‘A Fair and Just Future for Cornwall’ serves as a guiding theme for 21 articles by key stakeholders from across business, faith and the voluntary sector, all of whom articulate their own particular vision of a better future for Cornwall as we emerge from lockdown. There is no attempt to find a common agenda and each author is speaking from their own perspective.
Click on the image to download the report.
In this guest blog, Gavin Barker of Cornwall Independent Poverty Forum shares what they hope the report will achieve. Church Action n Poverty’s partners at End Hunger Cornwall have played an active role in producing this report.
The pandemic is a turning point. The decisions we take now will frame the direction we go in and it is vital that Cornwall has a say over its own future. Too often, the most important decisions about our future are tied to a Westminster agenda that pays little attention to a local context. We want our MPs and council leaders to listen carefully to as wide a range of local voices as possible before taking important decisions. Each of the contributors has decades of experience and expertise in their respective roles. They have a deep understanding of the communities in which they live and serve and they deserve to be listened to.
We want our MPs and council leaders to listen carefully to as wide a range of local voices as possible before taking important decisions.
The lead organisation is Cornwall Independent Poverty Forum which has its base in Truro Diocese and the Revd Philip Mounstephen, Bishop of Truro has contributed an article. While our normal focus is poverty issues we felt it was vital to step outside our role and reach out to as many groups and organisations as possible, including the business community.
There is a second purpose to this report and that is to trigger a wider public conversation. We will be sharing this on social media and we will also be writing to different community groups as well as 20 town and parish councils and inviting them to read the report and share their own vision – what they want for their town and community as well as for Cornwall. Everyone should have a voice.
Everyone should have a voice.
It’s very easy for reports such as these to be ‘parked’. They make a brief media splash, our leaders and elected representatives nod their heads, make positive noises, a letter is sent to the local press and everyone moves on.
We do not want this to happen. We are asking for a considered response from our MPs as well as council leaders and in three months’ time we will convene a meeting of all contributors to the report in order to share notes, any responses from MPs as well as discuss next steps.
Finally, in a year’s time we will gather together again and ask the question ‘What has changed?’ and we will use this report as a baseline by which to measure progress. The outcome of that process is likely to be a second report in answer to that question. The report will therefore be part of a rolling campaign as we all work to bring about a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable future for Cornwall.
Download our local group’s report on the right. Download resource Resources Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2022-24 Download our local group’s report …
This is a guest series, of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
This is Church Action on Poverty’s statement on the 2024 Budget. It includes the views of our expert advisors with direct current experience of poverty. …
This is a guest series of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
Welcome to the first of our new Neighbourhood Voices stories, featuring people in north Sheffield. We’re at Parson Cross in Sheffield, on a Tuesday morning. …
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We must all look out for one another, to ensure nobody is cut adrift.
We continue to hear heartening stories of how communities across the country are pulling together. The video below tells the story of one of our oldest partners, the Cedarwood Trust in North Shields.
The project usually operates a range of projects from its community centre on the Meadowell estate. But since lockdown, regulars, neighbours, staff and volunteers have been coming together to ensure nobody in the community is cut adrift.
Watch the video above to hear first-hand from local residents Jean, Henry, Adam, Lindsey, Lynne, Andrew and Dorothy, as well as the staff.
The team have been delivering meals, making phone calls, sourcing spare baby supplies or equipment, and holding cherished doorstep conversations.
Wayne Dobson, chief executive at Cedarwood, says the experience of lockdown will change their approach forever. He says there is a tremendous community spirit on the estate, and says:
We cannot just be custodians of the building. We need to be out in the community and that’s one of the things we are going to do differently when this is all over – we are going to continue the community outreach.
Download our local group’s report on the right. Download resource Resources Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2022-24 Download our local group’s report …
This is a guest series, of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
Learn the story of Dreams & Realities, and the stories behind it Previous Next A powerful new art exhibition has …
On Tuesday 14th July we launched the pilot episode of our new show The Collective on Zoom and Facebook Live.
The Collective is an hour of inspiring stories of collective action to promote dignity, agency and power.
In our first episode we explored Church responses to the crisis. You can watch the full episode here.
We heard first from poet Matt Sowerby, who performed a new poem Breath.
After that Adam and Naomi Maynard gave us a tour of St George’s Church in Everton which is home to a Local Pantry, and Vic Ponsonby told us about the network of Pantries across Liverpool. Find out more about Your Local Pantry here.
