I have been struck by the growing gap between the election campaign as it appears in the media and the conversations and discussions I am having through my work with community based organisations and residents.<\/p>\n
Over the past two weeks I have sat and listened to people talk about their voluntary work in a community enterprise which is working with vulnerable adults and young people, or the community activists who are advocates and supporters of local residents as they navigate their way through the complexities of the welfare state.<\/p>\n
Or there’s the Health Watch lead who is seeking to ensure that their role as advocates on behalf not just of patients is heard and respected. The media, however, seem pre-occupied not just with the usual photo opportunities that are part of any campaign but the stage managed \u2018events\u2019 which appear to rule out \u2018ordinary\u2019 people and have them replaced by party workers.<\/p>\n
So \u2018under the radar\u2019 is a large network of connected (and sometimes unconnected) projects and organisations from food banks to community re-cycling schemes. Often these networks are embedded in their localities drawing in some diverse sets of interests and partners, from faith groups to schools to local professionals to single issue campaigners.<\/p>\n
But in these networks and partnerships you are likely to hear quite different conversations from the ones offered by the media. These meetings and encounters in communities over quite specific issues are usually person driven ,from the Living Wage Campaign, to improving adult literacy and everything in between, and they offer a very different idea of politics and how we construct political conversations.<\/p>\n
Why does this matter?\u00a0For two reasons, I think. Firstly, they suggest that there is a much bigger desire to talk about what is really going on than might be assumed from reading the newspaper, and secondly they tend to be quite results focussed. They are practical discussions. And whilst they might become pragmatic at the expense of other things, fairness, equality and social justice, they do open up the space for these broader and deeper conversations.<\/p>\n
There is a risk that as May 7th<\/sup> gets closer the national conversation will have closed down opportunities for this more philosophical and open dialogue.<\/p>\n It is happening. I have sat and listened to the conversations and listened too as individuals recount their stories and weave together an alternative narrative on ideas of \u2018community\u2019 and \u2018solidarity\u2019 and \u2018change\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been struck by the growing gap between the election campaign as it appears in the media and the conversations and discussions I am having through my work with community based organisations and residents. Over the past two weeks I have sat and listened to people talk about their voluntary work in a community […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":225,"featured_media":140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32286,120,1688],"tags":[32328,32307,32290,32340],"class_list":["post-136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-election-2015","category-health","category-politics","tag-conversation","tag-debate","tag-general-election-2015","tag-politics"],"yoast_head":"\n