Recently in Big Society Category

I attended the greatest "hot ticket" event last Friday morning in "London's Living Room" (sorry, but really! "London's Living Room" is  just too fey for words! Whimsical or what? But a nice space nonetheless). 

The sun was streaming into City Hall (the Thames was twinkling), onto the great and good of the housing industry out in force. Charmaine Young of St George, in the most extraordinary feat, has corralled a massive number of industry leaders to produce the most formidable book Working Together. Delivering Growth through Localism (details can be found at www.berkeleygroup.co.uk/growth-and-localism).  And it is a most assured treatment for the enlightened house builder.  She is indeed a force to be reckoned with. And everyone was there.  

There was a very damning piece by Simon Jenkins on localism in last night's Evening Standard.  He thinks it is "hokum".  Well, I'm not sure that I agree with him, at least in a regeneration context, where localism has, it would seem to me, at least begun to take root in hearts and minds.  
 
Having said that, the notion of the "Big Society" seems to have gone away somewhat.  I guess localism is a rare example of an ideology totally shared by both parties in the Coalition, whereas "Big Society" is ...er...a little more whimsical and abstruse in nature.  [Is it true that on Newsnight some months ago, one of the interviewees, when asked what Big Society is, replied "Is it obesity?".  Oh I do hope it is true; it is priceless, if so.]
 
Big Society was also a casualty of the cuts in the earlier part of this year.  It was a complete gift for those grandstanders against government cutbacks in the wake of the Budget (for example, the likes of Suzie Leather "on behalf of" the voluntary sector, Cllr Joe Anderson of Liverpool City Council, Merseyside television producer Phil Redmond, Dame Elisabeth Hoodless of the Community Service Volunteers, not forgetting most of the opposition front bench).  These folk quickly got the shtick of "Big Society is merely a smoke screen for cuts" down to a fine art.  This was a most unholy alliance and they all missed the point (some of them on purpose).  It was a shame.  The cuts should have been decisively de-coupled from Big Society. I guess there are only so many hours in the day.  

We are still working on the outcomes from last Thursday's UKR Conference with Estates Gazette on "Regeneration - delivering through localism". It is a rich tapestry. Another strongly expressed and heartfelt theme was: please folks, please, Just Stop Asking Permission. Many of the speakers and the panel members coalesced around our simple plea for people just to mobilise and not wait around.
 
Big Society may be somewhat in the doldrums right now - and rightly so: for it is a big and profound idea but it needs to be withdrawn for the time being, since it needs nothing short of a serious regroup and a serious relaunch. But the real action must now lie around the "general power of competence" for local authorities under Greg Clark's Decentralisation Bill, which will be extant by the end of the year.

Under this provision, local authorities will be able to do pretty much anything, as long as it is in line with their democratic mandate. And so long as it's legal, of course. And when there ain't no cash then it is this power, used creatively and responsibly, that will leverage up the only resources on offer. This goes back to my old thesis that there will be certain local authorities that are open for business and others that dance to a different tune...
 
Of course, this not-waiting-about-to-be-told-what-to-do represents nothing short of a 180-degree turnaround in the regeneration mindset. (Bill Boler wrote me an e-mail yesterday addressed "To My Dearest 'Developer of New Paradigms for Urban Regeneration' aka Darling Jackie". What a soppy old love he is.) People are supplicant by nature and it is very tough to wean folk off the guidance documents and the bidding processes.

I've got 101 things to do (seriously: I counted them) before I can fly out to Nice on Monday to the inaugural showing of UK Regeneration at MIPIM, but I must find time for a bit of reflection. What is it we're trying to achieve next week and beyond? What is the "big picture" here? UKR is a new sort of organisation, taking everyone's ideas on board, and must be one that delivers quickly. We need a radical new body which really serves the cause of regeneration. But time is of the essence here: we must strike while the iron is hot.