This was followed by an interview with Cassius Francis from The Just Finance Foundation and Transforming Communities Together in the Black Country and West Midlands. Cassius spoke about what he had been seeing in terms of the impact of the economic crisis brought about by Covid-19 over the past four months.
Professor Anthony Reddie talked about some of the broader challenges facing the church in relation to the current crisis around the issues of race and class.
After this Nick Waterfield from the Parson Cross Initiative in Sheffield told us about the situation on the ground in his community and the challenge for churches as lockdown eases, especially not falling into the trap of thinking of ourselves as the saviours.
Nick was then joined by Stef Benstead in an interactive panel discussion about all the issues covered so far in the programme, particularly challenging churches to respond to the crisis.
The episode finished with a virtual choir from Sheffield singing their version of the Disney classic A Whole New World.
The next episode of The Collective will be 2 pm Tuesday 15th September on Zoom and our Facebook page. It will explore Community responses to the crisis.
Download our local group’s report on the right. Download resource Resources Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2022-24 Download our local group’s report …
This is a guest series, of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
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Self-Reliant Group facilitator, Laura Walton, remembers the struggles facing those seeking asylum in this country.
A shielding friend visited my back garden this week and even if it had been a bit wild after all the rain, she would have been equally as delighted to be there. She has large windows in her flat and grassy area outside but that was everyone else’s sanctuary so therefore could not be hers. She had a quick coffee and a biscuit but to her it was a taste of that freedom that we are now used to and which will keep her going until shielding people are released.
She, like so many others is waiting for her final release papers, permission to come and go and meet with others, enter people’s houses and ultimately to return home. Her home has been many things over the last few months; her classroom, her church, her supermarket, her gym, her social life, her counselling room and her prison. She has always been safe there, if frustrated, lonely and at times fed up and then lately despondent and cheerless. But her home has been and remains her safe place and is hers.
We know not everyone can say that about the place they live in.
The Red Cross amongst other organisations has continued to offer care, support and practical help to people without homes or safe places to stay. Many people in the asylum seeking process have been living in hotels through lockdown but are now waiting nervously to hear that they will be asked to leave. For them their personal situations within a Covid-19 recovery phase is still very precarious. For many who are new to the country, to the language, the customs and the systems, and who have come out of traumatic and often life threatening circumstances, their sanctuary is about to be terminated.
Through lockdown they have had the stability and assurance of a bed for every night, even if the address was still carried around on a scrap of paper. Most have appreciated meal times and a few the luxury of a chosen particular bar of soap. Being in contact with their families overseas has been a luxury many have had to do without.
And so they are waiting, waiting to hear about losing the only stability in their lives right now, waiting to hear from lawyers, from the Home Office, even for texts that will give them some idea of what lies ahead now for them.
While we have been waiting desperately for the go ahead to go….and come back and go again etc etc, they are waiting and about to lose their place of safety and a room that was just their own.
We are so used to the words, easing and relaxing when related to the upheaval of the last few months. Even those words sound like the opening up of our lives again and a future of opportunities and choices. Let’s spare a thought or even better, say a prayer for those people seeking asylum in this country. Let’s pray especially for those members in Self Reliant Groups here in Manchester who are in the process and have been stuck there for a very long time. Let’s pray that their waiting will soon come to an end. That in losing their hotel room or room in a house or someone’s sofa or a tent space, they will gain a more permanent place that they can begin to call home and begin to make decisions to direct their own lives.
Isaiah 40 verse 31
But those who keep waiting for the Lord will renew their strength. Then they’ll soar on wings like eagles; they’ll run and not grow weary; they’ll walk and not grow faint.
Download our local group’s report on the right. Download resource Resources Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2022-24 Download our local group’s report …
This is a guest series, of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
Learn the story of Dreams & Realities, and the stories behind it Previous Next A powerful new art exhibition has …
Community choirs in Sheffield have come together online beautifully.
All of us have been seeking ways to stay connected during the coronavirus outbreak, and to sustain community through these rocky waters.
Today, we’re delighted to share a wonderful piece of community singing, produced by some of our partners and friends in Sheffield.
Community choir coordinator Yo Tozer-Loft worked with an editor and four local choirs, to produce a beautiful community rendition of A Whole New World, from Disney’s Aladdin.
The choirs involved were the Dore & Totley Intergenerational Singing Teapot Choir; the St Mary’s Family Choir; the Meersbrook URC Community Choir; and the Gleadless Valley Food Glorious Food Choir and Friends.
She said: “Early in lockdown, we were making things up as we went along and trying to master the technology. Making a video became a good focus for our Zoom singing and a way of making something collective happen in this time. Some people were really feeling lost and unproductive.
