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Inside TWCP – A Flourishing Community – Lai Ogunsola

In 2018, my brother introduced me to Matt Scott, Director of Thames Ward Community Project, TWCP at an informal event in Barking.

To provide some context. I had moved back to London from Birmingham earlier that year. I previously worked in the Public Health Directorate at Birmingham City Council as a Commissioning Support Officer, prior to my role at the Greater London Authority.

While working in Birmingham, I developed an active interest in community development and regeneration and was keen to learn more about possible developments in Barking. I had seen first-hand the positive impact that community development could have in communities from my involvement in the voluntary sector via Sustrans and other community groups in Digbeth, and Edgbaston. I had discovered Impact Hub Birmingham, which was a social co–working space that empowered residents to make a difference in the city. I was keen to see a similar approach adopted in Barking.

After speaking to Matt and Jamie Kesten, I learned more about the ambitions and ethos of TWCP. The project really resonated with me. I was glad to see a desire to engage constructively with the council and the developers, Barking Riverside London to improve outcomes for residents.

I decided to get more involved as I felt the project was a perfect match for my professional skills and interests. More importantly, I felt that my 20 years of lived experience as a resident in Thames view would allow me to provide insight, historical context, a genuine resident voice and practical suggestions for future work.

My vision for Thames view and Barking Riverside is that of a flourishing community, with improved health outcomes and education/employment for residents.

Historically, relatively high rates of unemployment, poor mental health, obesity, anti-social behavioural and a range of other health and social maladies have been an issue in our community.

I have been exceptionally impressed with our joint work with Barking Council, and the local Clinical Commissioning Group, as well as our collective engagement with a wide range of partners, including the British Red Cross, University College London, The Bromley By Bow Centre, East London Citizen’s UK amongst others to address health inequity in the local area.

Lai Ogunsola

Member of the TWCP Health & Wellbeing Citizen Action Group

Director blog April 2022 – Handwashing guidance – what to do when policies invariably fail?

1. Palm to palm.
2. Right palm over left dorsum and left palm over right dorsum.
3. Palm to palm fingers interlaced.
4. Backs of fingers to opposing palms with fingers interlocked.
5. Rotational rubbing of right thumb clasped in left palm and vice versa.
6. Rotational rubbing, backwards and forwards with clasped fingers of right-hand left palm and vice versa.

How do you wash your hands of something? Some bold ambitious policy statement that politicians make but then it fails as most public policy does. Try the above. Send out technical manuals so everyone knows what to do and can practice together.

Seriously – most public policy fails most of the time. It doesn’t achieve what it set out to do. But read evaluations and corporate communications and everything has to be a success even when it mostly isn’t. All that is solid melts into PR. Residents were listened to, communities were involved at every possible stage, and everyone is deeply happy even when they are not.

One of the questions I wonder about is why do we go along with the pretence? A kind of open conspiracy against social change. People seem strangely frozen within the institutions and communities. In Japan they say: ‘the nail that stands out gets hammered down’ and I’ve seen that response many times, close-up and personal. The standard response to community work that shifts power is to shut it down. Fear and spite is the flip-side of a paternalism and there is a lot of it about. I think it is more than that though.

My sense is many of us don’t feel it could be any different. That any kind of change is not on the agenda. Although everyone has a voice most people don’t feel they can use it. There’s a vacuum that more unscrupulous transactional people seize but only because they are allowed to.

If you don’t act, you will be acted upon. And mostly we don’t act decisively – things happen to us. Those things are for our own good – everything that happens will be attached to a policy that is always and only a stunning success. So it goes.

My solution: have an honest conversation. Ask questions and don’t accept answers. Always question answers. If something sounds too good to be true it probably is. Historically power is rarely or never given – it is taken. It is contested, argued over. It can be done amicably and lead to much better outcomes for all, but it means taking a risk.

Issue / solution / action

The only way to break free from policy failure is to keep asking questions. Questions pinpoint issues. These issues become an agenda and an action plan. Having a plan and working that plan is about developing and testing solutions and taking action, over and over again. If you want change you have to take action and not leave it to others who have great PR but a disappointing track record. Part of our task is also to create the spaces where people can grow in confidence and self-belief to take collective action, to learn and work together in more authentic partnership.