First and foremost, we are seeking to foster a learning and knowledge culture. To this end we are launching the UKR FORUM product at MIPIM next week. The UKR FORUM will provide a range of services designed to influence the debate, input to government policy, and network with opinion formers and decision-makers who can assist members to meet their future business objectives. This service will confer a number of benefits to any business looking to grow in this extraordinary new world order.

UKR FORUM members will have access to our bi-weekly Breakfast Briefings on strictly topical subjects, explicitly working in support of regeneration policy with government. And they will receive a frequent online news and analysis service, providing timely written briefings on key issues in regeneration to organisations in the regeneration space. In addition, we will work with UKR FORUM members to develop the optimum relationships with appropriate trade and national press, speak at industry events, work with the UKR Big Society Task Force (seeking to deliver the private sector into the Big Society arena) and such like. And naturally, with all of this, comes the requisite cross-sectoral introductions.

It is all good stuff, golden really, so much so that, even before we printed the fliers, we had already signed Asda (what fantastic partners!!!), my old mates at Nabarro, the lovely architects Holder Mathias, and that uber-creative transport consultancy Peter Brett Associates. And then a wonderful new partner, in the shape of Aqumen Recruitment, doing ground-breaking work with SMEs, joined late yesterday. And we haven't even started marketing!

It is a bit of a relief to break off from frantic preparations for MIPIM or, worse still, from trying to second-guess the budget, to work in partnership with the Oral History Society on their conference to be held at the University of Sunderland on 1 and 2 July entitled "Creation, Destruction, Memory: Oral history and regeneration". (By the way, did you see in EGi this morning that the Work Foundation and the Centre for Cities argue, in separate reports, that the "government's potential scheme to revive enterprise zones is likely to be costly and ineffective unless there are drastic changes to the 1980s model"? What is going on? Last time I spoke to the lovely Nigel Hugill, we had a full-on-in-support conversation about EZs; I am seeing him this week so I undertake to get to the bottom of all of this and report back to you.)
 
The OHS are balm to a troubled soul, with their fine culture of listening and thinking properly about things. I am grateful to them for alighting on the theme of regeneration, at a time when the subject is hardly the height of fashion. Shows fortitude, I reckon. Of course, over the years, oral history's contribution to regeneration has ranged from it being used as a tool to encourage or improve community engagement and participation to inspiring pride in a local area or reaffirming or creating cultural identity. Its role, however, has so far been ill defined and ad hoc, and remains unexplored both in theory and in practice. The OHS international conference will explore the various uses and role of oral history in urban and rural regeneration as well as its unrecorded and potential contribution.
 
And it will be rooted in experience. The highlight, at least for me, will be the keynote interview: Roger Madelin of Argent in conversation with Alan Dein (freelance BBC Radio documentary feature presenter and pukka oral historian). Funnily enough, my money is on this being a little more expletive-deleted than the Madelin we see at MIPIM! Roger will, of course, be interviewed on the strong track record that Argent has in major developments and city centre regeneration including King's Cross, London; Piccadilly in Manchester; and Brindleyplace in Birmingham. He will tell his tales of over a decade of listening to people and absorbing their ideas and aspirations at King's Cross, in particular. And Alan Dein is the man for the job, of course, as he was the oral historian at King's Cross Voices.

More hysteria today in the press about the Big Society. For good measure, I chucked in my two-penn'orth in by drafting a letter to The Times, on behalf of UKR. Well, felt I had to join in, really. And it was an excellent letter, even if I say so myself. My main point being that the Big Society must be decisively decoupled from the cuts.
 
But I do wish everyone would just calm down (and I include Mr Cameron here, he should abandon his attempts to continually re-launch his policy; he should let UKR and others populate his policy for a year and then re-launch it). Rome wasn't built in a day and the Big Society represents nothing short of the closing of one old mindset and the opening of a new. It is not going to happen overnight. It is a transition and a set of values, an approach. To coin a phrase: we are on a journey. And you shouldn't launch a philosophy until you have a programme to back it up.
 
But we really have to divorce the Big Society mission from the cuts. And do so surgically and urgently.