“There were 35 singers and me. An accompanist made a backing track and we had five sessions learning the parts on Zoom, then shared it all via WhatsApp and our editor (John Swain) put it together.
“I am really delighted with it; I know the work the singers put in. For some it was a really big thing to see themselves featuring solo on camera. It really cheered people up and gave people a lift.
“We had planned to go into a Disney phase with the choirs anyway, and that was one of the songs. A Whole New World suddenly seemed very apt and it was quite serendipitous that it was completed just as new life tentatively set foot with the major unlocking last weekend.”
Download our local group’s report on the right. Download resource Resources Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2022-24 Download our local group’s report …
This is a guest series, of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
Learn the story of Dreams & Realities, and the stories behind it Previous Next A powerful new art exhibition has …
In this guest blog, ACE - our partners running the first Your Local Pantry in Wales - reflect on how the pandemic and lockdown require us to do things differently.
‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ Psalm 137:4
We have been exiled from our beloved Dusty Forge and find ourselves in a new and strange ‘land’! The roar of laughter from the weekly Retreat group is absent, the punchline undelivered. The Dusty garden is ripe with veg but the harvest is indefinitely delayed, a feast unshared. The Repair Café has ceased, everyday items lying unfixed and unusable. The artists’ paintings sit unfinished, visions cut short before their potential is fulfilled. Birthdays have passed with no cakes and no candles burning for another year lived, and no singing.
ACE Staff making up food bags and parcels
We were singing a song of sorts. A polyphony of diverse voices, sometimes a little out of tune, but with a unique beauty all of its own. We were finding ways of including new people in this quirky choir, many of whom had never been told they can sing and assumed they had no voice. There were busy days in the Dusty Forge when the cacophony was glorious and it felt like we’d welcomed a little bit of heaven on earth. We hadn’t finished our ‘song’, and I still find myself humming the chorus in the quiet of my own home… It’s not the same. It’s too quiet now, and these kind of songs are meant to be sung together.
Meanwhile our community faces a whole new set of challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic which are nevertheless familiar because they feed parasitically on inequalities and injustices which we already know. Incomes are dropping. Work is even more insecure and pay is too low. Folk can’t afford food. Isolated people are struggling to meet their own basic needs. Individuals’ already fragile mental health is crumbling further. Families already struggling with multiple pressures now find themselves together 24/7 without the support of extended family and friends, juggling work and home-schooling.
The ACE ‘family’ has responded quickly. We have repurposed our ‘Your Local Pantry’ project, allowing us to deliver food to those who need it whilst keeping local ownership through membership alive. Our debt and benefit advice and support is offered via a phone service, and is being well used. We continue to offer 1-2-1 mental health support. We have moved quickly to prepare safe procedures that can support volunteering and have tapped into renewed enthusiasm for mutual aid by recruiting new volunteers. They are now busy with staff picking up and delivering prescriptions, preparing wellbeing packs for local carers, and offering ‘phone a friend’ services. Creative resources are being provided for home use with bored children. We’re even planning a community-wide back garden archaeology dig through our brilliant CAER Heritage Project. And like lots of other folk, we have stuck a rocket under our social media use!
ACE Coronavirus response
If you spend a lot of time singing with others then you can learn to improvise together. Our improvisational skills have enabled flexibility in responding to the crisis in multiple ways. ACE is committed to a set of values and ways of working that provide a context for creativity. We believe everyone has something to contribute and that everyone’s contribution should be valued equally. We see and talk about our community not as a problem that needs solving by others, but as a network of people, places, buildings, knowledge, skills and creativity that too often go unnoticed, unacknowledged and untapped. We seek to identify and to nurture these ‘assets’ through communal relationships, by listening to each other and those around us in our community, and by seeking collective ownership of, and responsibility for, the spaces and resources around us. All this is energised by a large dose of experimentation. We have hoped to create a culture that grows these skills and attitudes in us all so that when change happens, or crisis emerges, we are fit to the task of responding creatively, flexibly and with hope. If the notion of ‘community resilience’ means anything to us then it looks something like this. The coming months are as good a time as any to find out whether we have begun to be successful in achieving it.
Back when I studied Youth and Community Work we had a course tutor who, whenever we were struggling to make sense of an aspect of our practice, would tell us that we had to learn to ‘sit in the shit’. It was very annoying at the time but the phrase has come back to me so many times since, and it seems particularly relevant now. Its wisdom is in challenging us to fight the urge to leave the shit and walk away as quickly as possible. The danger is to rush to old solutions in the context of new problems. When all has changed, and the odour of a new strange world is overwhelming, there is necessary work in sitting in it long enough to understand it. To get a feel for it. To engage it with all our senses so we can start to improvise a way through.
