The Power of a Story
In Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), the work of Cormac Russell and others, the idea and the practice of community work begins with a focus on what is strong within communities and not what is wrong. As part of our work developing a community led activation programme for Valence Park our intention is to focus on the assets, the gifts of the community members, over the statistical indicators of what is not working, or the bad news.
Funding applications often require a certain amount of context setting that sits awkwardly in this mix. To access funding to support the delivery of community development work, we are compelled to do the opposite. Be it deprivation indexes or levels of inactivity — this kind of story telling succeeds in proving the case for why a grant would be of benefit to the on-going development of social and physical activity in Valence Park, but making a habit of re-telling these kinds of stories again and again has a powerful and lasting effect.
A local resident, wishing to remain anonymous, recently told us: “LBBD is a shit place to live, nothing ever happens here, it’s full of crime, and I don’t want to stay”.
This, sadly, echoes the stories we often hear. Real community building work is slow, but it takes longer when we first have to unpack the damage caused by widespread bad press or what is often described as ‘place stigma’.
Valence Park in Dagenham is a home to a very good news story of community led change which started more than two years ago when Lisa Adams especially, along with others had the vision to transform the broken playground into a new hub for activity for (and with) local community members, creating the new ‘multi-use games area’ that it is today! Working together they raised money through crowd-funding, hugely supported by local charity Community Resources, London Sport, LBBD and many others. You can find out more about this inspiring story here.
I read an older adaptation of the Hans Christian Anderson folk-story recently called The Handmade Red Shoes and the story illustrates how important and empowering it is to be part of a creative process. The story starts with a young girl who is in a very desperate situation in the forest on her own, exhausted and with few resources. To cover her bare feet, she begins stitching together a pair of basic shoes from scraps of red cloth and as she stitches and stitches the shoes become complete, and she is delighted by what she has been able to create for herself. In the story because she has made these shoes for herself, her creation nourishes her in the sense that when she looks at the shoes, she recognises that she can look after herself. If she can create a pair of red shoes for her feet in the forest just with the few limited materials already around her, what else can she make!?
The story turns as the girl is taken in by a well-meaning but harsh old woman who takes one look at her crafted shoes and scoffs and throws them away. Instead, the old woman marches the girl to the shoe shop where the girl picks a pair of shiny new ones… Eventually we see in the story that these shiny red shoes have a life of their own and a distorted sense of power. As soon as they go on her feet and she starts dancing, the girl is unable to stop her dancing legs leading to a rather grim ending.
There are many interesting interpretations to the Hand Made Red Shoes story and other elements of the folk tale but for me the part of the story which resonates the most is the difference in making something that has emerged from oneself with ownership and creative direction. And this is contrasted with being given something shiny and complete to begin with which is, in the long run not as empowering and nurturing.
There is always something satisfying making something from scratch and the empowering effect of taking ownership of a creative process cannot be under-estimated. No one can deny the community effort around Valence Park is incredibly inspiring and nourishing the community — a local park again possible because of local people!
But how else can we continue to unpick this pervasive place narrative? Can a sense of shame in where you live or where you are from be disrupted by asking what is strong within both communities and people themselves, as we are encouraged through ABCD? It is awkward and challenging to have conversations that are not focussed on the deficit — it’s so rare that we, any of us talk like this. What damage are we doing by not engaging or giving the opportunity for people to voice their concerns and worries? What is the role of a non-resident like myself and organisations like Street Space in this evolving narrative of place? I have struggled to prioritise my own dreams and ability to focus on ‘what is strong’ at times — how does this affect my role in this collective journey?
In August we collaborated with young people from NCS, National Citizen Service students to co-create a Humans of Valence Instagram and a temporary Before I Die installation. Together, we created an opportunity for new conversations, about stories and dreams, encouraging the students to head into the park to strike up conversations with strangers. It was messy and experimental but surprisingly powerful.
“People worry more than they dream around here” one young Dagenham based student pointed out.
It’s easy to think and feel that dreaming and working towards goals from a place of perceived lack of power and opportunity, is irrelevant. A waste of time. But if we never voice or even know what our dreams are, how can we ever even hope to make them happen? The students were not asked in their local schools what their dreams were, and the ones who were, were filled with tropes of ‘if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail’ — hardly inspiring.
The board soon became full of dreams of all kinds — ‘Before I die… I want to travel abroad’ ‘Before I Die…I want to play for Tottenham FC’… ‘Before I die… I want to be a hair-dresser’ ‘I want to meet my family…’ ‘I want to be fabulous…’
At the end of the day we each wrote down a dream privately about a dream we wanted to create — and a step we could take towards it this week, this month or this year. Simple stuff and yet right here, it felt important.
After all, we all want to believe in this — the community bettering the community itself.
PS: Big shout out to London maker Amy Murphy who helped us out making the Before I Die board!
