Glasgow Civic Conversation #1

Glasgow Civic Conversation #1

Monday 26 February 2007

Gallery Five, The Lighthouse

Document Contents

Getting Started

Welcome and Introductions

Carol Tannahill - GCPH

Andrew Lyon – IFF

Starting the Conversation

Table Discussions

Opening It Up To The Room …

Resuming the Conversation After the Break …

Continuing the Conversation …

Wrap Up

APPENDIX – Participants

A Note on the Note

It may be helpful in making sense of this note to know a few things about it:

It was written in real time as the meeting was happening. It attempts to record the essence of what was said in plenary.

It is neither a verbatim note, nor a more standard minute. It attempts to capture the main sense of the conversation without reducing it to a set of action points as might be required of a more formal meeting. At some points therefore it reads like direct speech, while at others it reads more like a recommendation being made.

We hope, by recording the main aspects of the conversation in this way, to convey some flavour of what it was like for both those who were there and those who could not be there. We also seek to highlight some of the actions which will now be undertaken as a result of the conversation starting.

Page 1

Getting Started

Welcome and Introductions

Pat Heneghan kicked off the Conversation. He highlighted the safety instructions for the Lighthouse. He introduced the team supporting the meeting.

He shared the story of the Canadian ice hockey match – a fight where occasionally a game breaks out! This will be a meeting where occasionally a conversation breaks out!

Andrew has spoken to all of you in advance of this meeting and some quotes from these conversations are posted on the walls. The agenda for the afternoon is fairly open and we will have you all start by introducing yourself and sharing what you are passionate about in this conversation. We will start the conversations at the tables before bringing it back into a plenary session.

Carol Tannahill–Glasgow Centre for Population Health

Carol welcomed the participants.

I want to say a warm welcome to those of you who are here andalso to the people who have been involved but cannot be here today but will join us over the coming months.

I would like to put the civic conversation process in the context of the work of the GCPH. We have been charged with ambitious aims for the City and Scotland. Underpinning all of our work is concern with lack of progress in publichealth – qualityof life, spiritual well being and aspirations for the future. We know from the statistics that the health of the City is not improving. This is the starting point for all of our work in the centre and for this conversation.

Although we have been involved in more formal research and development, we need to share the benefits and experienceandthinking of people in this room – to make sense of where we are at the moment in the City in relation to our aspirations and a future which we might all want. The agenda is as broad and exciting as that. Andrew has felt a lot of passion in the preparatory conversations leading up to today. The quotes which we have surrounding us on the walls we might not all agree with, so we will have lotsof fun and excitement in the conversation.

Alongside these conversationsthere are other processes with different stakeholders and different partsof the City – it is easy to fall into the trap of sticking to the city centre and people we know. This conversation is not the only thing. However, this conversation is crucial and we are calling it the “spine” – the partthat will hold together all the other parts and into which they will feed.

Andrew Lyon – International Futures Forum

Thanks to everyone for coming. There will be a number ofothers joining us in June and October and I want to thank them for their help to date. Thanks to each person for the ideasand information and perspectives which you have offered to me and the conversation since August of last year. Thanks to you also for the quotes on the wall – they are your own wisdom and a reminder to us of the different sort of process we are in – exploratory and emergent, one of dialogue rather dictact .

I want to try and answer three questions. Firstly: Why are we in the conversation? It is not a better way – it is a different way of approaching the challenges which we face going into the 21st century. We are not saying stop everything while we talk. There is a whole range of activity in the City which needs to continue every day. – But this conversation is different.It offers us the opportunity to step outside the demands and experience of everyday delivery which we have, and spend some time in discussion and reflection about what this tells us. Sharing perspective will I hope lead us into new areas of enquiry, insight and understanding about what is possible for the City in the 21st century. We are asking what is missing, not what is wrong – what can we do in addition, and what doesour collective experience add that is different. What does new dialogue make possible?

The idea came from AC Grayling in the inaugural lecture in the GCPH seminar series in October 2004, in which he mentioned the idea of the “civic conversation” – the sum total of conversations in the pub, at home, on the bus, at work, in the media etc which a community, like Glasgow has with itself. We are trying to have a focused version of that – asking questionson what might be possible in the City, what is Glasgow’s purpose in the 21st century.

