Join the Chamberlain Forum at Highbury Hall, for a new view of how resilience and wealth is made in neighbourhoods. Practical action that councils and community groups can take to build the city infrastructure of the future.

Presentation and discussion of “Communities Managing Change” - Chamberlain Forum action research into:

• Localism
• Neighbourhood Planning
• Neighbourhood Hubs
• Community Networks
• Timebanking
• The Co-operative Council

Supported by Barrow Cadbury Trust and Birmingham City Council.

To book your place and for further information please go HERE or call 07795 448 462

6th June, Highbury Hall, 1.30 for 2.00 – 4.00pm 

Given the recession, everyone may be making some cut-backs – so we’re all in this together?  Not really: welfare cuts mean more people falling out at the bottom end of consumer society.  Where do you go when you can’t afford a bus fare, let alone a Primark top?  One answer suggests itself to some – you rob.  Same as when an addict can’t afford another £20 for a fix. Cuts in benefits will have a knock-on effect on the workload of courts and prisons.    But not everyone who’s poor breaks the law.  More people prefer to ‘bend’ it when they have to.  The Chancellor can take a bow for boosting one area of the economy at least: Britain’s cash-in-hand ‘grey economy’.  That is: people attempting what they see multinational high street companies getting away with – avoiding tax and evading tax.  Most people, however, neither steal, nor cheat.  Most people just get ill with the worry and stress of keeping going.

In any case: we all lose. First, because the government ends up needing some of what it saves on the benefit system, to pay for the justice system or the health system or to cover the shortfalls in its tax revenues.  Second – and much more important – more people are made ill and forced out of society because they can’t afford to consume.  And the version of society we’ve come to accept over the past 60 years has been all about consumption.  Designer labels, celebrity lifestyles or the Sky package you subscribe to.  Consumer rights seem more certain and less contentious than human rights.

What happens now when you start forcing people out of the consumer society?  Do they lose their rights?  Do they lose their identity?  Perhaps some start to find other ways of getting things done.  Timebanks, for example – which we’re beginning to see an upsurge of interest in – are mutual clubs based on members acting as  producers as well as consumers of goods and services.  They remind us life is about doing as well as receiving.  Was there a time we used to identify ourselves, more often, by what we did; where we worked; the service we’d seen; the church, the union, the clubs we belonged to?  What we made, not what is made for us.

Sudden welfare cuts cut people out of society – as opposed to tax hikes which, at worst, make the cost of society weigh a little heavier.  They are going to cost more than they save.  They are going to make people ill.  But they might also give us the clue that the consumer society is bust.  And rather than worrying about the next ‘fix’ of consumption, perhaps we can start to fix society on the basis of the kind of values you won’t find on display in shops.

The cuts are having a real effect on communities and families in this city and we know funding is only likely to get tighter.  Secretary of State Eric Pickles has said that Birmingham is the ‘biggest problem’ in the country.  We’re not sure whether that’s because the previous Conservative/LibDem administration we had in Birmingham was particularly wasteful or inefficient – it didn’t have the best of relationships with the Coalition nationally.  Or is it because the Conservative/LibDem partners were voted out of office here last year and the government simply doesn’t like the fact that the largest local authority in the land is run by Labour again?  Whatever the reason, there’s a feeling that if anywhere is going to suffer, the government won’t mind if it’s Birmingham.

Perhaps the truth is the industries that used to thrive in Birmingham and the Black Country have been crucified over the past 40 years – we used to have the highest productivity of any region outside the South East of England until the early 1970s.  We have grown too dependent on public spending.  Cuts mean families are now ‘nutritionally deprived’ not just short of a few bob for extras.  That hunger is focusing the minds of people in different communities on the need for change.  The city’s Pakistani/Kashmiri community is angry – not just about poverty, but also about the way Muslim voters’ concerns (which turned out to be well-founded) about wars abroad were ignored.  Some other Black and Asian communities feel side-lined by the relative success of others in gaining political and/or economic power.  Some White working class communities – many pushed out to council estates on the edge of the city – feel ignored, forgotten and – given the decline of  traditional industries – like the country thinks they’re obsolete.  In general, communities feel let down by public services and by the authorities responsible for them.

So, despite the real effect of cuts, many people look at the campaign to defend public services with some scepticism, if not bewilderment.  Why should we fight to defend services that didn’t serve us very well and that are run by public authorities we don’t have much confidence in?  It doesn’t help that the campaign to oppose cuts seems to be dominated by people and groups who are unwilling, or unable, to face the fact that – even in good times – many public services did not meet the varied needs of different communities in the city.  Enabling communities to have greater influence over the design and delivery of public services does not figure on their agenda.

These circumstances mean that the case for communities and community self-help is not being heard by those making the cuts.  And those advising them – the council managers and officers that remain – seem, perhaps understandably, disoriented and unable to formulate the radical alternatives we want to see and be part of.  The risk is that services are run down or transferred out to be run by the same managers, effectively operating as private sector businesses (albeit dressed up as social enterprises) with even less accountability. Worse: some of those services are going to start to be in competition for the very limited funding available to community organisations.  We may see privatised (or thinly mutualised) ‘voluntary’ organisations delivering unresponsive and badly-run services with funding that, in the past, might have been available to support genuine community self-help and enterprise – the things we need to encourage if we are ever to successfully re-invent our city and our region as prosperous and productive places.

