July 26th 2012
Exposing the lie
The biggest lie ever told about told about poor neighbourhoods is that the people living there don’t care about the plans and decisions that affect them.
The lie takes multiple forms.
The complacent: ‘We’ve tried all sorts of things, meetings, open days, but you can’t get them out of the house.’
The pernicious: ‘They’ll be there, first thing at the post office, but that’s it. Then they’re back on the couch.’
The faux-compassionate: ‘Why should they get involved? If I was living hand-to-mouth, with all those kids, I wouldn’t sign up for some community panel.’
The lie persists because it fulfils the basic function of deceit: it comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted. It allows the powerful to blame poverty on the poor.
The lie is self-reinforcing. You hear it used every time people don’t respond to meaningless surveys or poorly advertised consultation exercises. ‘We did our best, we put posters in the community centre and everything, but nobody turned up. They just don’t care…’ We tried, they failed, let’s not bother next time.
For as long I’ve lived and worked in deprived neighbourhoods, I’ve heard the lie repeated again and again.
But I’ve also been a grateful witness and sometimes participant in endless examples of imaginative and thoughtful ways to engage people that expose the lie for the shoddy excuse it is.
A few projects I’ve encountered recently have used all sorts of unusual, and unusually effective, methods to involve people. Ice creams vans giving out lollies to children and sign-up forms to their parents. Free haircuts and chiropody for older people to start a conversation about what they like and dislike about their neighbourhoods. Free use of a skip. Surely the ultimate in unglamorous, lo-tech engagement? But everybody using it was asked to complete a quick survey about their estate, and how they’d like to see it improved.
A few years ago I worked with a New Deal for Communities project that had tried various ways to engage young men, a notoriously ‘hard-to-reach’ group, in decisions about the area. They weren’t just ticking a box. The levels of male unemployment and ill health were high. And as in so many other areas, boys were leaving school earlier and with fewer qualifications than girls, and subsequently faced a potentially uncertain and marginal future.
The project organised a weekend-long X-Box competition that engaged more young men than all the previous efforts combined. A few years later, some of the participants attended a focus group I was running.
When I asked why they were still involved, they were clear. Thinking back to the X-Box competition, they didn’t feel like they were being ‘engaged’ in some abstract exercise. It was just fun. But they’d been given something, so felt obliged to reciprocate. And they had a bit of appreciation and respect for the people who thought it up. The lads listened when the organisers talked, and they were talking about the other things the New Deal for Communities was doing. From the X-Box competition, they’d gone on to do work experience and training.
Some excellent recent research by Liz Richardson at the University of Manchester into ‘active citizenship and localism’ underlines the importance of real-world relevance. One of the headline findings from her research, which she presented at a recent seminar, is powerful in its simplicity:
‘Don’t assume what citizens want to be involved in – ask them. Give them things they want to do, not what you want them to do.’
The topic has to be relevant, the format simple and accessible, the value of people’s engagement appreciated and the potential outcomes clearly explained. Starting with issues that resonate on an immediate, tangible level can and should lead to wider discussions. But is has to be that way around.
Clearly, effective engagement requires some investment of increasingly scarce resources. We don’t have amply-funded programmes like the New Deal for Communities anymore (how’s that for under-statement?). But a good pile of money is still wasted on involvement exercises that generate little worthwhile intelligence.
And as Professor Marilyn Taylor argued in the recently revised edition of her book Public Policy in the Community, engagement done well saves money by creating better-informed decisions and energising people to think about what they can contribute locally. Done well, engagement leads to empowerment and a dissolution of the artificial and anti-democratic barrier between the governors and the governed.
I’m not arguing community engagement is easy, especially in the current climate. The sudden visibility of the vines of the corruption and cronyism that ensnake every pillar of the British establishment has generated a poisonous ozone of cynicism. In the spiralling recession economy, people face many and more urgent calls on their time and energy.
