One of the most frequently mentioned purpose was the theme of social and community objectives. Such motivations were strongest for my interviewees from the spot fix initiatives, but played an important role in all other case studies. The only exception to this is busking, where only few interviewees mentioned larger social ambitions for their practice. These differences are partly to be explained by interviewees’ self-understanding of their own capacity, as well as the likely effect that their practice may have on their local community or society. Thus, the majority of interviewees, especially (but not exclusively) from the Mumbai case studies, strongly believe in their ability to effect change. As one of the interviewees from a spot fix initiative explained:
“The main reason why we didn’t involve any political party, like he said, why we started working individually is that we wanted to spread a very particular message: that any citizen or any person who has a problem, should take up the responsibility and work on it, rather than shouting at it, like he said, or rather just ignoring it. Just take an issue, be responsible for that issue and start working on it. You don’t need any affiliation, any NGO [non-governmental organisation], any political party, you just need to be a human being who cares. That is the message we want to pass. And people who look at us will get inspired and do such activities in their areas. That is what we want, once we associate a political party’s name, an NGO’s name, everyone will be like ‘oh, it’s a difficult job, we need some NGO. We are not an NGO’. People ask us, a very usual question is ‘kaunse
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NGO se ho?’, which NGO you belong from. We are not from NGO, we are citizens.” (SF12, interview, 2015)
More than simply believing in change, these actors believe that they can realise ambitious aims and are prepared to take on large-scale projects, too. On the other hand, there were a number of interviewees (especially from the busking and book swap case studies) whose ambitions for their practice were much more limited. They argued that their activity will not “change people’s lives or save the world”. This does not imply that they do not consider their activity to be valuable to others, but they see its value in a much more contained and specific way. This is further discussed in section 4.5.
The social and community theme is presented in four sections. Section 4.3.1 looks at altruistic reasons, followed by section 4.3.2, which discusses the theme of building community. Section 4.3.3 then interrogates people’s aim to effect behavioural change and section 4.3.4 a perspective that sees informal cultural practices as a social experiment.
4.3.1 ‘Doing good’
Many interviewees who talked about a social role of their practice mentioned that they wanted to do something good. A number of interviewees, especially from the guerrilla gardening case study, talked about their practice positively affecting a particular person and how they set out to do so. For instance, one interviewee talked about how she would plan the time she was going out to water the guerrilla garden in order to make it coincide with an elderly man’s daily walk, because she knew that he enjoyed stopping and having a chat to her.
More often than helping out a specific person, interviewees wanted to do something for the ‘public good’ or society at large. Several mentioned that they like helping other people and that they have an altruistic personality. One way of expressing this motivation is the term “giving back to society”, which was used repeatedly by interviewees. There were a number of reasons for them wanting to do so. Firstly, interviewees said that they love their local area or city and
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hence they wanted to do things that are good for it. Secondly, people appreciated that the city has given them many opportunities and they wanted to
‘repay’ those. And finally, several interviewees mentioned that they feel very fortunate in terms of their socio-economic position and wanted to improve others’ lives.
A few of the interviewees also wanted to make a bigger statement about the contribution that each individual can make to society, as this initiator of a book sharing initiative explains:
“Every time they take one of their books and put it in the [book swap], they’re doing something that makes themselves worse off. And so, they are doing something counterintuitive, to an extent. But…but by the fact that a large number of people sacrifice a very miniscule thing, it enriches everyone. […] In the Second World War, people…they were sacrificing lives. But this is a notion of – if you have a lot of people making a small amount of sacrifice, it’s something that is benign.” (BS10, interview, 2015)
This quote also highlights another important point for many interviewees, namely that their practice is selfless. Several added that there should be no expectation of pay back or reward. This includes any expectations about how others will receive the practice and whether they will show themselves grateful, as well as expectations of others in terms of how much support they will give to the initiative. Rather, ‘informal’ actors should simply do the activity, because they want to, or enjoy it. Several interviewees, especially from the Equal Streets case study, also added that the idea was more important than their own involvement in the practice. That is, they would be quite happy for someone else (such as public authorities) to take the credit, as long as the idea of opening up public spaces was taken forward.
These finding mirror Edensor and Millington’s (2010:176-7) observation of the
“sense of generosity” that marked local Christmas light displays, where “the displayers undertook this practice without expectation of any return or contractual arrangement, other than a sense of gaining pleasure from seeing
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other people enjoy their illuminations.” Interestingly, these views stand in some contrast to the views described in section 4.2.1 which highlighted the importance of external recognition. However, this might be explained by the greater importance of personal ambitions by these individuals, as opposed to an emphasis on a social role.
4.3.2 Build community
One of the most frequently mentioned aims of my interviewees was the idea to build community through their informal practice. Interviewees talked about their initiative as a resource for the local community to meet, connect and get to know their neighbours. They saw it as a place or initiative that “anchors” people within their community. That is, it provided them with a place to go to or stop by, when they are looking for a chat with someone. Many interviewees reported that the initiative has helped people locally to get to know others, giving their local area a “village feel” in the middle of London. Several also talked about greater safety in the neighbourhood and decreased social isolation. One initiator of a guerrilla gardening project mentioned that older people in the area feel that – unlike before – people would notice if something happened to them.
Several book sharing initiatives were considered to help promote the concept of exchange – of giving and receiving – between neighbours. Interviewees mentioned that it took people a while to get used to the idea that they could take books for free, while at the same time prompting them to make a conscious decision to give back something of their own.
In several cases the initiative acted as an information hub or events space for the community. One organiser of a book swap that is supported by a local community association (and labelled as such) also recounted that people use it as a hook to get involved locally: they phone up the local community association in order to find out more about things going on in the area and how to get involved with, or support, different issues.
