Seven Kings & Newbury Park Resident's Association (SKNPRA) organised a recent meeting to review the recent history of community campaigns in the area and to explore ideas for continuing community campaigns in future. The meeting heard four different approaches outlined by representatives of SKNPRA, Take Action for Seven Kings (TASK), Residents Associations in the UK, and The East London Communities Organisation (TELCO).
SKNPRA and TASK have undertaken a wide range of influential community campaigns and community improvement activities such as community clean-up actions. The two organisations have supported each other's campaigns but differ in that SKNPRA is a formally constituted membership association while TASK has had a less formal membership and decision-making structure. It was noted that, while the three founding members of TASK are for varying reasons no longer able to take its work forward as they once were, Padraig Floyd hopes to liaise with members to explore how to take TASK forward in future.
Resident's Associations in the UK seeks to link up Resident's Associations as part of a wider network which can provide information, resources and coordination for campaigns. Their website provides much of their information and resources as well as a help desk feature for specific advice.
TELCO works with the people who want to transform the world — from what it is to what they believe it should be. Drawing on the proven power of person-to-person organising, their work transforms communities and builds the local power necessary to create local and national change. They challenge people to imagine the change they can accomplish, connect individuals and organisations to multiply their power, and mobilise people by the thousands to make their voices heard.
These differing approaches - local campaigns through constituted associations, local campaigns through informal associations, networked associations, and area-wide community organising - together with single issue campaigning represent the main ways of doing community campaigning in the UK.
The discussion which followed the four presentations included input from Resident Association organisers and members, Trade Union officials and local Councillors. The discussion emphasised the importance of campaigns being locally focused but also recognised the benefits of shared campaigns and local groups working together in wider networks. Wider networks were more able to deliver training in campaigning or community organising to local people and could present a greater weight of opinion on issues that were shared across a wider area. The issue of disparities between different areas was raised as an aspect of community campaigns - this sense is often a motivator to local people to join campaigns - but it was also suggested that where such disparities became the main focus of campaigns the effect could be counter-productive. The importance of genuinely involving all groups within the local community in local campaigns and the need for greater understanding of how to do so was also noted.
The meeting seemed useful as a way of introducing organisations which provide campaigning networks to local campaigners and also as a way of beginning to form links and networks across local campaigning groups.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Ruts - In A Rut.