But it only works if you ask questions. You have to question if the person in control really knows what they are doing, if the policy is really working, you have to be willing to disrupt the present to claim the future. Next time you go to a meeting give it a go.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Inside TWCP: A Voice for the People – Romeo Murisa

Thames Ward Community Project represents an opportunity to give a voice for the people, by the people. The events held by them does more than communicate to building connections as it tackles challenges in a unique and impactful way with the aim to find a solution to the root cause of how the community feels.

I first got involved with TWCP by sharing a poem about mental health. The aim of the event was to help connect local residents and help facilitate conversations on the importance of social connection and the promotion of good mental health and wellbeing. This enabled me to share my talents and craft of spoken word, to help create impactful and meaningful conversations within our community. As a local resident, this was a space that contained individuals who share similar views to me but with a deep understanding of our lived experience. Hence, when an opportunity to be involved in the Arts and Culture Action Group with TWCP was presented, I was honoured to be given a chance to give back to the community. To give back through one of the most beautiful and readily available arts, known as spoken word. During this journey of working with the amazing team at TWCP, we have been able to achieve a milestone of creating an event for Black History month, which fused a vibrant palette of music, art, and spoken word. It was great to have written a piece for this to create conversations and hear the audience’s perspective.

As well as this, I have been involved in the fire safety action by writing three unique pieces that I have shared with the members and residents alongside the British Red Cross and the London Fire Brigade, to spark change and highlight our action points. I am excited for the end result for this one as it will help not only our community, but other communities that are at risk due to the lack of fire safety plans being put to action.

My plan for this year is to host writing workshops to allow everyone in our community to gain the ability to put what’s on their minds and heart to paper, because what is written is never forgotten. My ultimate vision is to support local residents that have a passion and talent for spoken word to gain their voice so that their stories can be heard.

Romeo Murisa

Member of the TWCP Arts & Culture Citizen Action Group

Director blog March 2022 – The Body Keeps the Score

Trauma underpins our lives and our communities; it is hard to talk about and often talking doesn’t help, who wants to relive such things, but we carry it in our bodies and reproduce it in our behaviours anyway. That’s what I mean by ‘the body keeps the score’. We are lucky if we get through life without distressing experiences that injure us physically and emotionally. If we don’t experience it ourselves, we’ll know others close to us who have.

We carry it in our bodies, but we also carry it in everything we do. It strikes me that community work and so-called ‘partnership’ working that seeks to address positive change, as opposed to maintaining existing inequality and power relationships, needs to exercise more care, because change is painful and is resisted.

Trauma informed practice has six simple principles which if acted on would help:

Safety
Trustworthiness and transparency
Peer support
Collaboration and mutuality
Empowerment and choice

Cultural, historical and gender issues

I don’t think our community and partnership spaces are always safe, trustworthy, transparent. Or that we have each other’s backs often enough (peer support). We compete rather than collaborate. There is compulsion in the workplace, not choice and we don’t talk about race, gender, class and other oppressions. Sometimes we create spaces for the above but not often enough. Because we live in the world as it is, not the world as it should be.

Over lockdown I found myself thinking a lot about the world as it should be.

I was thinking about the pain in our lives and how it is telling us something. It can be redemptive; we can learn from it but mostly it just hurts and then we go numb, stuck, doing the same things and getting the same results. About love and how there isn’t enough of it in the world – in the absence of love, there is survival and how simply to survive is not to live a life.

I thought about a recent situation that triggered me, where voices were raised. I don’t like being shouted at. It reminds me of a time in my life when my father would explode. He got sectioned. I remember social workers and police visiting. Questions being asked that had no answers. It just repeats. A year or so before lockdown my sister, who is autistic, got sectioned because the care home suddenly changed its staff and she literally started pulling her hair out. Social services answer was to put her into the same psychiatric hospital my dad spent time in. I then engaged with the health system my parents couldn’t cope with and it closed ranks. It reminded me that if you want change you need power; but that power without love is inhuman and love without power is anaemic, too weak.

