On my way to Canonbury School every week for my garden club, I cycle through an estate by Clissold Park built 1960’s style with concrete blocks, big windows, and literally acres of grass. Designed originally for the frolicking and the picknicking, the idea was to have an unbroken flow of landscape for people to use. None of this actually happens : no-one even bothers picking the legions of municipal daffodils, and I’ve hardly seen anyone even exercising their dog in the play areas.
Last week I went to a meeting to launch the garden group, and credit to them, they were prepared to fight for their right to par-tay : no accessible water, no available keys, access to only the tiniest of raised beds hadn’t defeated them.
There were 11 residents there : and eight others : the local councillor, the estate manager, three people from Garden Organic and Octopus, who have funding to help community garden groups, a local paper photographer, a lady marketing the local Transition group, and me, scoping out the estate for possible work for little red hen, which works with community groups to set up and run gardens.
I am interested in these kind of anarchic self formed groups, partly because I want a bit of a sneak preview of the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse, but also, because I would like people to rediscover the lost art of working together, that capitalism has encouraged us all to forget. Gardening is the easy bit, the hard part is other people : but paradoxically its quite easy to get grant funding for community garden projects, but almost impossible to get paid to help people stop arguing, complaining and blaming, and do something fun.
I read about the Pareto Principle from this blog on the Decathlon Website about increasing the impact of your training,( having just bought some climbing shoes! ): http://www.decathlon.co.uk/blog/nutrition/7853/
Basically, you get 80% of your results from a productive 20% of what you do, while 80% of your effort brings no results. Good news for anyone on a salary, because this means your boss is paying you for FOUR DAYS EVERY WEEK for doing NOTHING. In sport, it means don’t bother dragging your sorry butt round the park every day : do a proper energetic run twice a week. 80% of the World’s wealth is owned by 20% of the people, ( who do little with it, incidentally) and in business, 80% of your work comes from a very useful 20% of your clients. Pareto himself, as a gardener, maintained that 80% of his peas came from 20% of his pods, which I think is frankly taking what might be a good principle to a ridiculous extreme.
So the point is : ( apart from that you could have skipped 80% of this blog to get to this bit ) community groups are tiring themselves out doing all manner of pointless work, which is just making them annoyed:
producing leaflets and delivering them to every door, when they could just be saying hello occasionally and chatting to their neighbours : its a much more efficient and human way of ‘engaging’ people : any angry reclusive nutcase that lives near you can produce a leaflet and shove it up your slot, but people are more likely to go to local events where they know people.
Setting up new committees and running separate meetings when they could just piggyback on existing general residents structures, such as TRA’s. People want to do fun stuff, and nobody, but nobody, ever has fun sitting in a draughty hall listening to people moaning about why they are having to do all the work.
Organising large Community Events, with the sponsorship of funded groups, when a regular informal meeting would be a lot less work, and get more people involved. The Walthamstow Village Residents’ Association who are my gurus in this, have certain principles which are key to their success :
Meet every month no matter what, so people who miss one can go to the next, and momentum can be maintained.
Get everyone to bring some food to share, because everybody likes cake.
Have fun : even if you are moving 15 tonnes of compost in the rain, because its the fun that people come for and its the fun that will bring them back.
Have fun : because if you are working for free and you aren’t having fun, then you need to take a very long hard look into your psyche, and ask yourself what the heck you are doing it for.(Hint : Your ego might know the answer.)
I’m worried I might not have mentioned FUN enough times.
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