This is post 3 in a 4-part introduction to Humanity Project. For the basic intro go here, or for part 2 go here and part 4 here
As a new organisation, we’ve experienced many of the same challenges as the local people who set up and run the 46 neighbourhood assemblies in our first phase. One of the things we’ve said to all those people we’ve worked with is: okay, take a rest, and use the time to be where you’re at. So we’ve taken our own medicine and have done the same. So we can answer the question: where are we now?
We love thinking about…
“It’s easier to take this time to think,” says Ruth Rogers, our Operations Lead, “when we can rest having really distilled what we’ve learnt from that first phase. A quick recap: we really learnt we all care about each other, and about the places where we come from. So that’s really positive, isn’t it? People also really loved the intergenerational connection they felt when younger people and older people sat down together and talked. They really learnt from one another.
“The two other clear things we learnt: our assemblies really made people feel they had power to do things. Whether they were getting training to run the assemblies, being part of an organising team, or just coming to experience decent public deliberation to make decisions together, everyone felt positive. And that positivity led to the last thing we learnt: these assemblies made communities stronger. It glued them together.”
What people wanted to speak about
Something else we’re sitting with are the things people wanted to speak about at these assemblies. Now, we have three core themes that we know are important to the communities we come from: the cost of living, experiences of racism and discrimination, and really looking after our world for our kids and future generations to inherit.
Here’s a very quick list (with loads of stuff in the detail) that were the things that kept coming up again and again. Let’s go:
- Fewer cars, better air quality
- Safer public spaces & Pocket parks
- Community support in place of police punishment
- Supporting the local economy to reduce income inequality
- Limit the power of “technocrats” who don’t know the neighbourhood
- Support centres in high streets
- More opportunities for young people
- Meet young people where they are
- Get more professionals to volunteer supporting young people
- More non-profit cafes and community hubs with shared resources
- Get all the local organisations working together, not competing!
Rubbish!
One thing stood out though. We didn’t expect people to talk so much rubbish. Actual rubbish, that is – flying tipping, litter, mess. We went to the northwest, and people talked about rubbish in their communities, but not just moaning, doing something about it: litter picking and cleaning up communities.
Lots of you who came to the assemblies spoke about being upset by messy streets, and particularly big piles of waste like fly tipping. One person who was also an organiser said it wasn’t just dirty. It made them feel less safe, and that they also did a big review, and they found out that the amount of rubbish correlated with spikes in violent crime and other big problems in the community.
“It feels to me,” says Clare Farrell, “like there’s something emerging that are all quite the same wherever we go, about people wanting to feel safer, and people wanting those kind of safe places for young people, people wanting to experience green space and nature and get to it and and it feel like it’s for them. What people want is the feeling of safety that you get when you feel like you know your neighbours and people down the road. It doesn’t sound very complicated, does it, if all you need to do is talk to some people and then you’ll realise that you know them and that it makes you all feel safer.”
When did talking to each other become so radical?!
So while we’re looking at where Humanity Project is now, we’re thinking about how we join the dots between what feels like small stuff, rubbish, but really isn’t small at all.
It’s a bit like the broken windows idea. If you fix the small stuff, the big stuff doesn’t happen because people respect the place, and people, more. It’s a wider improvement of the health of our social fabric in the places we live. It can all start with coming together and listening.
“I find it quite staggering how the situation that we’re in is one where it’s a radical act to listen to people,” says Clare. “It feels like a radically constructive thing to do to, like, meet someone who lives near you and have a conversation with them. Mad, hey?! It makes it feel like, oh, maybe the pressure could get lifted off us because this process of deliberation and respectful discussion can, when it’s well facilitated and well held, really sort of soften both sides and get people to see what they’ve got in common. And from there, find agreeable ways forward, something that feels like a compromise, or whether it’s something where even someone’s mind can change.”
Which is why we’re taking stock. Just letting all these lessons from the first 46 assemblies sink in, so we can do a good job in the second phase.
Actually, let’s not attack each other
What Humanity Project has been interested in from the start is that we’re told we live in a fractured and polarised society, by people in the highest positions of power in politics and the media. It’s been called a culture war, which is really a way to attack your own people. It’s actually a sort of vicious engagement with your own population. We’ve never liked this, and we’ve always thought we can help people see that’s not actually the world we live in, when we just speak to our neighbours.
“But yes, living in those conditions where politicians and the media tell us that we’re polarised has made us more and more likely to sort of see the faults in one another,” says Clare. “And it becomes harder and harder to build the bridges between each other. But it’s really hopeful to me to find out that something came back from the assemblies we ran. It says yes, we’re finding it difficult to get some things to happen, and the running of them is quite hard work. But we’re finding formats that help people see across divides and bridge differences. So then we’ve just got to work out how to get more different people in the room. For me, that’s really super exciting, a positive that’s come back out of what we’ve done so far.”