Reflections on Community

Yesterday evening we watched a film on Amazon that we were a small part of while in Wythenshawe: "The Silver Screen Dreams Cafe" (details also on IMDB for when Amazon stop showing it). I found one independent review which ended with this:

In conclusion, ‘The Silver Screen Dreams Café’ proves that independent filmmakers tell the most authentic and immersive stories, so the cast and crew involved in the film should be proud of what they’ve achieved here. ‘The Silver Screen Dreams Café’ doesn’t end with its last credits – Mike and Rebecca Peacock have another profound story to tell, one that is about how the production process has managed to transform the disadvantaged community of Wythenshawe, Manchester, where the film has been shot on location. Considering how excited we are about ‘The Silver Screen Dreams Café’, we can’t wait to find out what the filmmakers’ next project would be.

The café scenes were all shot at St Andrew's Methodist Church during my time as Methodist Minister in Wythenshawe, much of the decor from the film's café makeover still remain.

A big theme of the film from the making to the storyline is community, and I woke in the middle of the night wanting to get these thoughts down about community.

Community vs Populist

We have been living through unrelenting attacks on Community, these have been conducted surreptitiously in the name of populism. The opposite of these attacks: healthy, ethical, inclusive, and supportive Community is how we can build a better future for everyone.

Three individuals powerfully demonstrate the anti-Community force of what I think of as corrupted populism: Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson. See the Wikipedia article for an in depth review of different understandings of what populism is. I contend that these three have long histories of manipulation, corruption, and deceit. They have sought power, wealth, and privilege for themselves by peddling hate, fear, racism, nativism, misogyny, transphobia, and more. While they present themselves as leading movements of ordinary people, they have done nothing to improve the lives of ordinary people. Examples of their attacks on ordinary people include Brexit, Trump's tariffs and attacks on healthcare, Robinson's profiteering from people's desperation. The only people who have benefitted from these movements are the leaders, their cronies, and parasites benefitting from the destruction they cause.

Yet, there are stand-out examples of the antithesis to this. These are examples of community building. Mostly deliberate initiatives that bring change that liberates, includes, celebrates and transforms lives for the better. These are the ones the film reminded me of, and I am fortunate to have seen many examples over the years. They have come at a wide variety of scales with a wide variety of leadership and funding models. Some have been short-lived, even transient, and others have lasted decades. Some examples, that I want to celebrate:

Sure Start Centres

At their best, these were brilliant as a way of reaching, supporting and including families who were considered by the NHS as "hard to reach". By basing services from midwives and health visitors in local Sure Start centres (who also ran a whole range of support services, social activities, peer groups etc) new Mums were very gently welcomed and supported so that they ended up accessing many services that in the past they would have missed out on. They also made friends who they kept as their babies grew and started toddler groups and later school. The health visitors got to see a lot more of these Mums, partly as it made it so much easier to move from the care of the midwife to the health visitor, and partly because they were wanting to come to the Sure Start centre for other things and the Health Visitors could catch up with them then.

Among all the government/NHS initiatives I have seen, this seemed to be one of the most effective at tackling long term prospects for new babies growing up in deprived homes. It was starting to change attitudes within communities, where we were in Raunds, a small ex-industrial town of around 8,000 people it meant that for the first time Mums from certain "notorious" streets were meeting Mum's from other parts of the town and building friendships.

Attempts to reduce costs in the name of efficiency meant a lot of Sure Starts lost their dedicated spaces, I believe that had a huge impact on their effectiveness for the people who were benefitting the most. They need a consistent location that is not associated with any organisation that might have failed them in the past. They need a consistent welcoming manager, and they need to be able to see Health Visitors whenever they turn up.

As government priorities shifted back towards the privileged, typically marketed as a focus on working families, Sure Starts were cut further because their support for the most deprived (and least likely to be working) was not valued. As such, one of the greatest Community building initiatives has been lost or highly watered down.

The Whitechapel Mission

During my four years part-time training to become a Methodist Minister, I spent between one and two weeks at the Whitechapel Mission each Christmas. Later, I took a group of volunteers to help out once or twice a year (which meant leaving Raunds in Northamptonshire at about 3am in mid-winter). There was never any problem filling a couple of cars with volunteers.

By refusing Government funding, the Whitechapel Mission was able to define its own services and who they were available to. At that time it meant opening at 6am, serving breakfast from 8am to 10am, and closing at 11 (so one shift 5am to 12 could cover the day). They offered showers, and new clothes twice a week. Everyone who came through the door was welcome (to come through the door implied self-identifying as needing help). Almost the only rule was no-alcohol. Tony Miller was able to manage the place, be open 365 days and year and have a policy of not banning people because of the way he built it as a community and the respect he had earned, over many years, from that community.