Communities who have lived through the failed promises of regeneration are rightly even more wary of getting involved in the latest grand project. They feel they were lied to, last time they got involved. Often they were. And those who didn’t get involved were lied about.
Engagement isn’t easy, but the logic of the lie has to be inverted and thereby destroyed. The burden of engagement shouldn’t be on people to find the time to respond to shallow and slapdash offers of consultation. It should be on those who claim they want to engage to find ways to energise and excite people to share their time, energy and stories. But if the lie goes unchallenged, nothing will change.
You wrote… “they felt obliged to reciprocate”.
That is not engagement. You are telling the lie by calling it ‘engagement’. Let’s stop being PC here and call it what it is – it’s a ‘bribe’. Giving ice-lollies, or use of X-boxes are ‘bribes’ pure and simple.
The real truth is that most people would engage if they felt their voices would actually be listened to, if those at the top REALLY did what the masses want, if those at the top stopped being so corrupt. But society is getting there, the corruption is reducing all the time, witness the News of the World folding, the Bankers being called to face the music, Gadafi being dead, and so on. The world is slowly getting there – and when it does THEN you will be able to engage people.
I think this piece deserved a far friendlier reception than the aggressive rehearsal of someone else’s views presented as those of the “masses”.
Good work, John. Frankly, it’s rare for young people of any background to have their views sought in whatever way, and I think it’s admirable. And it’s not just young people’s views either.
Thanks for this piece John. Grand projects are silly and big money distorts, but there are some hugely promising approaches such as big local, i feel.
A couple of points. First, you quote Liz R’s ‘‘Don’t assume what citizens want to be involved in – ask them.’’ Which is right of course but painfully obvious, non? So it still seems that we need to bash policy makers over the head with nuance-free maxims like that, and it’s 2012 already (later maybe). Why is that?
Secondly I disagree with Liz (comment above): engaging with parents when children buy an ice lolly is not bribery, it’s going where people are, and makes perfect sense.
Thirdly, it’s useful to pick up on Liz’s comment that ‘The real truth is that most people would engage if they felt their voices would actually be listened to, if those at the top REALLY did what the masses want.’ I think the first part is an exaggeration: yes the cost-benefit offer for civic involvement doesn’t appear positive to many residents in most cases, but the perception of not being listened to is only part of that. Another part, for instance, is that genuine committed engagement with the system can be all-consuming. People know others who have been swallowed into exhaustion by volunteering ‘for their community’ and they back off. We need to move towards a kind of assumed everyday informal community involvement (neighbouring is a good place to start, but I would say that) from which more formal involvement follows – successive governments’ emphasis on formal involvement as be-all and end-all is misguided, but they don’t know how to stimulate more subtle cultural change.
I don’t want to stifle Liz’s welcome enthusiasm for current social progress, but the second part of her comment is problematic and seems to discount democracy in the assumption of consensus and the idea that ‘the masses’, if only properly consulted, are (a) going to speak with one voice, and by implication, (b) whatever they say will be the right decision which policy should follow. We elect representatives and subject them to scrutiny because we don’t all agree but stuff needs to be done. We need to move away from this naive idea that ‘community’= consensus, and learn to work with the diversity of views, talents, backgrounds and ideas that emerge from people sharing a common local environment but much else that differs.
Lastly a minor point, but one that always bothers me, which is to ask why you refer to Marilyn Taylor as ‘Professor’? (I once inherited Marilyn’s desk at CPF and I know her to be wonderful: that’s not the point). It may seem trivial, but it feels like the inappropriate introduction of hierachy and privilege.
John
You make some good and pertinent points.
On the creative engagement point I would add Breightmet in Bolton who gave free taxi rides to town for people as long as they could talk to them en route.
On the ‘lie’ issue. It’s been my experience that there needs to be ‘healing’ of relationships (truth and reconciliation?) before trust is restored. This can take quite a while and be a bumpy road. It is feasible though. I value the lack of deadlines in the Big Local programme that enables this.
