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Five Year Report 1989 - 1994Year 3&4 Report by Simon Loveitt
THE THIRD YEAR JULY 1991 –
JULY 1992
John Bremner,
Hulme's minister, left during this period. With his departure, I feared that
there would be a lot more work of a ministerial nature coming my way. The
elders and congregation have however coped very well with his departure and
to their credit, very little extra work came my way. Many of the areas of community involvement created in the first two years continued during this third year. There were again some new initiatives, which will be discussed in more detail below.
St George's
Church, a Grade 2 listed building, was built circa 1823. Due to Manchester
City Council's development of Moss Side and Hulme during the 60's and 70's
and the displacement of residents from around St. George's, it fundamentally
became a Church without a congregation. In 1983 the Church became redundant.
Since 1983 numerous suggestions for its use have emerged, including a Motor
Museum, National Equestrian Centre and a Medieval Banqueting Hall. These
didn't materialise.
It was
becoming clear that Hulme was going to lose a historical link with it’s
past, so the Rector of Hulme and myself, with a secondee from British
Telecom, put together an alternative package. We were all aware that there
is a great need for an increase in the number of shops in the area, which
sell good quality produce at a reasonable price. The result was the idea of
a shopping
centre selling goods at a low percentage mark up, to benefit all shoppers.
The type of shops included a greengrocers, grocers, frozen foods, health
foods, bakers, newsagents, fishmongers, butchers, pharmacy, post office,
clothes shops, shoe shop, hairdressers and a skills shop, where local
craftspeople, e.g. plumbers and electricians, could register their skills.
Being a co-operative, local people would have say in the running of the
centre, but would also receive a dividend twice a year of at least 20% of
what they had spent during the past 6 months. This proposal was taken to two public meetings, where it was very well received. After many problems, with firstly the City Council's Planning Department and then a committee in the Anglican Church, a feasibility study costing £20,000 finally took place. The study found that the project was not commercially viable for various reasons, including the amount of disposable income available, the location and various planning restrictions, such as only being allowed car parking behind the Church, out of sight of the road. This would only allowed 26 car-parking spaces. One important finding of the study has shown that, even with the City Challenge proposals for shops, there still will not be enough shopping facilities in Hulme for local people. The responsibilities for the Church are now out of our hands and it looks likely that it will be converted into office accommodation.
As has been already stated, there is evidence that even with the proposed increase of shops in Hulme. There still will not be enough shopping provision to satisfy demand. One response to this may be a Bulk Buy Shopping Co-operative. Goods would be bought from wholesalers, taken to a central storage area and then distributed to smaller 'shops'. St. George's is an obvious choice for such a scheme, as would be the Aquarius estate on the southeastern side of Hulme. This still needs a lot of work to bring it to reality.
Work began on getting people interested in this scheme in January 1992. A few students on placement with the various churches in Hulme, myself and the Church of the Ascension Community Worker began to drum up interest. The project began slowly at first, but by the autumn we had about 20 people who were interested in Credit Unions. We elected a committee and although 26 people are needed to begin a Credit Union and training is required for the committee, a savings club could start while the details were sorted out. We tried to open a bank account, which has and still is causing us a lot of problems and delays. The Credit Union has not met now for about 5 months, as we are at the stage where there is no point in meeting until the bank account is up and running and saving can begin. Hopefully in the near future the problems with the bank account will be solved and we can re-kindle interest in the Credit Union, a savings club can begin and then a Credit Union start in a year or so.
Ecumenical links are very strong in Hulme. I spend quite a few hours a month in the Church of the Ascension working with the Rector or Community Worker on various projects. As a result I was asked to be on the management committee of the Ascension worker, Albert Slippe. He has a slightly different slant on his job than mine, as he is expected to carry out pastoral visits and to lead worship occasionally, as well as do some community work.
DROP IN
As a result of
discussions in Church meetings, a Drop-in has been set up for local people
by the Church and members of the local community. This was slow to take off
but it now has up to a dozen people attending during the two hours a week it
is open.
ESTATE
ACTION PROJECT This project has now been completed and the area is looking a great deal better. The security system makes a difference to the tower blocks now the teething problems have been sorted out. Although some of the building work was delayed by nine months, the delays were not entirely the fault of the contractors. When demolition began it was discovered that the walls were infact hollow shells of concrete filled with rubble, the plans the contractors had and the actual size of the buildings didn't match and the houses were built on top of old buildings, the cellars of which hadn't been filled in, so that the existing buildings were in some cases built on nothing. It is very surprising that they didn't collapse.
EUROPEAN CONTACT GROUP ON URBAN INDUSTRIAL MISSION -NAPLES
It was a wonderful experience attending such a conference. I found it not only immensely interesting, but also very worthwhile. It was the first time I had been to another European country and the experience of looking in such depth at Naples, not from the perspective of a tourist but looking at the economy, race and the Church in such a context was very valuable. A fuller report about the Naples conference has been written and is available if you would like to know more.
During this year, I supervised two students for a variety of lengths of time. For a couple of weeks during the summer, a CRCW student was on placement with me to gain experience of a CRCW at work. This was not a great success as it was too short a time and due to illness, one of the weeks was wiped out.
