After 15 years working at the coal face of regeneration I’m having an unplanned few months off as one job ends and another begins. In a way, perhaps it’s come at a good time, in that it has given me the chance to adjust to my new life back in education.
From April to December last year, I worked as a community development worker for a Leeds-based charity called Resourcing the Community. My focus was on helping small, community based organisations to find their feet – and crucially help them secure long-term funding. Then in December – ironically I suppose - we lost our funding and all 10 staff members were made redundant.
After 15 years working at the coal face of regeneration I’m having an unplanned few months off as one job ends and another begins. In a way, perhaps it’s come at a good time, in that it has given me the chance to adjust to my new life back in education.
From April to December last year, I worked as a community development worker for a Leeds-based charity called Resourcing the Community. My focus was on helping small, community based organisations to find their feet – and crucially help them secure long-term funding. Then in December – ironically I suppose - we lost our funding and all 10 staff members were made redundant.
What better time to give some thought to why I am in this line of work; and why I am taking up this course. For a decade and a half, I’ve worked in a variety of roles, all in the voluntary, community and regeneration sectors. If there was a common theme running through all of them it was my aim to improve the services, living standards and opportunities for the residents of Chapeltown and Harehills in Leeds.
But there’s one thing that has struck me as I’ve gone about this work: just how short-term everything is. Groups get set up, short-term projects are delivered, the funds dry up and nothing much changes. Take Chapeltown, where I live: despite all of the regeneration initiatives we have had in the last decade or so it is still classed as a deprived area. So something’s not working. If I have one hope of this course it’s that I might find some solutions to that fundamental problem.
Approaches to date have also been too ‘top-down’ – there’s not enough consultation with the people affected by regeneration initiatives. Again, those are the kind of skills I’m hoping this course will teach me: how to meaningfully engage with the communities that you want to make more sustainable.
I also hope the course will help me develop a better understanding of the policy landscape underpinning sustainable communities – and how politics plays into regeneration. I’m thirsting for a bigger knowledge base than I already possess. Looking at the modules so far, I’m encouraged. Society, politics and cities; and urban and regional regeneration have caught my eye.
Ultimately, at the end of the three-year course, I hope I can truly be part of the solution. Regeneration has achieved a great deal but a lot of the problems are still there. I’m here because I want to help achieve the long-term regeneration and social and economic renewal of deprived areas – like the one I live in.
My new job – which starts in March – is working as an enterprise support manager for a Local Enterprise Growth Initiative (LEGI) in Leeds called The Mosaic Initiative at Park Lane College. Leeds has received £15 million through LEGI to help people set up businesses in areas where there is little tradition of entrepreneurialism. Who knows, after this course perhaps I’ll be able to ensure this is one initiative that can have a long-term impact.
This is the first blog from Karen Morris in a series about ASC’s foundation degree
As I start ASC's foundation degree in sustainable communities, I find myself in between jobs.