‘French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil wrote about the claim of what is on our attention. She writes, we do not have to love what happens to us, but we ought to pay attention to it, to come to know it and grasp what might be done for the good in response. And we cannot really know what to do for the good if we do not grant events and people our deepest attention. There is love to be had in creative human wrestling with what is, in that response, if not in the events themselves.’ – Anna Rowlands.
So some of our immediate tasks might be to wait, to listen, to watch and to reflect. To remind ourselves that much of the value of community development is in the process itself, not in reaching some predetermined destination. Our commitment to Asset Based Community Development, Coproduction and Community Organising, the interplay between the three, and the set of skills and techniques they provide, offer a useful toolbox for this work. This can all go on alongside the absolutely vital work of meeting immediate need in our community. But as we sit in this unique and very unpleasant Covid-19 shit, we may slowly start to spot new and different opportunities for song.
We will notice melodies being hummed by people who until now were strangers. We will take up their tunes and bring them into harmony with some of our older ones (memory, and all that we’ve learned so far, will be important), we will discover new time signatures (maybe they’ll be slower and more reflective) and new key signatures (maybe they’ll be in a minor key for a good while yet, but that’s OK, a more celebratory day will come). We may even find new and safe ways of combining our voices together in each other’s presence (without using Zoom!). Eventually we will find ourselves singing a different but equally beautiful song in the new and strange land that we are entering. The land will form the song, if we take notice of it well enough. But the song will also help us make sense of, and live in, the new land. Our vision, as ever, is not to be passive but to act together, and in acting together to find shared meaning, life and joy.
Download our local group’s report on the right. Download resource Resources Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2022-24 Download our local group’s report …
This is a guest series, of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
This is Church Action on Poverty’s statement on the 2024 Budget. It includes the views of our expert advisors with direct current experience of poverty. …
This is a guest series of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
Welcome to the first of our new Neighbourhood Voices stories, featuring people in north Sheffield. We’re at Parson Cross in Sheffield, on a Tuesday morning. …
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Welcome to our new guest series, of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force …
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Church Action on Poverty supporter Liz Delafield shares how Dialstone Lane Methodist Church in Stockport used our 'Good Society' resources to spark conversations and action for change.
On Saturday we had a meeting with two local MPs, using the computer app, Zoom. It was called ‘A Good Society? Within and After the Covid Crisis’. A collection of people, mainly from our local area, joined us in a question/answer dialogue. It was the latest in a series of events that had been taking place at Dialstone Lane Methodist Church, and our first virtual meet-up. These meetings explore what it means to be a good society. They have included hustings events for local and general elections, an event prior to the referendum and several roundtable discussions.
I would encourage other churches and faith groups to hold a gathering like this. It is a great way to contribute to building and engaging with the community. I do not hold up the way we did things as a model you need to follow. There will be many other equally valid, or better, ways of holding good society gatherings. We made plenty of mistakes along the way. Here are a few ideas that may be of some use:
Getting started
The journey began in the run-up to the 2015 General Election. We met around tables with a good supply of cake and coffee. We used the questions and ideas in the Good Society toolkit. This is still available although it might be time for an update! This led onto our second event, a more formal hustings.
Communications
We use traditional ways, such as church notices, newsletters and posters, and invited groups that may be interested (church/faith groups, community groups, sixth form colleges). We also made an event on Facebook via our church page, and shared this on local community groups.
Keeping going
Many churches held similar Good Society gatherings but few have kept it going, so why did that happen? Several people who had been to the first two meetings had got a taste for it and were asking, “When’s the next one?” Things just developed from there. We had ups and downs along the way. But building a good society, or what Christians call the Kingdom of God, was never going to be achieved in one election.
Share a vision and keep hold of your ideals
At the majority of our gatherings, we have looked back at the 2020 vision of a good society produced after the initial good society conversations. We also decided that we wanted to add “A flourishing NHS that meets peoples’ needs.” We ask our contributors to express their ideas about a good society. This gives us a focus.
Keeping control whilst allowing expression
Whenever people with different opinions get together, things can get a bit fraught. We decided early on to establish ground rules. A well planned and chaired meeting helps to set things on the right foot. By and large the political candidates and other invited guests have been well behaved. People often come with lots to say. We try to find ways people can contribute, even if they don’t get to say it in the meeting. Our larger events have a ‘marketplace’ to give out leaflets and hold informal conversations. Sometimes people are invited to share ideas in other ways such as a ‘have your say’ board.