The wondrous Adrian Cooper of Team Homes fielded an extraordinarily generous lunch for a couple of us this week (fruits de mer in Scott's of Mayfair; blimey! Almost like old times!) and it was altogether a most uplifting occasion. A delightful interlude in my life, one of those "remember this day" occasions and one which I am sure we will all recall with affection for years and years to come.
 
UKR's Galileo was there (and was he in-the-mood or what?) and we inevitably got on to discuss the strange alliance of interests that are ferociously building in opposition to Big Society (see blog 7 February) and the importance of not allowing this extraordinary and radical idea to be subverted by those who merely want to grandstand against the cuts.

Adrian (having had a small drop of some very fine wine) was in philosophical mode. We live in strange times, that's for sure. But, as he says so wisely, you don't have to understand your life to live it forward; you can really only make sense of it backwards. He was extremely encouraging about UKR and our progress, particularly our wholesale adoption of Big Society; it isn't so very strange, was my response, we started from bottom-up community engagement more than 20 years ago, and actually it is rather a relief to go back there. It feels like home. And it has to be an inalienable right to give local people a central role in improving our towns and cities and their lives.

This afternoon we were given the ministerial statement about regeneration; Grant Shapps and Andrew Stunell were in Salford today and have been explaining how the coalition government's policies create a framework for action.
 
I was about to get a bit angsty about the fact that the statement is the shortest statement we've seen in 30 years, until some smarty-pants pointed out that the regeneration sector is rather used to screeds of verbiage and policy guidance but it hasn't actually always inculcated a culture of real action or delivery. So that put me back in my box.

And, certainly, when UKR began calling for the government to set out its plans for regeneration, we had in mind something like the old-fashioned government white papers (we even wrote our own "Not the white paper" - see blog 11 October 2011 - and jolly good it was too) but we now realise that we were still partly stuck in the remains of our top-down mindset. 

So it is action, not words. Dr Clever-Knickers Evans has a new word for this government: WYSIWYAG (or What You Saw Is What You Are Getting) and it has to be said that the regeneration statement is simply a pulling-together of all the relevant strands from the recent suite of white papers and putting them into a one-stop (forgive me coining one of our old terms) document.

No surprises, no rabbits out of hats (well almost none), no bells and whistles; the statement is a simple laying out of the basic tools that we now have and the resources available. Yes, we would have preferred to see a doubling of the Regional Growth Fund but we didn't really expect it to happen (and nor should anyone else have done so if they had been listening to ministerial pronouncements for the last nine months). And we are still expecting some further hooks in the Budget for Growth on 23 March (note to chancellor: may we have EZ-TIF? Pretty please).

Sadly, I couldn't get to the Centre for Cities event the other night in "London's Living Room" (who the hell ever thought up "London's Living Room", d'ya reckon? I can't even say it with a straight face) but Dr Evans was much in evidence on behalf of UKR as, from what I can gather, were most of my friends and relations in the sector. And I've had consistently good reports all around of both a high-class event and a timely report: Cities Outlook 2011.

The formidable Alexandra Jones and her team there should be congratulated for once again providing a very helpful tool for making sense of the uneven condition of the UK economy. All towns and cities have all been affected by the downturn, but - and this is the key point - each has a unique story and, as a result, each requires a unique solution in order to reposition for the next cycle. The Centre for Cities report throws down the required gauntlet for regeneration practitioners to sift through these differences to develop workable solutions.
 
Very timely and appropriate for us, as UK Regeneration finalises its business plans this week. Informed by the work of Cities Outlook 2011, UKR will get into position to help shape and co-ordinate new ideas and best practice. These solutions will be regeneration's contribution to the Big Society (our UKR task force is ably headed up by Bernard Hughes, formerly of ASDA and Tesco - see 19 January blog), necessarily finding genesis at the grassroots level, but often needing to be fostered by experienced professionals that can convert them into deliverable projects. So, the platform has been ably set down by Cities Outlook 2011, but it is now the regeneration industry's turn to prove that it has the skills to effect real change, working alongside local partners.