The Challenge for Culture in East London

 Culture, housing and Kinship in East London- new opportunities for investment

The IdeA website http://www.ideaknowledge.gov.uk/  refers to the publication  of 'The new East End’, which examines how life in London’s inner East End has changed since the 1950s. Published by Profile Books, it draws on the 1957 book by Young and Willmott, ‘Family and kinship in East London’.  The authors of ‘Family and kinship’ argued that housing policy and the welfare state could undermine family structures and support networks. ‘The new East End’ examines relations between the white working class and British-Bangladeshi populations of Tower Hamlets.  The book looks at the causes of hostility to newcomers to the area; it concludes that the welfare state and well intentioned housing policies have inadvertently contributed to racial tensions.

Kate Gavron, one of the authors of the book says: 

" There is a sense of community, or communities. There is definitely a sense of community among the white working class families still living in Tower Hamlets, and a very strong sense of community among the Bangladeshis.  There are a lot of people who want to buy houses in Tower Hamlets; it’s a nice place to live and near the centre of London…..more and more Bangladeshi families will move further out of London. They almost certainly won’t be able to live near each other so there will be a scattering effect.

Among the older white people who expressed hostility, their only solution was for them to have priority over the housing. But for most of them it was already too late because their sons and daughters were perfectly happy living out in Essex. Nobody really had any answers, apart from the provision of more social housing. Which should have happened from the beginning of the right-to-buy process, in my view. After all, this was a place where there was already an acute housing shortage and gentrification, the right-to-buy and the development of Docklands, all happening within one decade.  

It will be interesting to see if there are any further large migrations of one group. The Bangladeshis, Jews, Irish and the Huguenots went to the East End because of the docks and because it was the poorest part of inner London. Now the docks are closed there’s no reason for any one group to end up there.

It’s no longer a cheap area of London, so there may be no more large new communities arriving en bloc. There are, however, likely to be lots of people arriving from all over, including migration from other parts of London and Britain.  

I think that local authorities and the Government – and other organisations like the Young Foundation in Bethnal Green – are thinking hard about building communities, including looking at housing design.

For example they are thinking about how to combine the housing of families with young children and old people, and about how to encourage a feeling of neighbourhood, rather like the old neighbourhoods.

Whether you can construct this remains to be seen; to try to create a ‘village centre’ feel is a considerable challenge, especially when people nowadays are so mobile. There is a long way to go to rebuild the community spirit of the past."

Mirador:

There are challenges for agencies involved in the development of culture in the East End. The first entails working closely with all sections of the community to create and helping to retain the sense of community. The second challenge involves the development of policies and strategies for investing in culture as an integral aprt of the planning process.

How is this going to be done? I intend to talk to one or two people who are leaders in developing the thinking in this area and have produced initial results.

Culture and Economics

Various writers, researchers and consultants have put forward challenging arguments to outline the role of culture in the economies of cities, regions and countries where culture is seen as a major economic driver. For us here at Mirador, the issue is not whether culture has a positive role in economic development. We take that for granted although the case needs to be made!

I will be sharing various insights into this subject, which is attracting interest from a wide range of groups, to continually reaffirm our view that strategic investment in culture produces major benefits for the economy.

There are also some concerns. The first is about definition, ‘measurement’and validation of cultural concepts, their impact or outputs, contribution to wealth creation and the relationships between inputs and outputs, all aspects loosely described as the ‘evidence-base’ for culture. There are different views on what should be included and what should be excluded in the quantification or aggregation of cultural output. However, as long as the definitions are clearly stated and appropriate qualifications are provided, there is ample scope for developing the debate.

One of the most urgent concerns is how investment in culture can be secured to provide the greatest possible returns to the economy in terms of employment, value added, the creation of multiplier effects and the benefits that culture can deliver for the development of markets, the creation of economies of scale and through the forging of positive linkages in economies where culture is recognised as a major contributor to the gross domestic product (GDP).

There is a further challenge for agencies involved in the development and promotion of culture as a driver for economic development. Using the example of input-output analysis, there is perhaps scope for developing a model to project various levels of economic growth and to ascertain how different levels of investment in culture can be optimised to produce a given rate of return. Is the art or science of economic modelling able to provide such an analysis? If this was at all possible, perhaps people who campaign for investment in culture would be able to quantify the real benefits to the economy and society.

Many years ago the National Health Service used to say that they were investing £Xmillion in improving their service. Today, they report that an investment of £xmillion has yielded a specific number of hospital beds, operating theatres and a known increase of trained staff. In other words, the focus of reports has shifted from inputs to outputs. In the UK, where the developmental activities connected with increasing the capacity of cultural providers is mostly grant funded and the entertainment and leisure industries receive a combination of public and private sector investment, it should be possible to project the outputs that a given investment in culture should realise.

Critics of this argument may even justifiably say that you can only assess outcomes and outputs if you can measure them. A study of the economic impact of the Brighton Festival provides interesting conclusions. I hope to return to this later.