Hope Under Neoliberal Austerity. Группа авторов
home insulation and boiler replacement schemes for people experiencing fuel poverty. The authors situate place-based working in the context of central government cuts that affected the local authority and its partner organisations, and within the context of a large, powerful, bureaucratic organisation involved in multiple inter-organisational collaborations during times of severe and sustained financial pressure.
The chapter ‘City of Dreams’ illustrates that local authority cuts to arts and culture acted as catalyst for a new and exciting approach to enable children and young people in Newcastle and Gateshead to engage with culture and creativity. The authors suggest that City of Dreams – a collaboration between ten cultural and heritage organisations on a ten-year mission – actively involves young people in the design and delivery of the cultural offer, and has the potential to be transformative through the creation of new ways of working. It involved action research with representatives from NewcastleGateshead Cultural Venues, leading to the creation of a steering group of 16–25 year olds and a representative body of children and young people, which culminated in the development of the annual Big Culture Conversations. Newcastle University functioned as the key research facilitator for City of Dreams and established the City of Dreams seminar series, which brought academics and the wider arts, charity and other sectors working with young people together to discuss topics such as ‘youth citizenship and culture’. It involved increasing engagements with arts and culture by young people, some of whom were from disadvantaged backgrounds, developing their confidence and life skills. In its role, Newcastle University sought to draw on its own research strengths, as well as those of other regional universities, to support and be a critical friend to the project.
Part I of the book concludes with the chapter ‘Are we “all in this together”?’, which critically reflects on austerity and the COVID-19 crisis. The author argues that there are clear connections between the unequal impacts of austerity and COVID-19 on disadvantaged groups in society, and highlights the risks of applying the same austerity ideology to the COVID-19 crisis and its aftermath. Consistencies between the state’s expectations of the voluntary sector and the responsibilisation agenda are discussed in relation to austerity and COVID-19, while providing a focus on the implications of austerity and the COVID-19 crisis on young people, women and front-line workers.
References
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Lowe, R. (1993) The Welfare State in Britain since 1945, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Marmot, M., Allen, J., Boyce, T., Goldblatt, P. and Morrison, J. (2020) Health Equity in England: The Marmot Review 10 Years On, London: Institute of Health Equity.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2011) Together for Better Public Services: Partnering with Citizens and Civil Society, Paris: OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing. Available at: https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/governance/together-for-better-public-services-partnering-with-citizens-and-civil-society_9789264118843-en#page2
Peck, J. and Tickell, A. (2002) ‘Neoliberalising space’, Antipode, 34(3): 380–404.
Innovation outside the state: the Glendale Gateway Trust
Patsy Healey, Tom Johnston and Frank Mansfield
Introduction
Our story is about a civil society initiative activated by local concern over the steady decline of economic and social opportunity in a ‘remote’ rural area in Northumberland. As with many other parts of the Western world, such areas are on the margins of political attention these days, experiencing youth out-migration, ageing populations and difficulties in sustaining needed services (Shucksmith and Brown, 2016). Social renewal in such areas means searching for pathways towards a sustainable future.
The Glendale Gateway Trust (GGT) has grown from the efforts of committed locals, experimenting with how to do things, into an established part of the governance ecosystem in the county of Northumberland. It started in the mid-1990s, centred on creating a community centre and facilities for young people in Wooler, the main centre in Glendale, North Northumberland. It then grew into providing a platform for a range of activities, which have established a community and business hub, generated improvements to the high street, built a locally significant amount of affordable housing, ensured the survival of the local youth hostel, and created a base for a range of other initiatives and programmes. Infused by a sense of the changing wider context, the GGT has developed an entrepreneurial culture, looking out for opportunities and innovating with new ways of doing things. Over time, the GGT has become a significant actor in local development in Northumberland. As a result, it has increasingly been in a position to grasp available opportunities, both economic and political, drawing down investment from the private, public and charitable sectors.
The initiative was motivated not by a particular driving ideology or a specific local crisis, but by locally widespread perceptions of the ebbing away of an old life and the search for practical ways to both renew community vitality and find a sustainable future for the area. On the one hand, the focus has been on remedying what has disappeared or been neglected; on the other, the GGT has tried to open up new opportunities, such as affordable offices for microbusinesses. It can be seen as helping the Glendale area move beyond the sense of a place ‘left behind’ by agricultural change towards alternatives based on what the area can offer in terms of local amenities and assets, notably, the attraction of the landscape, heritage and sense of community for visitors and in-migrants. The GGT has brought new knowledge, ideas and practices into play in local development work, and contributed to changing how the much-stressed public sector undertakes its various activities and responsibilities. Its contribution is not uncontested locally, with tensions between expectations rooted in the past and the arrival of new opportunities, as well as between different groups in the community as each seeks recognition for its various contributions. However, such tensions reflect the challenge for any community forced to find new ways to sustain itself into the future.
Rural life on the margins1
Glendale lies just south of the Scottish border in Northumberland. In 2011, nearly 6,000 people lived here, in scattered hamlets, villages and the small ‘town’ centre of Wooler, where around 2,000 people live.2 The nearest larger towns (Berwick and Alnwick) are around 17 miles (27 km) away, though these are small for English market towns. The large urban centres of the Tyneside conurbation are over 50 miles (80 km) away and Edinburgh is 65 miles (105 km) away. In economic terms, until recent decades, the main employment was in agriculture. According to Murdoch et al (2003), the area had the political economy of a ‘paternalist countryside’ and a ‘welfarist’ government regime. One facet of the GGT’s activities has been to challenge this culture.
Tourism has been important for many years and the visitor economy is now as significant in terms of employment as farming. Meanwhile, many former farm workers’ cottages have been converted into holiday homes, or sold to more affluent incomers and second-homers. There is a steady inflow of people starting microbusinesses in a range of sectors, as well as professionals working from home. Young people are still leaving the area, driven by the search for wider horizons and especially the pull of urban lifestyles, along with limited work and leisure opportunities at home. In contrast, in recent years, there has been an inflow of those in middle age seeking a different