My sister is in a good place now and even when it was going on I was surprised at how calm I felt. I’d got used to that kind of thing happening. No big deal. Broken systems and broken people; I feel too much and then I feel nothing. I see how things get frozen. I try to remember to appreciate what is precious and focus on what it is possible to change, and that makes me happy. Sometimes.

I’ve been thinking about how power is also about vulnerability. Trauma is caused when you are vulnerable and are powerless and overwhelmed so it is odd to say being vulnerable can also be powerful. How can that be?

In that space of vulnerability we are most truly ourselves and from that space we can re-imagine what is important and worth doing in our lives. A lot of the things we do are probably not worth doing – the meetings we go to – the little competitive time serving rituals that divide and rule. Anything that can give a new perspective, new space to do differently, is worthwhile because when it comes to climate change, transformational public services, local democracy, looking after each other and being more human, much of what we do isn’t working and we can do better at every level.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Inside TWCP: Power to residents’ voices – Venilia Amorim

Having been an already quite active resident in the community – I joined the Barking Reach Residents Association committee as treasurer in 2016 – Tricia Zipfel, a founder and guardian of the Thames Ward Community Project, asked me and the association’s chair (Pete Mason) if we would like to be part of the interviewing process for the TWCP director’s position in the summer of 2017.

That’s when I met Matt Scott (TWCP director), back in September 2017. I posed hard questions, especially to someone who was new to the area. I wanted to make sure we got the right person for the job, someone who could establish a strong relationship with the local people, who really listened and actioned some of the brilliant ideas local residents had.

Since then I was quickly absorbed into TWCP’s steering board and never looked back.

I knew then – and I know now – that TWCP would be one of the most important projects for Barking Riverside and indeed Thames Ward as a whole. Important in developing residents’ skills, in encouraging entrepreneurship and engagement not only within the community but also with the wider stakeholders such as the council and the Barking Riverside estate developer, Barking Riverside Limited.

Living on the estate – I moved to Barking Riverside eight years ago – and in the borough (for a combined 17 years) has given me an insight of what is most important for residents: a safe and clean environment where people (young and old) can thrive culturally, financially educationally and socially.

Residents want safe and warm homes to live in, without the burden of inoperable heating systems or flammable cladding on walls. They want a consistent transport structure and shops and restaurants. Residents want a GP! One in which it doesn’t take months to get an appointment. Residents want parking spaces but want to be able to enjoy green spaces and clean air! Residents want good schools and activities for the wide diversity of residents as well as worship spaces…

Lots of wants… It’s not an easy task to be a town planner, that’s for sure! But it will be much easier with residents on board, actively making decisions on how best to shape the place they live in and will continue to live in for many years to come. I believe TWCP is a great platform for that. It has made great progress in already so many fields: arts, culture, nature, infrastructure, transport. And it will keep on going. It has and it will always have my support as a resident and as a steering group member.

My main passion is communication – I’m a journalist by trade – and I thrive in clear and open communication, ultimately by residents for the residents. This plays a hugely important part in my vision for Barking Riverside and Thames Ward: a place that is designed and built with local residents in mind, with their wants and needs as top priority.

Venilia Amorim

TWCP Steering Group Member

Inside TWCP: A Year in Post – Zainab Jalloh

Last week, it was my 1-year anniversary as Communications & Outreach Officer here at Thames Ward Community Project, and I couldn’t quite believe it. We choose jobs for a variety of reasons, but I remember vividly late 2020 hoping to take a risk to find a job that gave me time for family, and a job that was closer to what moved me, serving community. I believe in circumstances being timely and purposeful so when I was offered this role, even though changing careers was frightening, a smaller team more exposing, and the initial short-term contract precarious, I took it because it was what I wanted.

It has since been both challenging and incredibly exciting. I sit in my role as a worker but most importantly a local resident of Barking Riverside who emphatically wants to see our area thrive and people really be at the centre of decisions that affect their lives and TWCP exists for that. The heart of Thames Ward Community Project is residents coming together to create action groups and make change: Arts & Culture, Environment, Health & Wellbeing, Housing, Skills & Enterprise, and Young People, and comms plays a huge part.

