Community, community, community: WHO IS IT FOR?

‘Who did they think they were for? We can’t afford 3 quid coffees and five quid loaves. There is nothing more horrible knowing that when you walk down the streets you live in that there are more and more shops that you can’t even afford to breathe in. Yes, have them of course, but why so many and every new place? What about us? Why is no one listening to us? Just because we can’t spend as much doesn’t mean we are worthless? Or maybe we are.’

‘I don’t go to that part of the high street. It is not for me anymore. I’ve got all the shops and cafes I need for my food and things down here.’

‘Isn't a community when everyone has a place and a say? Otherwise what do you have?’

We have seen the power of what a community can do when people come together, when strangers make new relationships, when people lend a hand without asking for a thanks in return. But understanding our community and how it works, has also unearthed for us how power can work and create inequality in a local area. We see who has the power to speak and have influence and exactly who doesn't. 

Like turning over an old stone, we can see the various ins and outs of how our community works; the ones that are always the most visible, those that are not visible by their absence, where people feel they belong or are excluded. We can see how this plays out in the everyday lives of everyone who lives here and the places and spaces that they have access to and are able to participate.

The word community is the buzzword of the moment. Property developers, academia, politics, the third sector, local and central government all see ‘community’ as the saviour, as the route and tool to social transformation. The word is everywhere. 

You see big billboards over newly developed construction sites with taglines such as ‘BUILDING FOR THE COMMUNITY’, adorned with drawings from local school children. Top-down regeneration strategies from local government are replete with words about transformation and regeneration for the local community. Fine, but who exactly are you talking about when you use that word ‘community’? And who are you listening to?

‘Community-led’ and ‘place-based’ initiatives and strategies are shaped by highly priced consultancies and agencies who are brought in in the name of objectivity but have little connection with the place or community in which they are consulting. Or if the community is leading them, too often it is a distinct affluent cross-section of people who have a specific image in their mind of who is included and what they are doing it for. 

Look at Brixton, look at Peckham, look at most of East London. There is a uniformity that is pervading these areas which serves to erase certain parts of the community and deep, seated rich histories in favour of a middle classism that is served up to us as, supposedly in the best interests of our local economies and ‘community’. But who is benefiting from these new leisure and retail spaces, and new housing estates popping up in our local areas? Who is being listened to and whose lifestyles, cultures, and aspirations are being supported and amplified?

We have come to define this as a new form of colonialism. It is not overt, it does not shout in your face that you do not belong or that someone else is in control but it seeps into neighbourhoods a piece at a time so eventually it becomes accepted. Local people, often working class and/or ethnic minority people, are silently dispersed and moved away from areas they no longer can afford. Or if they have the fortune of holding firm and staying put they are increasingly deprioritised whilst the spaces that are used for daily living are ridiculed, then removed. We all know the ‘not another barber shop or chicken shop or McDonalds’ tirades that seem like a local middle-class obsession, but who is running social media campaigns on keeping affordable shops open like Poundland and Savers?

Despite a sense of diversity or commonality, communities are not spaces that are automatically equal utopias where all voices are heard, and pretending that they are is not only inaccurate, it’s dangerous. Communities are microsms where deep seated inequalities in our society are played out in the normalised and accepted everyday behaviours and actions of people. 

It is seen in the places people go to on our high streets, where they feel comfortable in and can afford, who has access to resources, from social relationships to money, and who doesn’t. In official and unofficial forums of local government consultation and community organising, who is visible? Who is really being listened to? When visions are set for places and growth strategies penned down, what lives are included in this? Who do you see living here in the future?

Whenever we use the word community, we have to be clear about what we mean. In doing so we are referring to a deeply messy, contradictory thing that is full of people with different levels of power and resources, with situations that may need to be supported to be able to be part of a community. Every single person has something to say about the area they live in, and if we aren’t hearing those voices, it’s our fault not theirs.

Our community is one that is shared. We all have a place in it and we have to have conversations, however difficult or challenging, to understand how we share these spaces together. 

With any new community initiatives or regeneration planning, whenever that little c-word is used and thrown around with abandon, at whatever level, we have to ask ourselves these questions (however well seeming the intentions or agendas may seem…)

Who has influenced this and what is happening? Who is in control here?

Which community are they talking about? Whose lives and aspirations are being prioritised?

Which voices are shouting the loudest? What’s their agenda? Who is absent?

How will this impact everyone else?