, 2007

Judith, QSA’s director, and I took a walk round Bow. Armed with a map and in biting winds, I felt like I’d slipped back a decade and was on some godforsaken geography field trip. The area we’re concentrating on is LAP Areas 5 and 6, or the local council wards of Mile End East, Bow West, Bow East and Bromley-by-Bow. Although QSA has been working in east London since 1867, Bow is not an area we’ve done much work in – this seems to be quite a consistent problem. Tower Hamlets is full of voluntary sector organisations but very little around this area. The diversity is quite staggering: very expensive large Victorian houses in terraces which somehow survived the Blitz; well maintained low-rise estates which have been transferred to social housing associations; blocks with social areas in various states of use and disuse; some council housing with unbelievably small windows and various modern developments around the canal. And amongst the people there are a mixture of ethnic groups, the largest two being the white community and the Bangladeshi community between which there are simmering long-term territorial and racial tensions. Another issue which has divided this area has been stock transfer with residents very divided about throwing their lot in with a social housing association or maintaining council ownership of their properties. The area was very quiet as we walked round and didn’t seem to have too much of a problem with fly-tipping or graffiti. The Malmesbury and Ranwell estates are both pretty notorious and I’ll need to have a cycle round at night to see what it feels like then. Is this an area where fear and perception of crime outweigh the reality? What sort of intervention can we make in areas that are fatigued with consultation and have fought weary battles around the issues of stock transfer? How do you have street parties in an area where streets aren’t the primary social space? Lots to think about.

The start of a new project… 26, March, 2007

Ten months ago I started working for QSA as Fundraising and Communications Officer. In my induction I heard about “Knees Up” a project that had been in development for a number of years. Something about running street parties in east London. To be honest, I didn’t really understand it – it seemed frivolous and didn’t seem to be responding to any needs that were being articulated by local residents. When you’re struggling to feed and clothe a family on benefits in a badly looked after tower block, what good is it taking a day out to have a party? Anyway, it didn’t seem to be an idea anyone was prepared to run with – funder after funder was turning it down, so I quietly assumed that it wouldn’t be a goer…

In the process of putting together an application to the Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund as a bit of a last ditch attempt to get some funding, I felt like I finally “got” what it was all about. In that we outlined the aims of the project:

“- build neighbourhood cohesion – using the tool of a party to break down barriers and build up connections between individuals, and between individuals and local faith, community and voluntary sector organisations
which will
- address social isolation – by knowing more people locally, connections and networks can grow – the party is a tool by which people get to know their neighbours and their street/locality loses its anonymity.
which will
- address the fear of crime – by enabling people to build up trust in their neighbours, ask for and give help, learning more about personal safety, then they may shift to a more realistic perception of crime and also feel more confident that they and their neighbours are doing all they can by way of crime prevention.
which will
- lead to bottom up local regeneration – as local people begin to trust each other, and social networks strengthen, they will articulate what they like and dislike about their neighbourhood, and begin to formulate regeneration proposals. Local regeneration champions will begin to emerge to lead this work, connect back into existing networks and create new ones.”

I realised that it could be the start of some really interesting, creative, adventurous community development work. I was converted to the idea!

However, I didn’t think we’d get the money. However, last month a letter arrived from the Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund. Along with a little money we had from Tower Hamlets Council and the assurance from some other funders that they would be able to offer support if we could generate wider interest, the project was finally viable! We held internal interviews, I applied for the job and got it. I’ll keep the communications part of my role. This week I’m wrapping up the fundraising element. In my capacity as communications officer I’ve been keen for a while that we should try using blogs, particularly when we’re doing innovative work. As such, from next Monday when I begin as the project manager of Knees Up, I’ll keep this diary as a record of what we’re trying to do: the successes, the failures and everything in between. Knees Up may not work as an intervention, but it’s going to be fascinating seeing if it will. Leave a comment and let me know what you think!