I’ve been able to heavily support our Barking Food Forest project and seen how important sharing the journey of a project is in building momentum and engaging residents. Even whilst in lockdown, we created social media pages to share our ethos, co-design session plans, and more recently people getting stuck in at events! And I’m learning that that’s what people care about seeing. Real people, real stories, real community building. So my focus this new year is doing more of that.

As a team we’re creating spaces that promote honest dialogue with major stakeholders; the Resident Planning Forum, Community Resilience Project, the Healthy Thames Project, to get our resident voices a seat at the table. And a key vehicle for me to champion real stories is through our now resident-led, community newspaper, “Riverside News.” If you haven’t read it yet take a moment! This is us. The community managing green spaces, supporting local entrepreneurs, building resilience, enjoying street parties and getting behind our young people! We’re a little closer today it seems to having the community we are happy to have our children grow up in, but I don’t just want to sell you positive press.

I want us to have some hard conversations too and to make sure those get heard. At TWCP, I like that we’re not afraid to do that. I’m excited to spend more time this year getting out of my house and meeting you. Collaborating and creating impactful content that turns heads, and gets resources.

Zainab Jalloh

Communications and Outreach Officer at TWCP

Director blog February 2022 – #newpower – why outsiders are winning, institutions are failing and how the community sector will win the day!

The world is changing, faster than ever it seems. I grew up without computers and mobile phones, without the internet – now those things define us, our data is mined and sold back to us.

I was asked to lead on some group discussions with COMPASS, an independent think tank, on how the new power of tech impacts on communities and neighbourhoods.

A new book had come out, entitled #newpower by Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans. Books like #newpower try to articulate the zeitgeist, to explain why our times are as they are. They have a big idea and even bigger hype so I am usually sceptical. The basic idea of #newpower is that for much of history things were straightforward – you knew who had power and who did not. But now it’s changing. For once the underdogs are winning. Just not always the kind of underdogs you might want. So as a community worker working in the community sector I know something about underdogs so I’m interested in changing the rules of the game.

Evidence of this change might include the #metoo movement, Black Lives Matter but also ISIS and Q Anon. In the hyper-connected world ideas and actions spread very quickly and this can force change. How do we use that for good? How do we make it easier to do good? The harm and downsides will be obvious, but this new world is coming ready or not.

One of the examples I liked most was Lego, the company. It was in decline and had run out of ideas. They talked to their longstanding fans and ran meet-ups for them over weekends where people indulged their childhood nostalgia but then soon ended up as an R&D arm, making successful products overnight. Lego in effect gave up control and handed over production and creativity to the people who cared most.

See where I might be going here? Council – control – community groups – new way of working. What would happen if we turned local services and democracy inside out like Lego did? That is the kind of thought process the book invites. And more to the point, it illustrates examples of cutting-edge business practice that does exactly this, underlining the point that far from being fantasy it is sound market practice that larger charities and public sector organisations have yet to catch up with.

What #newpower seeks to do is spread power much more widely to millions of people (crowds) and as much as possible, take it away from power holders altogether. Because power holders don’t have the answers or the insights and can’t grow anything. And now their power is flowing away from them by entrepreneurs who can code and activists who can tweet, video-edit and post.

In its better moments, the voluntary and community sector spreads power more widely and deeper. It was ahead of the curve in pushing power outwards and downwards when it remembered to collaborate rather than compete, in the pursuit of more equitable outcomes and a fairer world.

The four group sessions we did included council leaders, former government ministers, charity CEOs, policy people and we had a great chat. Mostly we didn’t talk about tech at all. We talked about how people behave to each other and how power changes that. The fear and cults of personality that so-called leaders promote. How large institutions create a culture that can crush people as a matter of routine. We talked about our sense of déjà vu, of policymaking being doomed to failure because of broken promises. The need for immediate ring-fenced money and buildings placed directly in the hands of communities, independent of anyone, in perpetuity (forever). People spoke from the heart as much as the head so that was my criteria for a worthwhile discussion and hopefully something better to follow. When it gets written up I’ll be sure to share.

