Saving the best bits of the curate’s egg? : The Legacy of Communities First

I feel compelled to write this blog after the semi surprise announcement last week by the minister Carl Sargeant that the Welsh Government’s flagship talking poverty programme Communities First (CF) is to be “rethought”.  At the time of writing what is actually meant by this term is far from clear and therein lies one of the problems to the community development / tackling poverty agenda in Wales. Although CF is fifteen years old, which in community regeneration project years is positively ancient, in recent years it has been beset by uncertainty as to it future and it has been a creaking gate of a programme which has not been conducive to its robustness.

During its fifteen years it has undergone various incarnations and at its most basic it moved from its original model and ethos of being a community led initiative that recognised the complexity of what community development means at a grass roots level to being, particularly in the past few years, a more traditional community focussed initiative pursuing distinct targets often under the direction of the local authority.

As someone who has been involved in CF in some shape or form since its inception I am of the opinion that not all these developments in the last few years of the initiative have been for the best.  The innovative approach of Communities First when it was first formulated is that it recognised that often it is the people who live in poor communities who have a unique insight into formulation solutions to the problems they face. As CF “evolved” however it increasingly moved from this innovative approach to one more dominated by local authorities and a traditional model dominated and led by professionals.  That said considering this change of focus CF has continued to deliver, at times, innovative and effective initiatives and projects that really made a difference to people’s lives in some of our poorest communities.

Particularly of late staff have had to work with a high degree of uncertainty in relation to the future and form of the CF programme.  In the past year all staff have been on a one year contract due to come to an end on the 31^st march 2017. This uncertainty is something that has dogged the programme since its inception. CF workers have become used to uncertainty as to the future of their contracts and last minute announcements as to the future and changes in the programme.  All these factors have not been conducive to the programme achieving its full potential.

Communities First has also had to endure being a favourite political football for the Welsh political class. The programme has always been a flagship project of Labour and as such and due to the budget directed toward it it has always been a prime focus of criticism from the Conservatives and to a lesser extent Plaid Cymru.  Interestingly though although CF has been a focus for this criticism from the opposing political parties they have neither offered or suggested any real innovative alternatives. 

No one can say that CF has been a runaway success.  Understandably as it has been trying to tackle poverty in some of the most disadvantaged areas of Western Europe that have had a very long history of trying to survive on the outer periphery  on the industrialised areas of the UK.  There have been various evaluations of the programme over the year some good some not so good but in the general consensus is that the programme is a bit of a curate’s egg, good in parts.

The recent announcement by the Welsh Minister as to the rethinking of the programme has led to some very poor reporting in the Welsh media (no surprise there then) and some less than informed statements from our elected representatives. In this report from BBC Wales http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-37617559 the use of the word “dropped” gives the impression that all the work of the programme is to simply cease.  Rather than mention the many success of the programme the report chooses to focus on an instance of fraud in one CF area. The most glaring example of a misinformed analysis of the programme’s impact comes from Mark Isherwood the Welsh Conservative’s spokesman who argues that as the CF areas are still suffering poverty then obviously the programme is not “fit for purpose”   Considering the programme has spend approximately £30 Million a year for the whole of Wales it is a bit much to expect that that relatively small amount of funding can be expected to tackle the deep and most fundamental repercussions of global economic forces. Additionally that this statement was to come from a representative of the Conservative party who have been responsible for subjecting the area and local residents to negative forces that have compounded the areas poverty such as the bedroom tax and the so called benefit reforms which again has reduced the amount of money which is coming in to the area. So although the years of Coalition and Conservative party rule have not improved the levels of poverty in the area this spokesperson chooses to blame the CF programme.

So Communities First is to be no more, so be it, nothing lasts for ever.  As I said earlier while CF has achieved some really great things at the same time it has been a bit of a curate’s egg of a programme often because of factors that are beyond the control of those who work on, plan and instigate the programme. What is crucial as we move forward though is that the achievements are built on and not lost. During this upcoming period of consultation and reflection as put forward by the minister it is essential we identify what those achievements are.  To my mind one resource we should recognise is the CF workforce and infrastructure.  We have fifteen years development of a workforce who know their communities intimately and knows what works and what doesn’t.  Empowerment has been key word in the minister’s statement in relation to the future of Communities First I would suggest a powerful method of achieving that empowerment at community level is to use that resources of the CF workforce who know what empowerment really means. As a first step what that workforce needs to achieve those aims is some certainty and a clear plan over a significant period of time so they can make these plans a reality. This uncertainty has hamstrung the programme in the past and let us ensure that the same mistakes are not made in the future.

Sono Italiano? (I’m Italian?)

You need to have read the blog before this where I set the scene of the Italian community in South Wales. I am now going to recount the role they have played in shaping my life.  Due to my own Irish ethnic heritage I went to the local Catholic school with many of the children of these Italian families and for some strange reason, that I really don’t understand to this day, many of my best school friends were from the Italian community. Another friend of mine, who was also a contemporary, @FarSouthProject  has suggested that they brought a touch of Mediterranean colour to an otherwise monochrome  valley’s life in the drab  1970s.  Not too sure about that myself and I don’t think it was something I consciously thought about much. The Italians were sort of cool in school in as much as they all smoked and also, particularly as I hit my teens the dusky attractiveness of the Italian women did not escape my notice but they were part of the everyday landscape  and I had grown up with them so in many ways I didn’t see them in anyway as "foreign", they were just my mates Fausto, Luigi or Mario.

Looking back on our lives sometimes I think we impose an order to try and make sense of it as some sort of coherent story when in fact the reality is a much more cluttered mess of serendipity and happenchance.  While reflecting on my own history I identify one particular pivotal moment when I was about 16 which I don’t know if it is a construction of my own need to make this order but is central to this narrative I have constructed of my life. I can remember the event as clearly as if it were yesterday when one of my Italian friends said to me in the playground of our school” What are you doing over the summer holidays?”    I was on the verge of leaving school and replied I didn’t have any particular plans just probably bum about.   He suggested that we make our way across Europe and go and work on his grandmother’s farm in Italy. I had never been abroad before or much out of South Wales and I could just as easily have said no but I said yes and embarked on this journey to Italy with two of my Italian friends.

Bardi Castle

As recounted in  my previous blog the place that I traveled to was Bardi high up in the mountains of the Italian hinterland and many an adventure was had along the way but that may be in another blog.That trip was an education to me, I had never really drank wine or even coffee before and by the time I returned I was prodigious consumer of both.  More than that I did fall in love with Italy on that trip, not just the countryside or the people but the culture, the way of life, a different way of doing things and perspective that very much appealed to me and also it showed me that my friends were in fact “foreign” as they had access to this other world.

To bring this story to some sort of conclusion, (although I hope I have a few more years left in me yet)  I continued to visit Italy with my Italian friends in following years and unsurprisingly I was eventually lucky enough to marry a girl from one of these Italian families as well and we had our honeymoon in Bardi.  I continue my love affair with Italy and I can’t see it ending anytime soon.  My children have Italian names and I have ravioli and pannettone rather than turkey and  pudding for my Christmas dinner.

The French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu uses the concept of bricolage, which is the French word for DIY, to explain how he feels people don’t only just have culture thrust on them but rather construct it themselves from what they have around them.  I think that is what I have done with my relationship with Italy and Italians, OK I'm not Italian by birth but I have happily taken on aspects of those Welsh Italians that I grew up with and made it my own and long may it continue.