Community participation - Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Community participation in two deprived neighbourhoods
Despite the extent of his civic activism, Graham’s style and preference for
informal troubleshooting has limited his involvement in formal governance. He
even resigned from a post as a tenant director on the board of the housing
association, believing that his residents’ interests would be best served by doing
so.
And, for other outsiders, participation in governance was simply not a crucible for
social change that was capable of sustaining their own motivation or galvanising
others (see Box 7). As one interviewee put it:
If you’re not used to that formal set-up, talk through the chair, all that
nonsense … the whole atmosphere says ‘I’m not going back’.
Another expressed his frustration that he could not engage in the governance of his
daughter’s school because the whole approach was opaque, bureaucratic and, for
him, exclusive:
If you could just walk in, and they said ‘come and give us your ideas’ …
but I struggle with it because of the forms.
Box 7 Mike’s story – finding a better fit
On any measure Mike Blaney is an active citizen. He trained as a community
development worker and has worked in some of the most disadvantaged
neighbourhoods in Liverpool and Manchester. He took a job in Benchill ten
years ago. He now works out of a community centre funded by Barnardo’s,
Family Action Benchill, where among other things he helps run a local fathers’
support group. In his work Mike can’t afford to be anti-institutional. Knowing his
way around funding regimes and grants programmes is essential to doing his
job. But, even with that experience, he found in his personal life that formal
participation in governance just wasn’t for him. He tried being a school governor
for a while. But the huge book of rules and guidance they handed him at the first
meeting, the lack of support he felt he received and the knowledge that he could
be personally liable for up to £25,000 if the school’s finances were mismanaged
was enough to persuade him not to go back. As far as Mike is concerned, if you
are motivated by the possibility of social change, involvement in governance is
often not the best option.
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