Finally, I think there is a legitimacy issue. The representative democratic model is seen as legitimate but less so the participative approach. It’s said that people only get involved when there is a problem or an issue. True. But why is that not just as legitimate as putting a cross in a box? I believe they can be complementary forms of people expressing their voice. Representative democracy might be the backbone but participatory has been described as the lifeblood.
So, creativity, reconciliation and legitimacy. Feasible?
James says:
‘I think this piece deserved a far friendlier reception than the aggressive rehearsal of someone else’s views presented as those of the “masses”.
I didn’t write in aggression. You appear to have read it as aggression. In fact I’d just had some good personal news and was in a happy contented state of mind – however, as cognitive psychology has shown repeatedly, without facial expression or other body language to assist understanding, then different persons will interpret the same written words in their own ways, according to their own state of mind. I didn’t and don’t feel aggressive toward the original writer nor his views. It is unfortunate that certain words are misconstrued as aggression. I’m not quite sure what you meant about me presenting ‘someone else’s views’ ? If you meant that I did not present my own opinion, then you are in error.
Kevin Harris says@
Secondly I disagree with Liz (comment above): engaging with parents when children buy an ice lolly is not bribery, it’s going where people are, and makes perfect sense.
Kevin with all due respect, you appear to demonstrate what I’ve just replied to James, that different people read and interpret text according to their own state of mind. That is….you saw ‘when children buy an ice lolly’ yet the original writer wrote ‘when giving out lollies to children’. Therefore, in your reading of it that is not bribery I agree, but in my reading of it, where the writer describes how children were bought the lollies, then to me that is it is bribery of the parents.
Kevin also wrote..
don’t want to stifle Liz’s welcome enthusiasm for current social progress, but the second part of her comment is problematic and seems to discount democracy in the assumption of consensus and the idea that ‘the masses’, if only properly consulted, are (a) going to speak with one voice, and by implication, (b) whatever they say will be the right decision which policy should follow. We elect representatives and subject them to scrutiny because we don’t all agree but stuff needs to be done.
Perhaps I should have used the term ‘voters’ as opposed to ‘masses’, for that was my meaning. Your ‘assumption’, that I ‘assumed’, there would be consensus following proper consultation, hence your view that I discounted democracy, is incorrect, and misses my point. For me, democracy is of considerable importance and, by definition, whereby in a democracy different flavours are permitted their differing views, then the combined volume of voters (the masses) can never be ‘of one voice’. To make my comments less problematic for you, my main focus wasn’t actually about the masses (voters in a community) speaking, or being of any particular voice, or any agreed flavour of outcome. I was focusing on them ‘being listened to’ – which hopefully, but is not always the case, the outcome in so-called democratic environments. In conditions where that listening situation genuinely arises in a given community/society, then engagement of voters (the masses)– not their speaking, nor their voice, nor the outcome, but their initial engagement (into the democratic process), will not and should not require bribery.
Thanks so much Liz, James, Kevin and Chris for your thoughtful comments. I’ve tried to respond / reflect on some of the points you’ve made.
*Ice creams and X-Boxes competitions*
I don’t see these things as bribes, but as simple ways to reciprocate the value of someone’s time and input. Yes, the ice lollies were free.
Apart from being much more effective, the examples I gave – and the one Chris gives – are no different from providing a cup of tea and a biscuit at a consultation event.
*Asking people what they want – it’s obvious isn’t it?*
Kevin – you’re right. It should be obvious; it is obvious to most New Start readers (if I can make such a bold assumption).
But the research – and I’m sure our collective experience – found many examples of organisations doing the opposite. Creating ‘opportunities’ for engagement that didn’t appeal or resonate, and therefore failed.
Why does it go on? The inertia of people doing what they’ve always done; lack of knowledge transfer and learning from good practice; lack of serious and consistent-over-time commitment to engagement; as you highlight, people assuming ‘engagement = lovely consensus’ and withdrawing when that isn’t the case. And the lie excuses all these failures by pointing the finger of blame at ‘them’.
