IPPR Culture and Civil Renewal Report Launch

Liz Forgan

If we in the cultural sectors know from experience that culture has the potential to be a powerful social force, then we must also acknowledge that active participation in cultural activity, particularly in so-called ‘high culture’,remains dominated by the well-off, the well-educated and the well-connected.

Moreover, particularly in heritage, the role of the expert in decision-taking has been until recently to the near total exclusion of all others.

In the words of the IPPR’s report, ‘those most excluded [from society] are also excluded from participating in the cultural life of the nation’.

This is no simple insult added to injury – shut out from society and High Society alike - but part and parcel of the problem itself. As the report demonstrates, participating in culture can enable communities to createand strengthen trust, reciprocity and understanding.

Yet in seeking to tackle deprivation and exclusion, governments have tended understandably to concentrate on core services, failing to acknowledge the role of culture in healthy, happy, stable communities.

So too, we as cultural leadershave failed in the past to grasp that cultural participation is not just about entitlement, enjoyment and enrichment, but can be a part of the vital bloodstream of empowered communities; that enabling people to get involved in culture can provide them with the skills, the confidence, the entryway into involvement in civil society.

That is changing. There is a palpable sense now in some parts of Government – though I’m afraid not all -- that, in the Thames Gateway and other growth areas, the mistakes of the past – of viewing community renewal as just about bricks and mortar, only tomorrow, never yesterday – must not be repeated.

And cultural agencies are starting to think seriously about what this means in practice, and how we can make real what this report, and David today, have talked about.

At the Heritage Lottery Fund there are multiple reasons why we believe greater involvement of the public in heritage is important – because the public directly funds our work by buying lottery tickets; because we need to expand the constituency that will take care of our heritage and give it sustainable use; because heritage is a living, breathing thing and involving more people in it thickens its plot; and importantly because we have long seen that participation in heritage projects has benefits not just for participants, but for the wider community.

The application of this belief led Demos to conclude that ‘HLF has shifted the idea of the value and importance of heritage away from something that is exclusively determined by experts on behalf of society, to one that recognises the importance of widespread participation in identifying and caring for what is valued collectively’.

I have to be blunt –we have not done this by mere persuasion, but also through the power of the purse.

To get money out of us, we ask applicants to show us how they plan to increase access to heritage and involve more people in taking decisions about it.

Because we’ve long done this, we now have a body of evidencein the projects that we have funded that demonstrate the role heritage can play in civil renewal.

In areas where tensions exist between older people and the supposed ‘hoodie generation’, heritage can bridge that generation gap: as in St Helens, where young people interviewedlong-time residents about their memories of growing up on their estates, helping to buildthe mutual respect that had been lacking.

In culturally diverse communities, a better understanding of people’s stories will help to knock down the crass stereotypes that feed division. In inner city Leicester, 100 young people researched the residents who had settled in the area over 100 years and explored what now united their diverse community.

This is not the normal sphere of engagement between different generations or communities, but it is a brilliantly effective one.

Regenerationschemes run the risk of gentrification and simply displacing local communities and their problems elsewhere, something we have always been aware of as a regeneration funder. By grounding plans in what people want for their locality, this risk can be reduced. In Stonehouse, one of the most deprived areas of Plymouth, a forum of 40 local representatives steered our Townscape Heritage Initiative programme, bringing back into use not only commercial buildings, but also empty homes, providing new social housing units and community facilities.

It’s an approach that is already being put to use by community groupsin the Thames Gateway, after the IPPR warned thatexisting residents need to be more involvedin plans for their area, if tension between them and residents of the future is to be avoided.

In areas already seeingpopulation flux, heritage has been a common currency that has smoothed that path – I remember meeting a woman in Milton in Cambridgeshirewho told me how long-term residents had got over a growing ‘them and us’ culture between them and hundreds of new residents by simply getting together to share stories of living in the villagethrough a photography project.

It is all straightforward stuff. But that’s exactly why culture and particularly heritage can play such an important role in civil renewal.

The standard ways that people get involved in their communities – through school governing bodies, PCTs, or political parties– are serious challenges even for those with the necessary skills and confidence.

Heritage is different. Everyone has a past and sharing it with others can be an enjoyable pursuit. And you need no expertise to get going.

Which makes heritage a perfect gateway to civil participation. Many of the people who take part in our projects say they have never done anything like it before. Yet many go on to take part in other community groups, and to be advocates across a range of other concerns and interests.

A key part of that is the skills that they pick up when enjoying heritage projects – interpersonal, presentation and communication skills, project-planning and budgeting, technical and IT skills, research skills and the ability to use libraries and archives. And importantly confidence and contact with other involved people.

Of course, heritage can be uncomfortable, difficult and even positively toxic. That can lead some to shy away from it, to tolerate difference yet never properly explore and understand it.

Yet properly exploring heritage, truthfully, respectfully, tolerantly is the way to overcome this toxicity. Some of the best projects we fund are those that are brave enough to tackle the difficult issues.

In parts of Scotland where sectarianism blights Catholic and protestant communities, young people from both are exploring the roots of the conflicts that have been handed down to them over generationsand to meet their opponents on different terms.

Having real knowledge about someone else’s heritage – as opposed to the assumptions and caricatures we otherwise work on – is a way to diminish fear. If religion is seeing the divine in others, then heritage is seeing the human in others.

We mustn’t lose sight of the human as we debate now the knotty questions of identity: what it means to be British, the future of multiculturalism, our Union under devolution, who we are and want to be. It is not just about values, institutions, state and citizen. But about knowing and understanding the stories of the human beings who made and make up our society, each single one of whom adds a colour to the tapestry of our collective identity.

It is about understanding the people whofounded those institutions – youngstersfrom Tredegar inWales, researching local man Nye Bevan and his lasting legacy of that great British institution, the NHS.

About exploring the links to the past that still bring pride – restored miners banners in the North East – and those that bring pain – the 2007 commemorations of the Parliamentary abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

Heritage which involves people is the humanising factor in what can otherwise be a fairly specialised academic or political debate. It is again, a way of including a much broader constituency.

We know from experience that, when we do this, the benefits are not just to heritage, nor just to those who participate, but to the wider community and society itself.

If, as we do, we ask for the role of culture in society to be recognised, to be taken seriously, to be adequately funded, then we too must recognise just how broad that role in society can and should be, anddo all we can to make it so.

Thank you.

ENDS