The Antidote to Alienation Is Participation

I was really encouraged by Andy Burnham‘s words about the antidote to alienation is participation, when he launched the Greater Manchester Participation Playbook last week.

My ADHD brain is always whirring on this: we’re living in a system that’s designed to prevent that participation.

A market economy that’s turned community into a luxury product.

And it’s killing our neighbourhoods.

But we need to go on a little journey back in time to get back to where we are today, and what you can do.

The £50 bench that taught us everything.

Twenty years ago, we bought our flat at the end of a cul-de-sac in Newbury Park, London, and bought a picnic bench to put outside our front door.

£50 from B&Q. Nothing revolutionary.

We were already talking to our neighbours anyway. But now we had somewhere to sit while we talked.

Our flat was designed so we had to go out the front door to get to the back garden. So that bench became where people naturally paused and started conversations.

Kids would do homework there after school. Neighbours would pause during walks and join conversations already happening.

We got together with the people in our small block and turned our separate back gardens into one big shared garden with a BBQ. Summer evenings, we’d all eat together at least once a week.

Years later, I discovered Matthias Hollwich‘s book called “New Aging“ and social architecture.

We were amazed. We’d been doing most of those things anyway. We hadn’t needed a guide to show us how.

I’d love to tell you the solution is we all buy a bench and sit outside our houses. But the reality is that most people don’t have schedules flexible enough to chat with neighbours during the day. That option simply isn’t available to everyone.

Amy, the exhausted creative producer, was watching parents choose between career and children.

In 2016, Amy Martin gave a TED talk about what she’d been seeing as Creative Producer at Impact Hub Birmingham.

Parents working just to afford childcare fees that “duplicate a household mortgage or rent payment.”