We know that there are local politicians that ‘get’ the need for radical community-led solutions and there are decent officers in public and voluntary services who have survived years of irrational and short-term managerialism with their integrity and enthusiasm for change in tact.  There are genuine social entrepreneurs and communities that are able to rise above populism and help to generate radical alternatives.  There are business people who see that wealth creation depends on social, as well as private, enterprise and innovation.  What’s lacking is a forum for these people to come together.  That was how my conversation yesterday ended.  If you think something like we think, why not get in touch?

The scheme is backed by Birmingham City Council, Solihull MBC and Buy for Good – a local social enterprise that helps organisations get community benefit through collective purchasing. It follows a scheme run along similar lines in Cornwall last year, which saw people save an average of £133 per year.

Birmingham and Solihull Together director Rokneddin Shariat explained: “As a country we waste a staggering £4 billion a year on energy – because so many of us are paying a higher tariff than we need.   A shocking 32% of the British public say they now find energy unaffordable – and 90% of households say being able to pay their gas and electricity  bills is their biggest worry.

“The thinking behind this scheme is that by acting as a community rather than as individuals we’ll get a better deal overall.”

The campaign has a longer term vision to help communities share resources, club together to save money on other products and services and support the local economy. To find out more visit www.birminghamandsolihulltogether.com, find the campaign on facebook, see @BS_Together on Twitter or you can phone 0800 917 5772 or 0121 222 8051.

The University of Birmingham Community Research Placement  Programme is an option for high-flying  final year geography students.  This year, students have been placed with community groups from Druids Heath to Sutton Coldfield and Smethwick to Hodge Hill and in local health services, colleges, Birmingham City Council and Sandwell Council for Voluntary Organisations.

The students get valuable experience of work – and of communities in Birmingham and the Black Country.  The community groups organisations get a piece of research, mapping or surveying carried out.  For example:

• Rhian Scott is working with Summerfield and Ladywood Timebank to test and help develop ways of mapping neighbourhood assets like ‘skills’ and ‘community networks’ that the timebank can then utilise.
• Alex Betteridge is working with Chamberlain Forum and Birmingham City Council to evaluate the contribution students make in Selly Oak district in South Birmingham.

The students present their interim findings later this month.  If you are interested in further details, in being part of the scheme next year or in exploring further opportunities for collaboration between universities and communities, then contact Chamberlain Forum (below).

(image by Lorna Prescott from Dudley CVS, drawn at ‘Community Rights in the West Midlands’ on 26th November 2012)

The Localism Act sets out a number of community rights that create the ability for community groups and voluntary organsiations to: lead the development of local plans, challenge the way services are delivered, and bid to acquire and manage local assets of community value.

For more information about the Localism Act, you can download the Chamberlain Forum briefing – Localism Act

For more information on Community rights, see – my community rights

Chamberlain Forum is working to develop links between groups with experience of, or interest in using these new rights, and establish the scope to facilitate peer learning and support in Birmingham.

We aim to survey as many local groups as possible, and gather information from groups about their experience of using community rights, levels of interest in using community rights, and the kind of support groups would like to enable them to use them.

You can complete the survey below, or via the surveymonkey website here - C Forum Community Rights Survey

Chamberlain Forum is running a city-wide Community First networking event in Birmingham, on Wednesday 24th October, 6.00 – 7.30pm at St Martins Tea Room, in the Bullring (next to the market).

The event is an opportunity to discuss and share:

• Panel updates, achievements and challenges of year 1 and 2

• Requirements for developing community plans

• Developing and managing community first websites

• Ideas for developing mutual support between panels

If you would like to attend, please email info@chamberlainforum.org, or call 07795 448 462 or complete the booking form below

cforms contact form by delicious:days

• Inclusive
• Democratically Controlled
• Participative
• Acting for the Sustainable Benefit of the Community
• Independent and Autonomous
• Educating and Enabling Communities
• Enabling Wider Co-operation.

The research will include work with one or more of the City’s District Officers and a series of round table discussions on key aspects of the model.  The first of these meetings takes place on 27 September 10.30am-12.30 at the Council House.  It will bring together a mix of people – if you would like to be amongst them, or for more information about future sessions, email Chamberlain Forum.

The Briefing for Neighbourhood Forums is on Wednesday September 26^th 5.15pm for refreshments and a 5.30pm start in Committee Rooms 3 and 4 at the Council House, Victoria Square, Birmingham

Forums can book places at the briefing on http://nhoodforums.eventbrite.co.uk or for more information give Chamberlain Forum a call on 07795 448 462 or email

Making the most of what we have – the skills and time of residents – to make life better.  That’s the object of neighbourhood timebanking.  Chamberlain Forum is looking to support the development of neighbourhood timebanks as part of its Communities Managing Change project supported by Barrow Cadbury Trust.  Representatives of neighbourhood groups and others interested in developing timebanking are welcome to a meeting considering the next step: setting up local timebanks.

The meeting is at Carrs Lane Church Centre at 3pm on Tuesday 10th July and will look at the practicialities of setting up a timebank.  Chamberlain Forum and neighbourhood groups have already gained inspiration and practical tips from visiting the Time2Trade timebank in West Bromwich.  At this meeting, we will be looking at a shared operating model which should make it easier for groups to set up and sustain their own local timebank.

If you would like to take part, then please contact Chamberlain Forum  by tel 07795 448 462 or email info@chamberlainforum.org