The Value of Small Things (VaST)
Posted Wednesday, April 28th, 2010Programme Summary
The Value of Small Things (VaST) tests new approaches to managing cities, and their neighbourhoods, more equitably and sustainably. It adapts innovative international practice to a British context, drawing on work with vulnerable communities in South Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe as well as the UK. The importance of good governance is widely recognised but securing a legitimate voice for civil society in urban planning and management remains very difficult. Using the interdisciplinary expertise of Emma Chetcuti (Multistory), Nabeel Hamdi and François Matarasso and Jeni Burnell (Architecture Sans Frontières-UK), this project seeks to work with Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council to address that challenge. The transect journey is the cornerstone of the VaST process that legitimises local experience and interpretations. It enables the identification of challenges and opportunities and develops an open partnership between communities, local government and private actors. VaST will pilot the concept for the first time in Britain and lay the foundation for a much larger international programme that will see the concept extended from neighborhood to the city scale. Aims and Objectives VaST aims to pilot innovative international practice in engaging civil society in urban planning and management. We will do this by:
1. Working with three disadvantaged communities in Sandwell borough to develop new methods of local governance.
2. Using interdisciplinary expertise and methods to enable local people to reflect critically on strengths and opportunities and mobilise on these.
3. Building effective partnership between formal and informal civil society with public and private sector stakeholders.
4. Developing resources to support transferable use of the new tools and methods through documentation, research and dissemination.
5. Planning an approach to scaling up neighborhood level practice to the city as a whole.
Overall Context
The VaST programme has emerged as a result of three key contextual observations; the growing interest in localism; the role of art and culture in regeneration; and the merit of converging knowledge across disciplines. To elaborate:
1. The value of community empowerment and localism (including participatory community budgeting ideas etc) is widely supported by government and civil society. The current delivery methods however continue to have relatively low levels of success in establishing sustainable engagement and lasting change, especially in the relationship between civil society and government. VaST aims to tackle this issue by starting small and working over a period of time with communities to foster genuine and meaningful opportunities.
2. Although art and culture has become an increasingly common aspect of urban regeneration, it has been proven that the capital led, festival city approach has had little impact and relevance to the more disadvantaged neighbourhoods. VaST’s relationship to arts and regeneration differs from this approach because it has emerged from an international development and genuine participatory community arts partnership.
3. The VaST programme uniquely combines established community engagement practice from the development and arts sectors. The converging of these worlds creates unique opportunities to engage with, not only the formal civil society sector, but the wide range of people who typically choose to not engage at all with local decision making and initiatives.
Local and Partnership Context
The VaST team will work in partnership with Sandwell MBC’s Partnerships & Housing Directorate and the Sandwell Local Strategic Partnership on 3 estates, each of which has a strong local identity but suffers from post-industrial decline and subsequent social and economic inequality.
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