This handout is a brief summary of key findings for two urban areas of the Communities in Transition Project, commissioned by CULF and funded by the Church Urban Fund. It involved desk research on statistics, focus groups with local Christian leaders and activists, and reflection on years of personal involvement in the two places.
In the 20 years since 1985 Newham has undergone massive regeneration activity and huge demographic and social change.
- Ethnic Minorities are now the majority and the mixture is constantly changing and becoming more diverse as time goes on. The area as a whole has changed from an area of substantial minority settlement to a rainbow majority of minorities.
- Huge investment in London Docklands has changed the physical infrastructure and economic base of the area and looks set to continue for decades to come. More regeneration is coming, not least the Olympics.
- Housing despite expansion and the building of new neighbourhoods, (some exclusive and affluent, most more mixed in tenure and value) remains scarce and inreasingly unaffordable.
- The traditional economic base of the docks and associated manufacturing industry has been replaced largely by finance, media and other service industries.
- Education is an important and growing sector with the new Docklands Campus of the Universityof East London, and several new school buildings.
- Although this has had some positive impact on levels of deprivation and the statistics on unemployment and education have improved, It is not so clear that conditions for the majority of local people have much improved. Newham still has much higher than average proportions of people without employment, with low incomes, with jobs that demand long and unsocial hours and commuting.
- Failing schools which were the norm in the 1980s are now very rare in the borough and young people seem to be responding well to high expectations. It will be interesting, if difficult to track whether successful young people stay in the area over coming decades.
How has the church responded to these social and economic changes? At three different levels
- Strategic and Political
- Missionand Evangelism
- Social Action and Community Projects
- There is a strong network of well connected church leaders who have been around a long time and do have a strategic understanding of the situation in the borough. They have drawn on research and their links with local power structures to attempt to ensure Christian mission is relevant and effective and that the ordinary and most vulnerable people in the borough are not treated unjustly or overwhelmed by the forces of change.
- Even so it appears difficult if not impossible to control or influence the direction of change in an environment as complex and dominated by global market forces as East London.
- Demographic changes in Newham have produced an ecology of urban religion where many new forms of faith and religious organisations are thriving and which has brought renewal and growth to many mainline churches in the borough. East Londonhas seen a revere in the tide of secularisation, although it is hard to say whether this will be sustained over the next two or three generations.
- There are good and growing networks across the churches of many denominations and theological and cultural traditions. It is not so clear that constructive and active relationships between Christians and other faith communities have taken deep roots to the extent that would be appropriate in such a multi-faith setting.
- The mainline churches, especially the Church of England has invested much capital in making its buildings more relevant and more open to the community and appears to be reaping some benefits.
- Almost all churches have responded to local need by developing social action projects and activities. Some of these have been overtaken and transformed by being incorporated in major government regeneration programmes. The churches and Christian agencies have been responsible for setting up and in many cases guiding to independence numerous projects and community groups using community development processes. They have also developed a reasonable professional capacity for project management.
- Christians in Newham have been quite radical in ensuring that the needs and voices of the most vulnerable people in the community such as homeless people and refugees and asylum seekers are kept on the agenda. There is a danger however that as Newham is transformed and gentrified, these voices will be further marginalised and/or that the care of such people may be left to the churches rather than dealt with by mainstream statutory agencies.
Preston a number of key economic trends that have affected Prestonin the last two decades.
- Over the past 20 years major changes in the global and local economy have reshaped the physical layout of the city and the way people live.
- Many areas of new housing have been built forming new neighbourhoods where a sense of community may be difficult to establish. Other deprived urban neighbourhoods have benefited from substantial physical renewal although there is some concern that peoples lives may not have been transformed.
- Gentrification / urban loft living processes are beginning in some of the inner parts the city, starting in the late 1980s in the Docks.
- Current regeneration programmes for Prestonare moving towards the image led, culture led, knowledge led models.
- Consumption, retailing and leisure has come to play a greater role in the local economy and culture.
- Employment has shifted to the service sector and employment levels have increased and the place of paid work in household economies has become more significant, with a probable knock on negative effect on levels of community and religious involvement.
- Manufacturing industry, and in particular the textile mills which were once central to the local economy has much reduced employment, and the shake out continues with regular reports of redundancies in the face of global market conditions.
- However manufacturing, especially the aircraft and related high tech industries remain a major employer, albeit that most production is located outside of the city boundaries.
- Many industries face uncertain futures in face of rapid change (even new business like call centres have closed down) and it is unlikely that many people will have a single employer over their lifetime.
- Overall the employment picture is not too bleak, thanks largely to growth in service industries and the education sector in particular..
- However there is concern about persistently high (and rising) unemployment in certain wards of Preston and a suggestion that there is a hard core of unskilled economically inactive people who are difficult to bring into stable employment.
- Incomes and wage rates remain persistently below the national average across the North West, and although Prestonis not so poor as the costal towns or the towns of N.E. Lancs there are areas, communities and individuals for whom poverty and deprivation remain a serious problem.
- Employment, and also shopping and even church attendance is less likely to be local than it once was. Car dependency is high.
The Churches and faith communities
- Have been swept along rather than having any sense of control over economic and social forces or the politics which shape them.
- Although some individual church leaders are aware of, and express unease, about the processes transforming the city, there is no evidence of strategic thinking, social analysis or systematic theological critique of urban change in Preston.
- In congregational life only recently does there appear to be any awareness of the needs of the city as a whole and so far this has only reached the prayer stage. Evangelical networking is growing strong, and fits into some wider networks such as Make Poverty History.
- The churches, particularly the main denominations have struggled against secularising forces and experienced serious decline in attendance (with ageing congregations), finance, clergy numbers and Christian buildings. Perhaps as a result a conservatism and negative nostalgic outlook is too common.
- There has been little attempt by the denominations, or ecumenically, to think strategically about mission into new areas of housing such as the Docklands. Only a recently have a few entrepreneurial independent evangelicals begun to think of church planting.
- The diversity of faith communities in Prestonhas caused surprisingly few conflicts, and community cohesion efforts have had some reasonably successful outcomes in terms of collaborative projects. However there are many issues and unanswered questions about living and working and worshipping , separately or together, in a multi-faith environment.
- On the whole the churches have not had a long track record of response to need through community projects. The Foxton Centre has an almost unique sustained history of community and youth work involvement, despite struggles to secure continuity of funds. (Others include the YMCA in Fishwick which is now closing, and the Central Methodist Night Shelter).
- There have been more secular community work project initiatives but few of these have been sustained long term. The pool of voluntary community activists appears quite small, but includes several people with faith commitments.
- Faith communities have invested in buildings which needed renewing and opening for different or wider use. At least four Anglican, one Methodist and a Salvation Army congregation have taken this route, while the development on the RC St. Augustines church is an immense opportunity. The Gujerat Hindu Centre provides an example from another faith which is recognised nationally, and the Clarendon Centre attached to the Jumma Masjid is an Islamic case.