*Privileging the Prof?*
I don’t normally bother with titles, but there’s a practical reason in this case. There are two Marilyn Taylors, both of whom work in the neighbourhood renewal / community engagement / development field and have written about similar topics. Saying ‘Professor’ Marilyn Taylor is, for me and others who know both, the easiest way to differentiate them.
*Voting and / or engaging”
The discussion on this is going in a few directions, so I can’t / won’t reply to every point.
I really like Chris’ description of ‘representative democracy as the backbone of democracy and participatory engagement as the lifeblood’. And within that, Kevin’s description of an ‘assumed everyday informal engagement’ really fits.
*Trust and reconciliation*
Chris – yes, you’re right.
Check out Liz’s slides about communities have ‘memories like an elephant’ whereas agencies forget and start again.
Often people have negative memories of being involved, let down, disappointed. Efforts to engage have to recognise and work through that.
Thanks again for engaging. Where should I send your ice cream?
John
I am the neighbourhood manager in a ‘deprived’ area of Cornwall and have been for the past few years. I totally and utterly agree with John. We have managed to engage huge swathes of the neighbourhood, reduce the crime and anti-social behaviour rate, fire levels have gone down and, most importantly of all, residents have a voice, represent the area countywide in forums and have even been noticed by The House of Lords. How have we done this? Simple really…we have a tiny office in the middle of the estate and WE ARE ALWAYS OPEN. Come in and have a moan, discuss an idea, have a cup of tea, ask for help with a problem, get a project you have always wanted to do off the ground. We may not know the answer but we know someone who does. Our results are amazing and all this not because we are marvels of the questionnaire and consultation but because residents can engage at a level that suits them whenever they want to. To effectively change anything you need to work from the centre outwards helping people to do what they feel needs doing, what they feel needs changing not what we feel they need to change. I have had the best of times working alongside and engaging meaningfully with this neighbourhood and learnt loads from the people here. Nicely written John
Great piece and some smart insightful comments too. Here is where I am at. Nearly all people are engaged, all the time. They are just often not engaged with us. They may become engaged with us if we offer them some combination of love, fun and power. Unless we offer all three, engagement is likely to be short term and lack transformation.
Perhaps instead of seeking to engage ‘them’ in our decision-making processes we should instead seek to engage ourselves in their agendas, their decisions, their opportunities. We should seek to be engaged before we aim to engage others.
I wrote this piece on my own blog which seems relevant. It is in the form of an open letter: To those who would engage us:
To those who would ‘engage’ us…
We are already engaged.
We may not be engaged with you, or in what you think we should be engaged with, but none the less we ARE engaged. The things that we are engaged with offer us what we are looking for, perhaps consciously, perhaps not. Our chosen ‘engagements’ give us some combination of love, power and money.
There is a fourth thing that some of us get from our preferred engagement, and that is freedom from pain. Freedom from the pain of hope denied. Freedom from the pain of optimism dashed. Freedom from the humiliation of yet another ‘failure’. This pursuit of freedom from pain is what you label ‘apathy’.
We may choose to engage with you, and your agendas, if you offer us what we want. Unless we see possibilities for this our engagement with you is likely to be short lived and will change nothing. It might be enough for you to tick the box called ‘community engagement’, but little more. Love and fun might attract us for a while, but it is making us powerful that keeps us engaged.
Many of us who you find ‘hard to reach’ or ‘difficult to engage’ have ‘been engaged’ with people like you before. We have been sold false hope and have suffered the pain of having that hope dashed when you let us down, or when you run out of funding. Your reputations go before you. Sometimes even your promise of cash can’t persuade us to engage…we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
You might pay us to move our muscles, or answer your questions, but you cannot buy our hearts and minds.
If you want to encourage us to change what we engage with, then you need to understand us, understand what we are looking for, and understand where our engagement is likely to take us. It is this ‘where it leads’ that is often the hardest part of the story for us to explore. Some of us have learned to live for today and let tomorrow take care of itself. But, if you can really offer us something that provides us with a genuine shot at a better future….