Furthermore, several interviewees highlighted that – in the context of living in big cities, where there is much greater cultural diversity than elsewhere – their
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practice gives them an opportunity to take advantage of this diversity and to specifically involve members of the community that tend to be excluded. One of the organisers of a guerrilla gardening project put it as follows:
“It wouldn’t have been any fun. There wouldn’t have been any point in doing this, if it had only been white middle class ladies. […]
Everybody meets everybody. It’s a bit like Obama’s inauguration speech. It becomes like a microcosm of how things should be, where people come together irrespective of race, income, sexuality or religion.” (GG3, interview, 2015)
Similarly, a couple of interviewees from the Equal Streets case study talked about the open street event giving people the opportunity to meet and connect not just with “your group of people”, but everyone. Several interviewees feel that they are able to bridge the divide more successfully with this particular practice than with other community activities (see section 4.6.3 for further discussion), while others see their informal practice as part of a menu of community-focused activities. This is because the particular initiative, for example, a book swap, may not be of interest to all community members, but they might be drawn in by a community garden or a street party instead. However, they still see it as important to provide this particular point of engagement.
It is worth noting that while the community motivation was an aspect of all case studies, it was particularly strong for book sharing and guerrilla gardening initiatives. This might be because these types of projects tended to have a fixed site and become a relatively permanent feature in the local area. Thus, they provided more scope for community engagement, than more temporary activities such as busking or some of the one-off spot fix initiatives.
4.3.3 Effect behavioural change
Changing mind-sets and behaviours was another purpose that ‘informal’ actors saw their practice fulfilling. While the envisaged behaviours depend on each individual case study (prevent littering, using sustainable modes of transport,
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etc.), the idea at the core of this ambition is that each individual should play their part in society in order to improve the lives of everyone.
The first way in which interviewees were trying to effect such behavioural change is by raising awareness of a particular issue. Some of them mentioned how they directly confront people about behaviours that they consider undesirable (for example, asking them not to spit on the roads) or provide guidance. The latter might include signs of where to put litter or, in some cases, actually creating the facilities (such as bins or public washrooms). Perhaps more importantly, interviewees attempted to lead by example. Indeed, not only did they consider action to be more powerful in convincing others to change their behaviour, but they also recognised that unless their own behaviours was in line with the principles they ‘preach’ they would come across as hypocritical and untrustworthy. Several interviewees also referred to the ‘broken windows theory’ (Wilson & Kelling, 1982), whereby the maintenance of urban environments to prevent small crimes is thought to help prevent more serious offences from happening. In the same vein, interviewees talked about the positive effect they had seen (or believed in) from keeping areas clean and tidy, in terms of encouraging people to looking after the area themselves.
Creating a sense of ownership in others was considered to be another key step to effect behavioural change. One of the initiators of a spot fix initiative therefore spent considerable effort in engaging others in the practice. For instance, he ensured that he got a group of volunteers from a neighbouring slum involved in the cleaning of the railway station he adopted, as he believed that they will be less likely to dirty the area themselves and more likely to stop others from doing it. At another railway station, he also got a number of school classes involved who collected signatures from commuters, whereby they were pledging not to spit or litter the station in future. Interviewees also expected a sense of ownership in people to help maintain the initiative (for example, by sorting the books on a book swap or by watering plants in a tree pit) and to make it spread.
This, they felt, was important as they recognised their limited capacity and that the only way to scale up their practice to other areas was for other people to take responsibility.
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While there was unanimity among the interviewees about how important this sense of ownership was, many also acknowledged that it was very difficult to
‘instil’ this in others. This is partly due to a lack of confidence, as people may feel like they are not allowed to work on public land (for example, plant up a tree pit) or that they need a bigger organisation to be part of (for example, to clean up a railway station). According to other interviewees, this is because of people’s feeling that it is someone else’s responsibility to clean this and that it is not ‘their’ land. One guerrilla gardener argued that people changed their behaviour, the moment they crossed their front door. Behaviours that they would not tolerate inside their own home (like throwing litter on the floor) were considered acceptable outside. An organiser of one of the spot fix initiative felt that this problem was made worse by the fact that many people in big cities are not staying in the same place permanently, but might move every few years to a new area and hence are not as rooted in their local community or care less for it. These debates about feelings of ownership highlight the difficult negotiation between, and attitude towards, public use rights and private exchange rights of the urban ‘commons’ – as conceptualised by Porter (2011), Blomley (2008) and other literature on the intersection between informality and ‘commons’ property.
This will be further discussed in the Conclusions (see section 7.2.3).
4.3.4 Social experiment
Finally, a considerable number of interviewees, especially from the book sharing and guerrilla gardening case studies, talked about their project as a social experiment. Recognising that their practice takes place in the public space and that they are unable to ‘guard’ it, they were keen to test out people’s behaviours, on the one hand, and encourage good behaviour, on the other. As one interviewee from a book sharing initiative put it, it gives people a chance to be nice, whether that is by ‘giving back’ when they see the book swap empty, or by spontaneously tidying it up when it is in disorder. Several interviewees explained that part of their motivation of their practice was to just see what will happen, but they implicitly assumed that their experiment or test will have a positive outcome – that is, that there will not be any major vandalism or theft or
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anything else malicious. Thus, part of their motivation was to send out a positive message about the particular community that their practice takes place in, as
“it’s a good commentary about the people around, in the neighbourhood.”
Several interviewees admitted that their risk was low. That is, they did not have much to lose should the experiment fail – a few books stolen that someone wanted to get rid of anyway, or a few plants – and hence they were happy to take the risk.