The Play Forum
has been meeting for a number of years to co-ordinate playschemes in the
summer and to ensure that application forms had been filled in correctly. It
was decided to increase the role and remit of this forum to include:
i) Becoming a working group of the Social Issues Committee of the
iv) Acting as both a monitoring and lobbying group around play issues.
This developed very nicely during the year with as many as 20 people attending during the two hours it were open. This was in part due to the added resource of an advice worker whom I negotiated to be based at Tatton Street for two hours a week. Towards the end of the year, this became a very well used service.
Following the problems we had with launching a savings club/credit union ourselves, due to the banks being very awkward and particular about who they were going to allow as signatories on this account, we had heard that there may be a possibility to join up with an existing Credit Union - Moss Side and form one large Credit Union. It now appears that the registrar's have changed their minds about the size of Credit Union's because some of the smaller ones have been failing. Moss Side is very happy about this proposition, as are those interested in Credit Union's in Hulme. The advantages in joining Moss Side Credit Union are that they are already trading as a Credit Union, so Hulme will be able to begin trading a lot quicker, as those involved in Moss Side are already trained and they have already a substantial amount of savings, which could be used to assist loans in Hulme. After months of negotiations, a Savings Club was launched in Hulme at the beginning of July 1993, details are found in the following years reports.
Pierre (Hulme Sports Programme), a Development Worker from HARP (Hulme Action Research Project), based at the Zion Community Health Resource Centre, and I began to organise a weekly health group for the users of Zion to go and use the facilities at the up market Y-CIub - the new YMCA in Manchester. HARP is an organisation working with people with mental health problems; supporting them in the first instance in housing problems and then developing wider support looking at their general well being. Many of the 'clients' lack confidence when meeting new faces or groups of people and many are physically inactive, which often increases their mental health problems.
FINNISH STUDENTS
CITY CHALLENGE This year saw the pace of demolition quicken, with the last two of the notorious four crescents demolished. When City Challenge begun, it seemed that it was just about demolition. No longer. The rebuilding of Hulme began. New Housing Association houses appearing on cleared demolition sites.
New fencing had been promised to the tenants of St George's for about five years and each time they were disappointed, as the money was diverted to other schemes. This year finally saw the St George's estate benefit from new fences and improved lighting. Although it has taken many years to achieve, the estate certainly has benefited from this and is looking much better.
This year
also saw the first phase of a two-year scheme to upgrade the local park. In
the first year of the scheme, new paths, improved fencing and new lighting
will be installed park, followed next year by new play equipment.
CREDIT
UNION This year saw the start of the Hulme Savings Club, which was begun while negotiations were completed with the Registrar to widen the common bond to include Hulme. It also gave opportunity for those within the Savings Club to build up some money in their accounts. Quite early the Registrar agreed in principle to the extension of the Common bond, but the sticking point was the maps which we were sending in to show the boundaries of Hulme and Moss Side. For some reason new questions were raised each time a new map was sent, testing our patience. Eventually the Registrar agreed to the maps and we became a Credit Union. It has taken over two years from beginning to end to get this far and at times really tried the group’s patience. Three of the board members from the Savings Club are now on the board for the wider Credit Union. Hulme has also given out its first loan of £300, with other applications for loans being made.
FINNISH STUDENTS
I found the following experiences positive: I had the possibility of living fairly near to Hulme, so quite often I travelled by foot from place to place. The local congregation of St. George's welcomed us very warmly - which motivated me from the beginning of my placement period. We did not work together as pairs all of the time. This enabled me to cope as an individual and it was clearer to measure my own coping in various situations. I had to be aware and active - using my own resources. We had three days of fixed programmes - this meant that we could concentrate on two or three projects and I felt it was reasonable. We participated on a community work skills course at S. U M. and in Hulme we spent one day a week at the Zion centres cafe.
I found little negative: There was not enough time in the whole placement programme. Once I had learned to know some local people and had some idea of what really interested me - it was time to return to Finland. Sometimes I felt we did not get enough information beforehand about events and happenings in Hulme, so we missed some events that I would have found interesting. The length of working days varied a little too much, because often some meetings were cancelled and it was fairly hard to arrange some alternative programme spontaneously
ST. GEORGE'S GOOD
NEIGHBOURS SCHEME We were funded from Hulme City Challenge, in response to the recognised lack of shopping facilities in Hulme, to organise shopping trips for elderly and people with mobility difficulties, to enable them to shop at facilities charging a reasonable choice and cost. This scheme began on December 9th 1994 and using taxis with which we have a contract, we accompany about 15 elderly people each week to Stretford Shopping Centre.
JUNIOR CHURCH After five years of regularly taking the young people on a Sunday, I was becoming burnt out and decided to take a break from this and to come back to this only if a rota was formed to share out this burden of important work with young people. This has meant the church facing the issues surrounding young people within the church head on and to their credit, a rota is being set up and I feel a lot less pressure in regard to this.
HULME AND MOSS SIDE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP (HMSCF)
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