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When people from Oxford City Council come and sort of look at the community centre and say the only thing we can do really is to pull it down and put on a supermarket for the people here, then I think it’s absolutely awful, and ignorant, and treating people like second class. (Les).
Discussion with participants about what might be termed official responses35 to the Leys and those who live there are characterised by a sense that little, if any, ‘good’ can derive from the area. That, to some extent, the area and those who live there are a kind of write-off which, at best, can only be contained and managed, usually at arm’s length. It seems that official, lay and media perceptions and discourses all contribute to both the construction and reinforcement of these negative narratives. As Les notes the perception of the City Council’s attitude is one in which local people are seen as ‘second class’. For others, this view manifests as a kind of civic unworthiness associated with high levels of non-participation (in, for example, Council-led or sponsored initiatives) and apathy.
There used to be a residents’ association. It folded after a while. The City Council’s trying to get up a similar sort of thing now. I mean people just; I think there’s a perception that people on Blackbird Leys are apathetic. But I think that’s [er] a very general term that fails to sort of look at some of the issues that are underneath it as to why people don’t appear to be getting involved in the way that may be statutory organisations would like them to be getting involved. I mean, you’ll know yourself, there’s been so many different projects come and go on Blackbird Leys [er] and when, you know, when they’re here with all the money, yes, it might do something for a little
35 By this I mean individuals and organisations from the statutory sector and other organistations that have a formal role in delivering services to the public.
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bit. It might not. When they’re gone, they’re gone. And there’s not much to show for them. I don’t believe I just said that. But it’s true unfortunately. (Les).
Les’s comments reflect a more complex situation that rejects the charge of apathy and suggests that reasons for not engaging with statutory organisations is an outcome of what residents see as a set of repetitive, short-term interventions which lack sustained and meaningful engagement with residents and achieve little for the community but benefit a handful of people and meet some immediate objectives of the statutory agencies involved. (See also McCulloch (1997) for a reflection on how statutory interventions can seemingly work against the community in its widest sense).
Other participants describe how they felt professionals tended to talk down the estate and its residents by applying generalised and stereotypical views to all the residents on the estates, belying a lack of understanding of the estate created by a professional, socio- economic and geographical distance.
I was at a meeting a few years back, and the Public Health Director of the County Council was there. It was a joint meeting with the Primary Care Trust and the County Council. It was actually held at the leisure centre on Blackbird Leys and he was going on and on and on about this area. And I finally stood up and I said, “I actually am a resident.” And I was on his workforce at the time, and he didn’t know because he lives in leafy Summertown and it’s all very beautiful in his two million quid house. (Tina).
Where individuals had direct experience of developing their own initiatives and events on the estate they often reported being met with scepticism and reticence from external agencies who expressed doubt about the ability of the estate’s residents to contribute positively to their environment. In the following extract, Rachel talks about her (and other
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residents) participation an initiative organised by the Oxfordshire Art Weeks Programme36 and how this cultural intervention was viewed by some members of the organising committee, the local paper, the parish council and the City Council:
… so I started up an art group with four, three other artists called Blackbird Leys art group. BLAG. So we did the first art week’s exhibition that they had on the Leys, which for a starters was about the thing with the art week’s committee like ugh Blackbird Leys Art Exhibition? Oh really. A bit of contradiction in terms. Actually some of them were really lovely. But in the Oxford Mail we had a real fight with them about giving us positive coverage. That we were trying to do something positive. When we did the project that got the Glow Tree sculpture put up there which I see now is mentioned in lots of sort of reports, you know, from the City Council or whatever. You know, at the time we were told; “What on earth were we doing trying to get a sculpture put up in Blackbird Leys? Don’t you know it’ll get vandalised? What a stupid idea. You know, Blackbird Leys. “We don’t have those sort of things on Blackbird Leys.” That was the parish council that told us, and we were like “No way, you know, why shouldn’t we have nice things all of us here? Are you saying that because we live in a socio-economically disadvantaged area we don’t deserve nice things and nice environment?” And look at Glow Tree’s sculpture now it’s a really accepted part, you know, nobody’s vandalised it. That’s not saying they never will, but it hasn’t been, you know, it’s really loved and respected that. And why not? It’s a beautiful thing. (Rachel).
This reflection again demonstrates official perceptions of the estate and the resistance to recognising the skills, achievements and potential of the estate’s residents. The assumption
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that ‘we don’t have those sort of things on the Leys’ and commitment to the notion that artistic creativity (in this case) is inevitably doomed summarises many of the prejudicial attitudes residents face. This extract also underlines the view that the estate and residents are undeserving of ‘nice things’ and of ‘a nice environment’ and that they are somehow attitudinally unsuited to the sort of cultural events that are an everyday and unexceptional aspect of life in the rest of the City. The residents ‘fail’ in two ways: not only do the residents of the Leys lack creativity of their own they are also underserving of such creativity unlike other areas of the city.