Community comes together to give their area a local voice

There has been a huge amount of talk about “building back better” after the Covid-19 pandemic.

For one Wigan community group, that means concentrating on grassroots relationships and local areas working on the challenges and problems that they face.

Springfield Supporters launched as a mutual aid group at the start of lockdown, with residents signing up for What’s App groups connecting everyone on their street together so neighbours could support each other.

Now the Springfield and Beech Hill community group, which runs on similar lines, has ambitious plans to make this part of the borough a connected place which is able to meet many of its own needs and solve issues locally.

For Angela Fell, who was involved in setting up the mutual aid group, the response to the coronavirus has been an opportunity to consider how many things could be done at community level if people were encouraged and empowered to run services and activities.

She said: “What we’ve tried to do is create something where everybody’s got a purpose and something to give, rather than just people being the recipient of support.

“It’s about growing neighbourliness. At the beginning of lockdown we covered 112 streets in Springfield with What’s App groups and phone lists and asked neighbours to look after each other.

“There were welfare lines people could ring but we wanted people needing help to ring a neighbour, not a stranger. That’s more sustainable in the longer term because you end up with stronger communities.

“One day the council put a social media post up about how many food parcels it had delivered. To me that’s a sign communities aren’t supporting each other. It’s not something to celebrate or shout about, it’s a disappointment.”

The group is currently holding weekly listening events around the Beech Hill and Springfield areas where people can talk about things on their mind concerning their community and discuss possible local solutions to them.

Walks have been set up for those who do not want to venture out of doors on their own, there have been online coffee mornings during lockdown and Angela has run evening mindfulness sessions for anyone who might benefit from it, from those bereaved by the pandemic to those shielding to those going through major health battles.

She is keen to harness the wisdom of the area’s older generation and has also been particularly struck by data showing the area where the mutual aid group operates has significantly high level of referrals to community link workers for social isolation.

However, she is convinced this is not an area where ringing the town hall should be the route to a solution.

She said: “We don’t want a befriending service, we want people to make friends. ‘Rent-a-friend’ is not what we need.

“We can ensure no-one is lonely in our area by keeping people connected. We need to create opportunities for people to develop real and meaningful friendships.

“The walking group started when we realised that as we were moving towards the easing of lockdown people were feeling anxious about going out so we suggested having a walk together.

“We met in Beech Hill and explored the woods all round there. We’re hoping to grow the idea into photography and local history groups too, because we’ve got about 20 people interested in that.”

Further plans including setting up a local children’s football team and creating a food pantry where residents become a member and then can get hold of groceries.

Ultimately, Angela has more ambitious plans to keep money within Wigan by running services currently put out to tender to large public sector or private concerns on a mutual aid basis, ensuring voluntary and community groups have seats and voices around decision-making tables and linking the Springfield and Beech Hill group with other organisations such as Made In Wigan and Abram Ward Community Cooperative.

At a time when austerity has ravaged many more deprived parts of the country and town halls have faced swingeing budget cuts it is sometimes feared that only local government can really hope to support people and provide an alternative to activities run for profit on a business basis.

This has not entirely held true in Wigan, with a number of not-for-profit groups and community organisations springing up in recent years to support and provide services for residents as the council has altered its way of doing things.

For Angela, though, this process of decentralisation could still continue much further.

And she is convinced there would be positive outcomes for borough communities if people were given more scope and power to do things for their neighbourhoods.

She said: “We have the skills to do all these things for ourselves, but we’ve forgotten how to do it or got used to professionals coming in and doing it for us.

“There’s an African proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child and the child who doesn’t feel the warmth will burn it down.

“In Wigan we used to run play schemes during the holidays, with people creating activities in their own communities. Somewhere along the line neighbours were told their efforts weren’t good enough.

“We’ve now got passive communities that don’t know how to organise or have a voice.”