The Vision Project

LOOKING TO
THE FUTURE
WRITTEN BY STEPHEN ROBERTSON
Stephen has been the Chief Executive of The Big Issue Foundation since 2007.
‘Staying in the moment’ or ‘stuck in the
moment’? Short-termism and self-denial
are not the qualities of a ‘mindful’
approach to modern living. Will we regret
tomorrow what we did or did not do
today and, today, does tomorrow seem
just a little too far away?
Social and economic exclusion most frequently
wander hand-in-hand along the path of social
ill-justice. To bring about an end to exclusion we
are really talking about achieving sustainable
decreases and the eradication of the chronic
outputs that are symbols of inequality within our
society; be that homelessness, gender or ethnicitybased
discrimination or inequality of access to
labour markets for example.
Of course, these are not sudden overnight
manifestations of short-term problems writ large.
History can teach us lessons if we are curious
to look and open to being taught. What are the
positive social behaviours we can understand
from history? How have these evolved, mutated or
ceased to exist and why?
Society is made of people and social and economic
exclusion can act like a disease, infecting, adapting
and spreading as it multiplies and expands.
Individual and collective responsibility should be
accepted, and positive action taken; action that is
informed by insight and history.
Some societal challenges are the unintended
consequences of action elsewhere; when a library
is closed it is often true that more people end up
in the local A&E department as a result. We should
be attempting to predict if what we intend to do
now will lead us to a more positive future, a future
that we seek to design.
Many of the young people we encounter in our
work are in hardship and on the streets in-part
because of problems that can be traced back
generations. Poverty inherited and maintained
by their parents, and their parents before them,
breeds family conflict and breakdown. The trauma
of losing the family home (however meagre),
and the support system that it provides, spins
young people into a downward spiral that’s often
impossible to climb out of.
Feelings of hopelessness can quickly amplify across
everyday behaviours. At a time when they crave
family members to nurture self-reliance, negative
experiences can start to reinforce the isolation and
inadequacy that many young people experience.
The lack of confidence that can result ensures that
the easiest way to deal with life’s challenges is
to run away. To run away from responsibility, run
away from the opportunity for education and run
away from the chance of getting a job. Missed
basic needs, at a young age, can be handed down
and passed on from generation to generation.
People need ongoing support to help them cope
with the trauma of poverty and homelessness.
At the Big Issue we give people experiencing
financial and social exclusion the opportunity to
earn money by becoming vendors. Their primary
motivation may be cash, but in the process, they
gain retail skills, resilience and self-worth. They
figure out how to be part of society again, to own
and tackle their exclusion.
Our way isn’t for everyone, and it’s not the
only way. For others, bursaries may be more
appropriate so that they can benefit from an
education that leads to a career and a long life of
contributing to society rather than a short life at
the mercy of society.
To enable this, we need a shift in public perception,
we should encourage the public to recognise
that people are homeless because of wider social
problems, not just housing. Social ills that only
a genuinely benevolent society can address and
we, the well-intended, should never play a role in
promoting the stereotypes that re-enforce the
idea that homelessness is an inevitability. That in
the main, people are the architects of their own
decline.
When people become homeless we need to
act quickly to reverse their fortunes. The many
organisations in this space must work more
collaboratively (and there is much to say about
the real value of collaboration going forward),
creatively developing solutions with permanence
at their heart, rather than applying individual
sticking plasters. And, if an idea works, let’s give it
the space, time and money to succeed – Housing
First works so implement it properly.
We need our Government, of whatever political
persuasion, to implement a welfare regime that is
sufficiently robust and generous to ensure that our
citizens are not held down or held back by things that
we can control or correct. Monetary poverty leads
to poverty of opportunity, so we must help families
to obtain a better future, rather than just fund the
status quo.
Earlier this year the Environment Agency warned
that England’s flood planners must prepare for
the worst of climate change. Its chairwoman,
Emma Howard Boyd said, on current trends, global
temperature could rise between 2C and 4C by
2100 and £1bn a year would need to be spent on
flood management. She went on to say that some
communities may even need to move because of
the risk of floods.
Climate change and the emergence and public
mobilisation of movements by, for example,
Extinction Rebellion do demonstrate that there
is power in collective endeavour. Citizenship and
democratic action here look beyond the normal
timeframes to re-write a future history that has yet
to happen and a future that many may not even
be alive to witness. Thinking, planning and acting
for tomorrow is a critical component to ensuring
that we live in the present and thrive not just in
the short-term moment.
So, what has history taught us with The Big Issue
magazine? How has something so simple had such
a profound effect on so many and for so long?
At the very core is the concept of self-help and
responsibility. Many who we first meet live a
life that extends 60 to 90 minutes ahead, the
immediacy of their situation preventing any
thought about tomorrow, with little or no capital
to support the next day. For those who return
the next day with some cash from the sale of
the free magazines we provide each new vendor,
then another 23 hours have been added on to
a persons’ experience. They have engaged with
themselves and saved something from that for
another day. They are thinking about tomorrow
and that is where the window of opportunity is
opened. Self-determination, personal effort and an
eye for the opportunities that tomorrow can bring.
That’s where this all starts.
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THE VISION PROJECT