HeartEdge Mailer: March 2018

Welcome to the HeartEdge Mailer for March. Loads to inspire and equip this month - including:

• Portrait from Prison, plus Adam Curtis on fear of change. And face paints!
• Purple Shoots in the West Country plus a social enterprise 'how to' guide
• Big Lunches, Dave Andrews on compassionate community work and 'Down to Earth'
• Plus John Swinton, Maggi Dawn, Inderjit Bhogal and Jess Foster!

We're defined by our four Cs - HeartEdge churches and organisations are about becoming:

• Active in commerce 
• Engaged with culture
• Nurturing congregation
• Developing community

HeartEdge: Events

21 May, 7.00pm: St Martin in the Fields, London: “Who is my Neighbour? - The Global and Personal Challenge". Sam Wells chairs a panel discussion with Rabbi Shulamit Ambalu, Dr Megan Warner and Revd Richard Carter. Sam Ahmad Ziaee who will talk about his journey aged 16 from Afghanistan to the UK. Edited by Richard Carter and Sam Wells, and published by SPCK. The event is free and open to all. Copies of the book will be on sale at £10. Book here.

Thur 24 May, 2pm - 4pm: St Martin-in-the-Fields, London: HeartEdge Start:Stop Workshop. Learn about Start:Stop, the popular 10-minute work-based reflections for people on their way to work, with Revd Jonathan Evens. Session include - growing a new congregation; engaging with working people; ministering in the workplace and communicating with busy people. Book here or call 020 7766 1127. HeartEdge members - free. Non-members - £10.

24 - 27 August: Boughton House, Leicestershire, Greenbelt: Sam Wells, Vicar of HeartEdge members St Martin in the Fields will be speaking at Greenbelt Festival this August Bank-Holiday. Carol Ann Duffy, Paula Gooder and Pussy Riot also feature. Details here.

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Carol Ann Duffy - Prayer.

Phil Evens and The Barton Project

Teresa Smith, Kate Coxon and George Smith have written a comprehensive report on The Barton Project which was set up by my father, Phil Evens, in 1974. The Barton Neighbourhood Community Project: Barton, Oxford City and Oxfordshire is published by Oxford Social Research Ltd and the introduction to the report outlines its scope:

'The Barton Neighbourhood Community Project was first established on the Barton estate, Oxford in 1974. The initiative for the project came from a lecturer, Phil Evens, in the University of Oxford’s Department of Social and Administrative Studies (known as ‘Barnett House’) which had a long history of local research and local involvement, and was in the late 1960s and early 1970s closely involved in major national government programmes targeted at disadvantaged areas in the UK. Evens persuaded his Department that they should also support a local initiative and selected the Barton estate as an area that had been neglected (A ‘Forgotten Community’ was the title of his 1976 book). Barton is a small social housing estate on the eastern edge of Oxford city, outside the main city ring road, that cut it off from the rest of the city.

It can be argued that in one form or other the Barton Project has existed ever since, though the University passed on the direct link in the 1990s to Ruskin College when the project’s community work student training unit was transferred; the project’s welfare rights work, Oxfordshire Welfare Rights, is now funded and managed by a local community work agency.

While this report focuses on the community work on Barton now and the current social and economic conditions on the Barton estate, the study also covers some of the changes and developments that have occurred both in the area and in the way community work has operated in disadvantaged areas like the Barton estate.

In the opening section we cover some of the wider background to the development of neighbourhood community work in the UK and analyse the social and economic conditions in the Barton area in comparison to Oxford, Oxfordshire and England as a whole. The second section focuses on the Barton Neighbourhood Project in terms of its development over time and its current programme of work. Further case studies of particular schemes are also covered. Finally we ask whether the Barton Estate is any longer a ‘forgotten community’, and draw out lessons and conclusions that may be relevant to other areas in the UK and elsewhere.'

Dad's experiences and other contributions to the development of community work were published in Community Work: Theory and practice (1974) and The Barton Project (1976). Both books applied his Christian faith to his work, and called for the active involvement of Christians in community work and other public services. My other posts about Dad and his work can be found by clicking here.
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U2 - Bad.

Bob Holman & Phil Evens: Affluence and position as inconsistent with Christian faith

In 1970 my father, Phil Evens, entered social-work education by becoming a lecturer in applied social studies at Oxford University. There, he discovered that he did not fit into the exclusive network of “North Oxbridge Society”, and so he moved nearer to his ideological home and working-class identity by setting up an Applied Action Research Community Work Project in 1973. It was called the Barton Project, after the council estate on which it was based.

His experiences and other contributions to the development of community work were published in Community Work: Theory and practice (1974) and The Barton Project (1976). Both books applied his Christian faith to his work, and called for the active involvement of Christians in community work and other public services.

Similarly in 1976, Bob Holman 'resigned his professorship in social administration at Bath University to become a community worker on the city’s deprived Southdown estate. He saw his affluence and position as inconsistent with his Christian faith. He and his wife, Annette, and their two children, Ruth and David, moved from a comfortable middle-class area in the city to a home next to the estate and he started the project where he then worked.'

In 1976, the Barton Project project lost funding, and my father's job was restructured away. He returned, somewhat disillusioned, to his roots in Somerset, where he became self-employed as a landscape gardener. During this mid-life crisis, he and his family began worshipping for the first time in the C of E, and he continued, as he had done for many years, to set up and run Christian youth clubs. Involvement in wider aspects of Anglican ministry led to his call to train for ordination.

At Trinity College, Bristol, he set up the Voice of the People Trust, to sponsor Christian ministry in urban priority areas through community-work projects linked to parishes. Work on the trust was carried out in conjunction with his ministry, first, as a curate at Aston Parish Church, and then as Vicar of St Edmund’s, Tyesley.

'After a decade in Bath, in 1987 [Bob Holman] went to live and work on the vast and deprived Easterhouse estate in Glasgow. He always wanted to show what could be done to motivate and involve people and bring communities together. Bob spurned any distinction between himself and other residents, calling himself a “resourceful friend”. His daily work involved filling in social security forms, accompany young people to court or helping a neighbour to raise a loan for a new cooker.'

Holman, who died on 15 June, became a regular contributor to the Guardian which published some extracts from his writing following his death:

'I will not lose my Christianity. It came before my socialism. The example and values of Jesus Christ led me to seek a societal implementation through politics. The writings of Richard Tawney and the practices of Keir Hardie and George Lansbury led me into the Labour party. But Christianity is more than politics. It will be with me to the end.'

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Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals - All That Has Grown.