While I was there (starting 25 years ago) it was clear that the need was growing (even at a time when Westminster Council were claiming there were no homeless people in their area - which meant they were moving people on and not counting them) and that many people were trapped. One year they would be squatting, another they would be on the street, the next they might be in a hostel (but that was a temporary staging place), then they would get a flat, but they would not be able to furnish it or pay the bills so they would lose it and be homeless again. Through all those stages, the Whitechapel Mission was the only constant. Anything with government funding and therefore government policies always had eligibility requirements (that changed like the wind), and so did not cover people consistently. At one point, to be considered officially homeless, you had to be seen by the roving team three nights in a row. But they didn't check the same places each night, so unless you moved around and were lucky, you could not be counted as homeless and thus eligible for support.

Over the years, the Whitechapel has responded to the changing needs of the community. Some examples are adding breakfast options for Muslims, providing mobile phone charging (banks of chargers for different types of phone), groups for women etc.

For me, the key lessons to learn from The Whitechapel Mission are about consistency (for decades), being guided by the needs people actually have, and not having criteria for eligibility.

Free Software Projects

There are thousands of free software projects with varying success forming communities around them. Some are huge and are essential to many large businesses (such as the Linux Kernel, with over 1,000 contributors every month). Some are very commercial and run by companies, others are fiercely separate from business models. I've used hundreds, could be thousands, of free software projects and contributed to a few (mostly in very small ways).

When I am writing my own software and looking for languages, frameworks, libraries, and tools, I find the attitude and responsiveness of the team quickly determines my interest level. Some seem like they would be very useful, but you can see they are not responding to questions or even offers to help.

If you are not familiar with this as a community, then this film on the history of the Python Programming language might help explain things (you probably need to know something about programming to find it understandable).

A project that demonstrates a lot about how a smallish company can start a free software project (January 2025) and build a significant developer team (over 150 people have contributed so far) then the Turso project to rewrite SQLite in Rust is a good example. See their January announcement. If you are on Discord you can see how they treat people (welcoming and well, in my opinion), hence, the project is able to move far faster than it could if it were just the Turso company doing the work.

CAP Debt Centres

Christians Against Poverty Debt Centres are widely praised by the campaigner Martin Lewis as the best way for people to get out of Debt. They are run by local Churches with full training and support from the National CAP Charity. Not only are they based in the local community, but they also meet people in their own homes (or if that is not safe then sometimes in places like a charity supporting survivors of domestic abuse), and they are not just focused on the debt. Instead, they connect people to form community.

We started a CAP Debt Centre in Wythenshawe when I was Methodist Minister there and our Centre Managers (Cassie and then Claire) were brilliant at helping people through the whole process from first contact to being completely debt free and beyond. As debt is almost never an isolated issue, it was essential to be deeply connected into the local community (housing associations, councillors, police, mental health teams etc), also in an area of great deprivation and lots of destitution we found that it took more patience, understanding and support for people to be able to receive help than was the average national expectation.

The challenge is that CAP (and a few other smaller charities) are doing something that big agencies and corporations have failed to do. Obviously getting out of debt completely transforms peoples lives (literally from death to life in many cases), however, there are huge benefits to society as a whole. When people are able to rebuild their lives they move from being a financial burdon on society to making a positive contribution. The costs to the NHS, policing and education all drop. Clearly, there is a short-term negative impact on some companies/councils who find debts (typically rent and council tax) get written off, although realistically the debts were never going to be repaid as it was.

Unfortunately, not only has society become dependent on the work of these charities, we are also consistently increasing the size of the problem due to misrepresentation of the issue. It is well documented that it is impossible to actually live on Universal Credit without extra support or getting into debt. It is also clear that private landlords have been raking in huge profits while not investing in (or even doing basic maintenance of) the homes they rent out. Parliament has been unwilling to address these issues, partly due to pressure from the anti-community populists (supported by a lot of the media) and partly out of greed (check how many members of Parliament are landlords and how they have voted against legislation to require rented accomodation to be habitable (for example).

The key lessons for me are that we need to ensure that facts influence policy, that we formally commit recognise that we need proportionally far more resources for people who are vulnerable, deprived, destitute, ill, disadvantaged (by education, race, gender, sexuality, impairment etc) to enable them (and critically future generations coming from them) to fully contribute to society. The long term benefits are for everyone, albeit requiring a leveling up that the rich, privileged and powerful resent and resist.

Conclusion

A focus on building community that includes everyone (and that provides some with the extra support they need to be able to be included) is a great way to improve our society for all. This is positive work that we can all be part of.

Oh and yes, in case it isn't obvious, this should be a gospel imperitive for all Christians.