Secondly, while there are many reasons for having the conversation – it is reasonable to ask: but why now? My own work with the IFF has been about uncertainly andcomplexity and change. There were people who disagreed that this existed 6 years ago – but now when I say “uncertainty and rapid change”, people say ‘yes, and so what’ – there has been a shift here, with many more people realising that major shifts in the fabric of society and economy are taking place. There is something happening at a global level outside the City wherewe human beings find ourselves under increasing strain to make effective and coherent sense of the world. This is the bigger, global context in which these conversations are occurring. How do we limber Glasgow up to be robust in such a world?Glasgow has many connections to the world at large, what we might call “Global Glasgow” – what preparations does the City need to make to participate fully, what kind of force does the City wish to be in the 21stcentury? Elsewhere in the GCPH seminar series, Tom Devine talked about changes which happened in the City over the past 30 years or so. The changing nature of the City is beyond question–a more useful question might be what will we do now? What are our values and aspirations in framing the City’s future. These issues are up for grabs and we should start to frame them now.

Finally – why am “I”involvedin this? Why me? In trying to start this conversation I have done two things. Firstly, I have tired to speak with as many people in leadership roles in the City as I could. People who are active in, committed to and passionate about the future of the City and its people. Secondly, I followed the thread of your consciousness round the City following up leads you suggested, engaging other people in the conversation. In these individual conversations, there was an almost unanimous sense that having a conversation like this would be useful. Each of us hasaperspective on things which we don’t get time to reflect on. There is a tremendous amount of energy which could be brought into focus and applied to the City.As the phrase on this poster over here says “Spend more time trying to realise capacity in the community than creating it”The energy exists, it is there and I am hopeful that the conversation will provide good conditions for it to emerge.

Whilst we are some of us in this room, we are not a full set. There are another 30+ people in the conversation so far who we will report back to. In addition we are open to the idea of extending the conversation in ways we cannot think of at the moment.

Finally, the quote fromDavid Hume – “Truth springs from argument among friends”. We want to get beyond the politeness zone – butthis does not mean falling out. We can strive to respect others and their opinions and tolerate differences of opinion in the search for deeper truths.

I am looking forward to this immensely.

Pat then asked the group to introduce themselves to each other, by discussing what they are excited, concerned and passionate about in the conversation.

Starting the Conversation

Table Discussions

Pat set up the discussion at the tables.

At the IFF we discovered that to get new thinking, creativity and ideas it works well to get diverse views. At the IFF we brought together 20 very interesting people who individually could expect to command a room and over the course of five years we have got to the place where they can tolerate each others’ views. I would encourage you to tolerate each others’ views and compare them and let them co-exist.

Perhaps for our own benefit, we came up with a framework. On the one hand we have the environment – the world in which we exist, green spaces but also the economy and the world in its many guises. What is the environment/context represented by Glasgowcurrently– for example social conditions and economy. Then on the other hand we have the people and their capacity to deal with that environment/context. Are they coping? Are they doing well? Do they feel subjected to it? Is it out of balance? Do they have the capacity to bring their world into balance?

The two elementsof the framework are the environment/context and the capacity.

So where are we now? Often what people say is a complaint or describes an imbalance. Are we in balance now? How will this change as we go forward? What will change in the environment and the capacity of people in the city? It is a very loose framework but may be helpful to those who prefer a framework rather than a completely free form conversation.

If this does not work for you then start somewhere else where you have energy.

We will discuss this for about 30 minutes then open the conversation up to the whole room.

Opening It Up To The Room

Pat requested that the tables shared a key point from their table discussion with the room. Points raised included.

• We explored the divide in the City; wars being waged against certain parties. We discussed “intent”. Is there an intentional war on those in poverty? We can recognise and understand the roots of some things that happened. Taking a different orientation; if the growth of Glasgow Airport collapses on the back of global warming – is this someone exercising cruelty or something good that went bad.

• We were exploring whether there was an intent –the answer to this question is important. If there is a conflict then we need a way to put it right. If it is not intentional then we have one conversation. If there are wrongs to be righted then it needs a different conversation.
• A participant felt that there is not public recognition for what is going on in Glasgow (an intention to keep people poor). Unless we are talking about whether policy caused it or whatever, it seems to have been deliberate and this needs to be recognised. We are talking about social need at a Glasgow local level and national level. People are casualties of a global war, but we need to recognise the other wars. If we don’t recognise discrimination in the City then we cannot build the future.
• We also need to look at whether there is reconciliation to be had.

