Exploring Community – this was a facilitated open discussion looking at how communities are changing with the aim of encouraging the development of ground up solutions to common problems (early 2015).
I started Exploring Community because I wanted:
- to find out what really concerns local people
- to ensure that different community groups got together – speed dating style
- to erode some of the artificial / assumed boundaries between groups to ensure more cohesive working between them …
My inspiration was the art work London is Changing – a design and research project by Rebecca Ross (with help from Duarte Carrilho da Graça) at Central Saint Martins.
In a series of striking billboards, the team brought out the common thread in many conversations they were having as part of their research into demography and social change.
In the conversations we had that evening, some common themes emerged which echoed what I was hearing elsewhere too:
- Insulation between different groups is harming communities further at a time of already damaging rapid change
- Gentrification and a lack of affordable housing is displacing previously settled working class communities
- Mental health and wellbeing is suffering as people become displaced by profit driven development
- The creative life of the city is being eroded as people get pushed out to its fringes or leave altogether
- Communities are becoming ‘museum exhibits’, fetishised rather than humane and living (Brixton was cited by some).
During this ‘exploring community’ session, I asked the homeowners present whether they could afford to buy their home at today’s valuation, not what they bought it for originally. The answer was sadly unsurprisingly, no.
Sanjit Chudha 