THE MARSH FARM COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT STRATEGY

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This document was written by Damian Tissier of STUF consultants (Strategic Urban Futures) after he had worked for a year with different community groups on the estate to capture our vision for effective community empowerment and economic regeneration of Marsh Farm.

The report said: “As a neighbourhood, there are many unique features about Marsh Farm. What has struck me most, however, is the vision, commitment and imagination of the community representatives that I have met. Over recent years, I have been directly involved in four Single Regeneration Budget (SRB) Programmes, three New Deal for Communities (NDC) Programmes, and two Sure Start Programmes. In my experience, deprived and disadvantaged areas often have had the ‘community stuffing’ knocked out of them. Marsh Farm, in contrast, is a resilient community that has evolved many different strategies to cope and survive with a high degree of social and economic stress. Consequently, it has a vibrant community that is bubbling with ideas and fired with enthusiasm.

Therefore, any approach to community empowerment must be appropriate to the special circumstances on Marsh Farm. The wealth of community activity and the strength of community bonds indicate that the level of social capital in the area is high. On the other hand, economic capital is low. The BNG household survey showed Marsh Farm to be an area characterised by a low income levels and high levels of unemployment. Around 40% of the population are dependant upon benefits.

The BNG study concludes: ‘Job creation is key, in order to promote the regeneration of the area and to support local services and businesses. This forms a key strand of policy to keep money and wealth within the local community rather than ‘leaking’ out to other communities’.

It then went on to spell out our strategy to achieve this:

“An effective programme of community empowerment should have a measurable and long lasting impact on the economic regeneration of the area. Indeed, the work of the Centre of Community Enterprise, which is quoted more extensively later in this paper, suggests that viable and sustainable communities must have a high degree of local control over economic activities and resources.

The central proposition of this paper is that local economic control is best exercised through various forms of mutual and community enterprise. Community empowerment can then be described as an investment strategy aimed at stimulating and supporting community self-help, initiative and enterprise. Such an approach knits together social and economic goals in order to increase the ‘common wealth’ of the community.

It will need to link into and complement the NDC proposals for the use of the Coulters Building. This is the flagship project of the NDC Programme and a feasibility study for the Coulters Building was completed by Donaldson’s in association with Enterprise Plc which recommends that the building should be used as a ‘community resource and entrepreneurial hub’. In other words it should be a centre for social and community enterprise.”

The size and location of the Coulters building offers tremendous scope to accommodate the diverse range of existing community oriented services, as well as providing a physical base for the NDC process. Additionally, though, the Building should provide a creative and enabling hub at the physical heart of the estate that is both accessible to, owned and managed by the local community in its widest sense.”

It follows that such an approach to community empowerment will focus on the following main elements:
• It mobilises community resources
• It is inclusive and involves all sections of the community
• It builds community capacity and social entrepreneurship
• It opens doors to sources of finance and technical/professional support
• It promotes self-help, social enterprise, community ownership and the ‘mutualisation’ of local public and private sector services.