At the heart of #newpower is a vision of the world turned upside down. I’m not wholly sold on that. I don’t think the underdogs are winning though some demagogues are gaining traction. I’d settle for a more pragmatic view of partnership working and power shifting – where the top-down power holder can meet independent community groups and residents in the middle. That middle ground does not come easy. But we can do much better than winner takes all; we can fundamentally change the rules of the game.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Director blog January 2022 – Freedom from Fear

‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others’. – Nelson Mandela / Marianne Williamson

When I think of inspirational quotes this is one I frequently return to because it is so direct and relatable. Mandela used it in his inaugural address and took it from an earlier source (Marianne Williamson) so it is a mishmash. The child of God reference may mean different things to people of faith or no faith, for me that doesn’t really matter. It asks an interesting question – what are we afraid of? What holds us back? At the beginning of a New Year and after nearly two years of the pandemic with all the disruption and uncertainty that brings, the world feels strangely adrift. Plenty of things to be fearful of but where does that get us?

Fear is a universal experience but it doesn’t have to be defining; it doesn’t have to set limits. Addressing what is difficult is more often liberating. I wanted to think about this in the context of community work in Thames Ward and beyond.

One of the things I am conscious of is that for community work to be successful people need to invest in something bigger than themselves. In contrast much of the social conditioning we receive encourages us to be selfish and competitive – in order to get ahead. Community work is relatively low profile relative to footballers, tech entrepreneurs, celebrities, erratic politicians – that suck up the national conversation. If the criteria for success is money, profile, status, power – and the fear of not having those things drives us, then community work is out of step with the world, playing by the wrong rules.

Here’s the thing – recent research consistently shows happiness is something we do for its own sake, not for external goals. When we become fully immersed in something we enjoy we experience what is sometimes called ‘flow’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1997). We don’t watch the clock because we are wholly absorbed and more truly ourselves. That sounds like winning to me, and along the lines of what Mandela spoke about – something liberating which spreads outwards. When I see community work in action, in its better moments, it is the same dynamic taking place.

My wider reflection is that the community sector is the cornerstone of a successful neighbourhood, ward and borough. One in four people nationally regularly volunteer – that is around 17 million people across the UK. That is a good news story that deserves much more celebration. They don’t do it individually – they do it together in groups (community groups).

I hope the community sector doesn’t continue, in the words of Mandela, to ‘play it small’. Sometimes when community groups get round the table with professionals you can feel people shrinking. The resident voice if it gets any access at all rarely sets the agenda and even rarer, do they hold money and deliver services. Billions of pounds of investment come in and out of the borough in a process that is largely invisible to most people. We are a million miles from where we need to be in terms of real empowerment to leave you with another quote: ‘The first step is half the journey’ (Aristotle).

What that means is, once enough people in the community case choose not to be afraid and come to appreciate what Mandela terms, their innate brilliance and talents – that is the ‘first step’ and it changes everything. As soon as residents and community groups stop following and start leading we are more than halfway to where we need to be.

Happy New Year everyone!

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Inside TWCP: 78 years in Barking – Allan Thacker

How did I get involved with TWCP & Why?

Well, just over four years ago, Barking MP Dame Margaret Hodge obtained lottery funding to set up a community project to ensure that residents of the rapidly developing Barking Riverside and Thames View could become involved in the changes that would affect both areas.

At the time I held the position of chair of Thames View Tenants & Residents association, so along with a colleague was invited to sit on a panel to interview candidates for the project leader. Our choice along with many others recommended Matt Scott for the position, so TWCP was born! I became a “Founders & Guardians” member and later a steering group member.

TWCP today has gone from strength to strength and its overriding aim is to involve and help residents “have a voice at the table” whether that be with Barking Riverside Limited or LBBD.

My vision for Thames View/ Barking Riverside?

Infrastructure. What I mean is that as Barking Riverside continues to expand over the next ten years, priority is given over to the pressures facing residents. The proposed “Health Hub” is coming, (long overdue), and the rail link is almost complete. We now have an excellent bus service with praise going to the young people of Riverside School for their achievements. The riverboat service to central London is coming, (well done BRL). Tunnelling the A13 is a major priority for residents who regularly have issues leaving and arriving at their homes.