• From a different table:That sums up our discussion – how does this process work in an inclusive sense? Is there a thing that we can do in the whole of Glasgow, or is it just in bits of Glasgow?

• We started off talking about why this happens – because we allow it or sanction it?
• We also talked about differences in a very small geographic space. You can go into one street and it is fine to walk down, but the street next door is not safe after dark.
• There are beautiful green parks but surrounded by gang sites. This is difficult. What needs to happen for people to get education here?
• It is difficult for people to get educated – they don’t realise they are living in poverty – it is a way of life. There are people who don’t get the poverty line wage of £350. There is plenty of regeneration in the area, with new houses but people cannot afford cars. There is a big supermarket in Pollock but the people that shop there are not from Pollock. There are jobs created, but they are part time and to take this means you need child care and help with council tax and you become an even bigger strain on the economy (than staying on benefits). Big companies put things in, but they don’t provide anything for the community – community centres, car parks back onto bad housing estates. The planners don’t think about this. They don’t build bridges to get into areas – so people will have to take taxis to get to places. The public transport layout is not good. From Crookston it is difficult. Coloured people will get attacked if they walked down the street at night. Its madness. I don’t see people getting out form Pollock unless they win the lottery and become ‘scum with money’!

• How did it get like this? Did someone design it this way?!
• It looks like there are bags of money in some places. There are pockets of houses which look colourful but it is just because there are so many different types of houses.
• Things do change but slowly.
• In the first world war we had big generals with small maps! We need to think differently from the big bang approaches in terms of policy. The City has grown and we need to go right down with the microscope to places where we can support people e.g. in particular streets there are problems, others have a strong community. Taking it bit by bit and talking it through with people is important.
• We talk about regeneration, but what about maintenance for the good things that are already there?

• From a third table:Our conversation started in a different place, but covered the same issues. We drew a diagram with paradigm and time. We have had a way of doing things in the City which has peaked and is not so effective any more. We are searching for a new way of doing things. There is a period of tension and change in the present as we shift from the old way of doing things towards a new way of doing things. If you wanted to do this as a Reality TV show you would do it with two islands! One called past and the other future. There would be obstacles and fog between them – how do you get from where we are now to where we want to go – not some indeterminate place we don’t want to go to. What is the compass for the fog of the present – our values. We don’t want to go backwards, but how do we develop forms of engagement for the 21st century not 20th – how do we get the balance of resources and stewardship and innovation and creation. Can we really ask the public sector to do that? What is the connection to local and global and can we hope that these dimensions simply fall into place.

• The facilitator consolidated: I am hearing about actions and outcomes, with intended and unintended consequences. The connection between the two is engagement – what is the engagement that allows you to connect the two. The other part of this is about scale – whether an individual or house or street – what actions do you take and what impact this has. How do you deal with this? If you deal with Glasgow as a city with big hands on a small map then you may get unintended consequences.

• A fourth table reported:At our table we tried to do two things – to concentrate on the framework of environment and capacity and tried to unpick the notion of capacity. We connected with the point of inclusive experience – we unanimously concluded it was not inclusive. We looked at individual people. People generally perceive the environmental demands are tougher – and as a general rule there is less capacity to control situations etc. That said there are big differences in individual choices and ability to control e.g. socio economic categories.
• We made a crude attempt to look at coping mechanisms – you can exit, or exercise voice in an individual or collective way. A lot of people downgraded expectations as a coping mechanism – they play safe. We tend to operate with a notion of selective perception. People encountering the same experience perceive things differently – even in the same organisation, people at the top tell a story which bears little relation to how people experience it at the bottom.
• We concluded lookingat the role of work. People’s work satisfaction drives their life satisfaction. They either love it, or it is okay and they get paid, or people’s jobs don’t figure (conscious rejection or it simply does not figure in the role of satisfaction). The connecting thing is inclusiveness.

Resuming the Conversation After the Break

Pat reminded the group of ‘tolerance’ and ‘participation’ to make sure that everyone’s views are heard, regardless of whether they are agreed with or not.