Often your approach appears to us to stand on the premise that you have the right to engage us in what you believe to be good for us. You impose your sensibilities and priorities. Or you impose the policy objectives of those who pay your wages. You force us into a parent child relationship.
Imagine that a powerful outsider came and tried to persuade you to live your life differently. To give up some of the things that you enjoy. To ‘persuade’ you to work on a project of their design. How would you respond? With enthusiastic compliance?
Perhaps instead of seeking to engage ‘us’ in your decision-making processes, or in co-creating your services, or in spending your budgets, you should instead seek to engage yourselves in our agendas, our decisions, our opportunities. You should put us as individuals and communities at the heart of your endeavours.
Before you seek to engage us in your agendas, perhaps you ought to spend a bit of time trying to engage yourselves in ours? Not by pushing your way in with your authority and your money.
But by winning an invitation. By being ‘helpful’.
So, the next time you sit down to write your engagement strategy, just think about what you might need to be like for us to invite you in.
The opting-out and the opting-in of engagement is a two sided coin, one explores the reasons for Non engagement, the other the reason For engagement. You only examined the latter in any detail; to use the giving of ice-cream as one example. You didn’t dissect why the lie was a lie. There is my difficulty… you said the lie was about why the poor do not engage, therefore, to give reasons why they do engage is answering a different issue.
I believe it could be more fruitful if the first side of the coin was explored more widely than it is by those in the sector; that by understanding why persons fail to engage in the first place would lead to greater engagement. The second side of the coin, the actual inducement process, whether it be ice-cream or cups of tea, needs extremely delicate handling as it could be a dangerous route to take, in that it has potential for ultimately leading to corruption and loss of democracy.
That you attempted to belittle Liz, see your very last sentence in the comments, probably let you down.
Peter Oakwood (poaky)
I’ve just read Mike Chitty’s two comments and have to say ‘I wish I’d written that’. It is so very telling, so revealing of the true situation (insofar as I too have experienced what Mike says, and with similar views being oft repeated by my neighbours/colleagues sat around the table as me at local community forums). It also reflects both the point made by Liz, about the need for ‘conditions where the listening situation genuinely arises’ and my point about ‘understanding why persons fail to engage in the first place would lead to greater engagement’. Yes, I wish I’d written what Mike Chitty wrote.
Peter Oakwood (Poaky)
Thanks John – brief points:
“fun”…..crucial to people getting involved….it’s an option after all, so if it isn’t fun then why engage?
‘bribes’…..freebies are good! Free food, haircuts etc….why not? And appeal to people’s self-interest….nothing wrong in that so long as its transparent.
Build relationships & trust….only then start asking residents to do things (for themselves)
James
from grey Cheltenham
I really liked John’s piece and, being a neighbour, can think of local examples. We are in one of those areas that scores high on all the deprivation indices but is easy to get to. A university architecture department came to do a consultation at the local community centre and I was one of not many locals to attend. The baby architects were nice, if a little naive (I am a well-worn cynic). What they got right was to grasp that there were unlikely to be any grand projects for them, but that there is still stuff worth doing with local people.
On a different tack, when I used to consult (elsewhere) re new schools as part of my (then) job in local government, I was sometimes appalled at the cynicism of the consultation process. As for anything to do with the Department for Education…(spit).
Hi James and Paul,
Thank you very much for taking the time to make comments.
James – ‘fun’ is the crucial word. We find ingenious ways of squeezing the enjoyment out of engagement; no matter people don’t turn up.
I do, however, get the feeling that things are changing and improving.
Paul – yes, cynicism. The thing is, people can see that cynicism and respond with cynicism in kind.
The powerful element about the examples I gave, and the others that people have contributed, is that they broke through that cynicism by offering something interesting / fun / intriguing.
Thanks again for reading and commenting!