Transport for London will pick up the bill (£1 billion+)! It would have been half that 10 years ago.

So as I enter my 78th year as a Barking resident, lot’s to look forward to.

Allan Thacker

Resident trustee of TWCP

Director blog December 2021 – Of Elephants and Eggshells

Circuses are often seen as cruel these days but when I was growing up that concern wasn’t a thing. We had a small black and white tele with three channels so circuses were a big deal. If you’ve ever been to the circus a few years back or seen clips on TV of old shows, you might notice that the younger elephants wear big manacles attached to huge chains tied to big spikes sunk metres into the ground. Or you might miss that bit and just see the regalia, consume the spectacle as is intended. Look a bit closer and you might notice that the larger older elephants have very thin ropes around one foot attached to a spike less deeply rooted in the ground.

Why the difference? Why would the larger elephants not need a much heavier chain than the younger one? Understand this and you’ll understand where much of the voluntary sector is right now. Where resident empowerment has got up to, too. It is a little psychological trick called learned helplessness. The younger elephant cannot move, it cannot escape because the chain is way too heavy. Over time it gets used to the idea that whenever it feels something on its leg, it is tied to something too powerful to break and thus it cannot escape, even though in reality it could snap those bonds very easily.

When our world and what we can do is restricted over a long enough time, we end up believing we cannot snap our bonds, we cannot choose anything other than what we’ve got, even though the bonds are as sheer as gossamer. That’s when it gets dangerous, when people fall into despair and make poor choices and everyone pays the price for the confinement.

The elephants are being gaslighted. Made to doubt their own reality.

Reading the council corporate plan 2020-2022 as maybe more people should do, because otherwise how will you ever get an appreciation of the bigger picture, I read about how the voluntary and community sector was seen as playing a role – pages 20 and 21. There are four priorities.

The first is capacity building – the BD Collective get to do that (although I had thought it was the CVS).
Second is participation in social networks – Participatory City get to do that. I’m not sure what the difference is between this and the next one but…
Third is democratic participation – BD CAN get to do that. Every grassroots action, all of it presumably.
Fourth – a more relational council, as I understand it, the council relationship managers do that, though presumably it permeates all the way from top to bottom.

Why does any of this matter? Who cares?

It matters to me because it is a top-down representation of the sector I work in and what I do, and what thousands of volunteers and community groups do, and it is inaccurate. Three or four organisations who have a transactional relationship and in many cases were created by the council, will not create ‘a friendly borough with a strong community spirit.’

At this point it can feel like an elephant treading on eggshells. That feeling again when the words and the actions go in different directions. The documents all say the right thing – the 2019 Council VCSE strategy (yes, you should read that one too) talks about ‘enabling and embedding relationships based on trust.’ At this point all that is solid melts into PR. We don’t learn about the detail of what happens when this lofty aim falls short. It is asserted and that appears to be enough. We have yet to see a voluntary sector compact, one of the VCSE strategy actions, but even if one were to exist it would have no legal teeth. Which means in effect, it’s nice when it’s nice and it isn’t when it isn’t.

One of the exciting things about the many spaces BD Collective have created is the emergence of an independent vision of what community is. Michael Little, working with the BD Collective, reframes it as the community was here first and underpins everything else. It’s easy to forget that when reading about it in somebody else’s policy document. You’ll only feel your chains when you start to move. Something is starting to move though.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Category: Blog

Inside TWCP – A Flourishing Community – Lai Ogunsola

Director blog April 2022 – Handwashing guidance – what to do when policies invariably fail?

Inside TWCP: A Voice for the People – Romeo Murisa

Director blog March 2022 – The Body Keeps the Score

Inside TWCP: Power to residents’ voices – Venilia Amorim

Inside TWCP: A Year in Post – Zainab Jalloh

Director blog February 2022 – #newpower – why outsiders are winning, institutions are failing and how the community sector will win the day!

Director blog January 2022 – Freedom from Fear

Inside TWCP: 78 years in Barking – Allan Thacker

How did I get involved with TWCP & Why?

My vision for Thames View/ Barking Riverside?

Director blog December 2021 – Of Elephants and Eggshells

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