When riots and counter-demonstrations occurred in cities and towns throughout the UK, commentators responded by talking of “community”. That got me thinking about what a community is.
Struggling to find a metaphor, I came upon the garden. You know what it is; it can have wildly different styles and plants, but instinctively, you, as the onlooker, can tell it has a different more controlled and loved tone than simply a wild space. So, let’s begin with space and boundaries.
Space and boundaries
For a community to exist, it needs space and spaces. Those deliberative or accidental paths where citizens meet and mingle. The local shops, the pub, post office, place of work or park where folks can see each other, stop and talk; make a connection. This social interaction is the lifeblood of a community and one that cannot be replicated by WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages.
Here in rural Suffolk, those opportunities are diminishing, as the pubs become gastropubs where you can’t hang out unless you want to eat – usually expensively. Gone is the quick drink and a chat. We don’t have as many local shops, as supermarkets, and purveyors of takeaway food and alcohol, and charity shops hollow out the high streets. The banks are gone – but if you are fortunate enough, a post office struggling alongside selling cards. If you still have one, the local library is a place to go without requiring payment.
God forbid you are young, as kids are bused to school or driven by manic parents hurtling from one deadline to the next. Youth clubs are rare and often require a car ride. So, hanging around Greggs or the chippie with your mates is the only option for many. Teenagers are using more centralised sixth-form colleges in towns, maybe many miles away from home, putting more pressure on their parent taxi-drivers to maintain any social life.
Ownership: who holds the keys?
Which leads me to ownership – who are the gatekeepers to space for a community? If you are lucky enough, maybe a civil society group could be running a youth project like Inspire, which has sites in Ipswich, Lowestoft, and Hadleigh. Or maybe the local government has managed to keep a small amount of money to add social cohesion and runs community-based activities like dance classes and over-50s activities, such as Chelmsford City Sports runs. For many, libraries and sports facilities are the only community-owned spaces.
However, some villages are fighting back as their spaces are taken from them. The community pubs springing up across the region are testimony to hundreds of local volunteers trying to keep a heart beating for themselves. This movement is growing; Plunkett UK, a registered charity, has developed a network with 31 trading pubs across Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex. A further 48 groups are looking to establish their own pub. While the East of England Co-operative Community Cares Fund has helped with funding.
Likewise, there are more community shops like the ones in Monks Eleigh, Polstead, Sproughton and Coddenham. This focal point is being returned to villages where commercial pressures and real estate values have seen the extinction of traditional retailing. There are multiple sources of support, such as the Rural Community Council of Essex, an independent charity working to help rural communities create their own services. People are finding other creative ways of maintaining the services they want, such as pubs like the Saracens Head opening a local shop, as they have done in the village of Newton Green near Sudbury.
The gardeners of community
So, who are the ‘gardeners’ of these local communities? These assets are community-owned because a small group of volunteers put the money up to buy their pubs or make shops that keep a community ‘asset’ alive. The same small band of folk run the fairs, fêtes, festivals and events that create a dynamic community. They tend to be the same active folk, often retired, who run the region’s parish councils and events committees. As work-life balance is a losing battle for many, the time for hobbies, interests and passions is being squeezed out of many lives. Add in some heavy-duty commuting or after-house chores, and the available pool of volunteers can get very shallow.
This leads me to the ‘biodiversity’ of our shared spaces. Are our common spaces welcome to everyone? Or is there an element of pre-qualification and “people like us”? Do we accept there can be different choices, lifestyles and classes, all with a right to participate? Often, we create spaces in our own image and wonder why we don’t get a wide range of ‘wildlife’. The more biodiverse a space is, the richer the habitat is for everything. I think that works for all communities; diversity makes life more interesting if we accept everyone has something to contribute.
Communities across the UK came together to clear up the streets trashed by hard-right groups that had nothing to do with them. Brickies rebuilt walls, mosques were flooded with defenders, and multi-faith collaborations happened while food and drink was shared. We are best when we can ‘break bread’ together; eating with strangers has, for millennia, been a sign of trust.
The pollinators: connecting and sharing
This brings me to a hugely influential group: the ‘pollinators’. Like the bees, these super connectors move ideas through a community and share ideas around. They ignore what divides us and build connections between isolated or lonely parts of the community. These super networkers collect information and share it around to help others by nurturing relationships.
Communities like gardens need space, resources, agency, self-confidence and TLC. Don’t assume that communities happen; they don’t. Do your bit, say hello, find out who your neighbours are, help out, pitch in and volunteer, and you will be rewarded by creating the connections that make a group of individuals into something special – a community, a vibrant, growing garden. It’s where we can all grow better, surrounded by our companion plants, protecting us from the worst that life can throw at us.
A stable climate for growth
But to garden, you need a stable climate; this means we need a government that values communities, gives them adequate resources, maintains our spaces, and, hopefully, will build more. I would like to see a ‘Citizens Hall’ in every town and city, equipped with shared resources, to help communities self-organise, to let kids and adults make music, dance and create art, to host the mother and baby groups that make young starts easier and to give the old and the lonely somewhere to hang out that isn’t their own four walls and doesn’t cost them money they don’t have. Maybe then we can grow some more public gardens across the region.