Teamwork
An event like this takes a lot of planning. I have relied a lot on a friend in my church who is an excellent organiser. We are also very lucky to have some members who bake delicious cakes.
Using Zoom
Owing to the restrictions on meeting during the Covid 19 epidemic, our latest meeting was on Zoom. We decided to keep it to one hour, as zooming for longer than this can be difficult. We put people on ‘mute’ on arrival to keep it from being chaotic, and lined up the questions beforehand. It was less fluid than our real-life meetings, but a useful alternative under the circumstances. One advantage is that we don’t have to clear up afterwards!
What next?
We are planning another Zoom meeting, this time with local councillors. Perhaps, as we emerge from this pandemic, this would be a perfect time for all of us to reflect and renew our vision. It’s time to build back better. What is our vision for a good society in 2025?
Download our local group’s report on the right. Download resource Resources Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2022-24 Download our local group’s report …
This is a guest series, of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
This is Church Action on Poverty’s statement on the 2024 Budget. It includes the views of our expert advisors with direct current experience of poverty. …
This is a guest series of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
Welcome to the first of our new Neighbourhood Voices stories, featuring people in north Sheffield. We’re at Parson Cross in Sheffield, on a Tuesday morning. …
Learn the story of Dreams & Realities, and the stories behind it Previous Next A powerful new art exhibition has …
Self-Reliant Group Facilitator, Laura Walton, reflects on freedom, anxiety and the lifting of lockdown restrictions.
How did you spend your Super Saturday? Doing what you’ve been doing nearly every other day of the lockdown so far, be it working at home or working in and around the home? Or were you one of the thousands that truly re-embraced normality yesterday and went shopping, had lunch, met up with a friend for coffee or popped in at lunchtime for a quick drink? Or were you actually working in one of those places, actually doing your job in the place where you get paid to work as opposed to the place where you live?
Since when in our lives has a Saturday been so eagerly anticipated by so many? The FA cup final…..Olympics penultimate Saturday…..the royal wedding…..maybe. Since when have we cheered at the prospect of a colour and restyle at midnight or a pint at 6 am? Our lives still continue to be turned upside down by the events of the last few months. The mundane and the necessary are being hailed as the triumphant stages of us pulling through this thing together. How much would you pay for a hot Gregg’s sausage roll in a paper bag? Or sitting in someone else’s living room drinking tea? Or just going to the park for a swing and a slide with Nanna? The ordinary gets its rebranding on Super Saturday and we get to delight in those many social activities which we’ve lived without for so long now, but which were common every day experiences for most of us.
But wait…….what about Leicester’s 330,000 inhabitants and the 2.2 million people who as “clinically extremely vulnerable” are still living under huge restrictions and whose minute opportunities for that taste of freedom are dependent on the weather. And what about the as yet not quantified, thousands of people who will choose not to rush to the cinema or the local zoo or even the library. Fear, uncertainty, lack of clarity and mistrust of what life is looking like now in public after nearly 4 months, will still hold many thousands in captivity in their own 4 walled prisons.
Even though we are dusting off our calendars, pretty certain all of us have some fears and anxieties about what this new freedom will be like, how long it will last and how pure and exhilarating it will feel……if at all. Within our own shores there is conflict of opinion and advice and as we look to Europe and beyond to where the virus still has a strong grip, nations are operating on different guidelines with a variety of enforcement methods.
Do you, like me, wish there was an overall authority who would guide us all safely through the storm, rescuing those whose boats are already overturned and whose lives are sinking fast?
There is a truly beautiful songwhich was formed in a Nigerian woman’s heart and has travelled around the world and been translated into 50 different languages in the last 4 years. It is a song of hope and a confirmation of faith in a God who is worshipped and followed throughout the world by millions. This is the God who is a…..
Way maker
Miracle worker
Promise Keeper
Light In the Darkness
This is the authority we are looking for in how to move on in our lives following all the pain, uncertainty and fear of the last few months. He promises to be there throughout our lives, every minute of every hour of every day. He guides us by his spirit, heals us in all our hurts and restores our peace and our purpose for living. We do not know what lies ahead but we can fix our eyes on the light and know that in the morning we will be free.
Download our local group’s report on the right. Download resource Resources Church Action on Poverty North East annual report 2022-24 Download our local group’s report …
This is a guest series, of stories that challenge and change. These are intentionally contrary stories that push back against negative ideas, and force us …
