GURU magazine FINAL website

Civil society initiatives in Glendale, Northumberland. Image: Patsy Healey
There is a continual tension between creating
voice and asserting legitimacy as a stakeholder in
the agency world, and being co-opted and
‘groomed’ into the practices of this world. Some
community activists are aware of this and see part
of their agenda as helping civil servants and
professionals change how they relate to civil
society initiative.
Those involved in community development assert
the agency of community-based collective action.
They act politically in the sense of asserting the
power to act as/on behalf of our ‘placecommunity’.
But we have no single arena or
platform upon which agency is performed and
articulated. Initiatives compete, including with the
parish councils. So there are challenges in moving
from a ‘place-in-itself’, a ‘we’ which recognises
itself, to mobilising as a place-for-itself.
There are some benefits in this micro-diffusion of
power, but also costs. We often talk of “stronger
together” but “coming together” is not so easy to
achieve.
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This is partly because of the socio-economic
transitions underway in the locality. But it also
reflects different ways of thinking about the past,
present and future of our ‘place-community’. Some
want to hold on to the past, suspicious of
incomers. Others seek to re-build a world with
factory jobs and affordable housing. Some
incomers seek the romance of rural life. Others,
both locals and incomers, are energetic
innovators, keen to do new things, challenging
people seen as negative moaners. Few so far
advocate the kind of environmentally sustainable
lifestyles attractive to some younger generation
urban dwellers, though many care in a general way
about living sustainably. Co-existing with all these
frames is a widespread feeling of our ‘placecommunity’
as a friendly, lively, open-minded,
caring community and beautiful place, concerned
about our vulnerable members along with everyone
else, and regularly asserting a “stronger together”
philosophy whenever some conflict breaks out. Will
this frame help us to move forward?
Our activism achieved significant outcomes in
terms of ‘public value’ – materially (investment,
goods and services, environmental qualities);
through social infrastructures (platforms, and