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Stronger Communities
London / Sheffield / Liverpool / Stoke
The “Stronger Communities, Stronger Economy” discussion in Liverpool took place on 25 March 2009 and was hosted by Arts in Regeneration
Who participated?
Participants in this discussion group were; Barbra Fitzgerald, Rialto Neighbourhood Council, Valerie Watson, United Heritage, Denise Finch, Director of Arts In Regeneration (AiR), John McDonald, Freelance Photographer/Resident, Nikki Bonner, Arts in Regeneration (AiR) and Adeyinka Olushonde, LARC partnerships & Development Co-Ordinator (Thrive Programme)
What happened?
This meeting started with an introduction to ‘why we are here’ and a brief introduction by participants. This was followed by an open discussion.
The Ideas
Observations included that local Your Community Matters events are always negative - discussing problems (i.e dog poo, lighting) they aren’t pro-active or positive. These events are a starting point but are not moving fast enough for the sector. A recent Participatory Budgeting event was very positive with local people making decisions on funding. Although there is a limited pot, this makes sure resources go where they are wanted/needed. Grassroot grants and money for new projects in the local area - Infrastructure funding for grass roots organisations are needed.
Proposal : Strengthen the Sector
1. Shared Backroom.
We need direct support at neighbourhood level, for back room, admin for voluntary sector agencies to buy into. Individually, we can not afford backroom, collectively maybe we can. This support would avoid duplication and be best value. We could also develop consortia bidding for funding, development, tenders to deliver (i.e. PCT). We need to work together, to enable us all to survive, not burn out - and maybe thrive. Capacity building to enable us all to be fit for purpose. We are all good at what we do, and we can deliver Community Cohesion, Enterprise, and Empowerment, as collectivly we have a lot to offer. Working together would protect the social capital of the local area. We need to create mechanisms and the space to enable it to happen and the resources, finance and skills. Has to be grass roots neighbourhood led, and would match the local government area agreements strategies. Would enable us to work towards addressing areas problems at grass roots level. Neighburhoods could Become Self healing.
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2. Community Markets
There needs to be support for regular community cultural markets, to enable local small scale trading of home grown produce, cultural foods, home made arts, crafts, antiques, and flea market. This would also serve as a place to meet, share and be neighbourly, which would be good for the community. A community cultural market would enable young mothers to exhange childrens clothing etc, and encourage tourism in the area (i.e. the Portobello Road model).
AiR/United Heritage have identified space, Afro Carribean Centre, we need support to make it happen. Afro-Caribbean centre also need help, they are struggling to survive. Market license outsourced, we need to meet and ensure community can get access to trading opportunities. Create much needed income streams. Creates work ethic. Community Allowance pilot would be good. Capital required to enable stalls to be purchased/opportunity for creating jobs. Storage on site. Also would support understanding, tolerance in a multi cultural community such as Toxteth. (AiR put in bid to community cohesion grant. Fingers crossed we get some pump prime monies.)
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3. Working Together to Support Growing Locally
In Liverpool there are a number or organisations working on garden produce projects for example, Rialto Neighbourhool Council have been offered land for gardening / growing vegetables by Toxteth TV and Arts in Regeneration is working with Eden Project on the Big Lunch (which would be an ideal opportunity to launch a garden produce project), as well as working on four other projects across the city, (one of which has just gone organic).
Further work could be done to work together to share gardeners, gardening tips, seeds, cuttings etc. AiR enabled training last year for community to get qualifications to teach skills and United Heritage is now moving this forward. These have already got Health & Safety qualifications, and also WEA has offered some tutor funding – on food workshops, healthy eating agenda. Cultural gardening, grown your own.
More work to also develop partnerships between the many agencies developing proposals in this area of work - working together to maximize buy in BTCV, Britain in Bloom, and Neighbourhood Management. Community engagement in the “Big Lunch” will create high profile attention on growing. Barbara has been running a food co-op for many years, and will look at developing the Food Co-Op’s capacity to assist those most vulnerable. LARC also offered contact in Rotunda, North Liverpool where they are developing a bar code garden
More public land should also be handed over for gardening projects
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4. Bank relationships
One of the main problems delivering at grass roots level is the relationship with cash flow. When winning tenders/commissions/grants money is always given retrospectively. Some agencies really struggle with cashflow, e.g. AiR overdraft facility been reduced by 45%. We need to ensure that banks are encouraged on a national level to view community social capital as valuable asset resource, worth investing in and supporting.
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5. Recycling
Denise wanted to suggest the Finland recycling model to be looked into - where people get paid for the return of their waste for example, tins, bottles, plastics etc - as a way of creating income for people and reducing land fill. This model works well in Finland, but the meeting ran out of time to discuss further.
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