SLN 2nd Annual Network Day Welcome Speech

Please find below the welcome speech delivered by Angie Kotler

Good morning and welcome to Bradford on another hot summer’s day!

The aim of today is: taking stock, and moving forward. Today is a very apt day to do this. 7^th July, 7/7, is etched in all our memories – in Bradford it has been a day to remember since 2001, when we had riots. 4 years later the London bombings have ensured that this will be a day that we all remember and hopefully reflect. In the media this weekend I took great heart from the stories of hope and courage from people affected directly and indirectly on that day – we were all of course affected in some way and it is thinking about how we respond to events such as 7/7 that in large part shapes our work, but not only this…….

We started local school linking in Bradford in 2001/2 in response not only to the social divisions in our community, but also to concerns about unequal achievement patterns across our district - neither of which are sustainable or healthy .... this work and the thinking around what contribution education can make to both a more equal and more cohesive society has grown and developed and continues to do so.

We have been working with you all and many more colleagues in schools, other organisations and over 40 local authorities over the past 3 years, to support exploration of the role of education in developing community cohesion. And today we want to consider: where are we now? Have things improved or got worse? Or are they just the same? What have we learned, are we any clearer and where do we go from here?

Some might say the overall context has become more challenging, and while that may be true, our response to this, is that the work we do in addressing issues of identity and diversity, community and equality, is equipping schools to feel more confident with the contexts they are working in and that this must continue to be a priority. Changes in government may be unsettling and yet it also creates opportunity for fresh conversation and new perspectives and we must not waste this opportunity.

One thing that seems very clear is that we are all more aware now of the potential for conflict in a world in economic turmoil and with additional unprecedented environmental and social pressures. And while education alone cannot tackle all the issues of society, education must equip students well for the future life they face.

The Young Foundation report released a year ago: Grit: the skills for success and how they are grown cites rigorous research on the importance of social skills, emotional intelligence, enterprise and discipline. It talks of the need for motivation and resilience (to the challenges of modern life); empathy and understanding; and the ability to communicate effectively and work collaboratively. These are the skills needed and yet they have been neglected over the past years, in favour of more academic skills – we have always claimed that these skills (which for some reason are often called ‘soft’ – mainly because they are less measurable,) are inseperable from academic success – the reason we started the linking work in the first place was that we saw evidence of this, where more successful schools gave priority to a borader and more creative curriculum and so we wanted to bring these together with schools that had a more narrow focus - and this is why the work we have undertaken with you all has been about developing these skills – it is not an either/or question – if people are talking about ‘back to basics’ – then we would say: these are the basics for success in the 21^st century.

School linking, we have always said, is a vehicle, not an end in itself. The vehicle is there to take young people on a journey of discovery; of who they are, how they relate to others and how all the pieces in the puzzle of their lives might fit together and make sense.

I’d like to welcome you today with a quote from GY, (who is not of the Young Foundation, but of the Guardian!) Gary wanted to come today to read this to you himself but unfortunately he couldn’t, so I am taking the liberty of reading for him from his new book: Who we are and should it matter in the 21^st century. This book explores why identity is such a big issue in contemporary society. It’s my favourite book at the moment and one not only that I think everyone should read this summer but actually the book I wish I had written!........

“Everybody has a story. Not for most of us, a grand overarching narrative that draws together the various strands of our life into one neat, consistent thread but a collection of unique, discrete and occasionally contradictory chapters that come together only in the telling. Few of these tales belong to us entirely. We arrive in the middle of a random variety of stories and then set about weaving some together and discarding others in a bid to write our own.” ……….We have a decision about which events will influence us and how, but we rarely get to choose the event s themselves. Refusing to recognise your influences is not the same as not having them. It simply disables you from interrogating them to find out why and how they have had the effect they have. “

At SLN we aim to support this ‘interrogation’ which is why the first piece of work every project starts with is called: Who am I? - because we believe that young people need to understand their stories and the interdependence of people who contribute to them; these are likely to be not only in the immediate locality, but in the whole country and the wider world. They need to understand this for so many reasons: we want and need them to be motivated, engaged and confident to play their part in making the world a stronger and safer place than it is today. They will only be able to do that if they see and feel the connections. They need to understand how their history helps us make sense of who and where we are, only then we can we decide how to use that information to decide how to write the next part of the story…..

Which leads us to our other key questions: Who are we? And Where do we live?

Working with you all around the country, we have grown to understand both the uniqueness of each context, the rich diversity that makes up this country both geographically and demographically, and also the common needs of all communities. Whether you are working in a diverse and complex inner-city environment, possibly with tensions and shifting priorities, a semi-urban context with endemic unemployment, or a rural setting which feels both secluded and isolated, the issues of how to develop the appropriate knowledge and skills to be an effective citizen are actually the same – it is only the starting point that is different.

This year, as we have worked with you all and also with our new regional associates, many of whom have experience of global learning and sustainability and taken that as the starting point, we have thought a lot about the connections and overlaps between the agendas of global learning, sustainability and community cohesion, about what the key learning is in all of these agendas and what if, in these changing times, we had none of these titles; what would still really matter, what would we still really want our young people to learn? The common threads are the issues of rights and responsibilities, fairness, the environment, and engagement in processes that will make a difference to their lives and those of others. These play out in different ways and yet they are fundamental to a healthy society for us all. The trick is in understanding our starting points and working out the journey from there. This is what we aim to do when we work with you.

We thank you all for coming today. We want to share and celebrate the successes and the learnings of the year and to work with you today to map out the year to come. We know that for many of you the future is very uncertain and that funding is a key issue. Ted Cantle from the Institute of Community Cohesion (and we are delighted to have Alveena Malik from iCoCo with us today) said in a recent statement that it is essential that organisations do continue to maintain their focus on understanding their local communities, being sensitive to emerging tensions and have clear approaches in place to tackle these. The long term costs of dealing with the aftermath of tensions and community disturbances far outweigh the short term costs of identifying them and managing them at an early stage.’ I agree with this and would add to it that even if you do not think that you are in an area where this is a major issue you still have to prepare the young people you work with for the wider world.

I will finish with another quote from GY: “The thing we forget about the story of the boy who cried wolf is that when all is said and done, there is actually a wolf. So when people claim an impending or existing clash of civilisations, there is of course, always a chance they may be right.

When it comes to identity, there is always a wolf lurking somewhere. There has never been a time in human history when someone hasn’t been trying to rally one group against another on the basis of their differences.

That’s not the fault of difference itself. The problem is not that diversity exists, it is what we choose to make of it. In short, do we understand our various identities as being integral part of our common humanity or as something separate, above and beyond it?.....There has also never been a time ...when some have not defied attempts to divide them on the basis of their difference (but) have instead united to defend.... human rights. All too often these people have been all too few....and the challenges facing us now, such as climate change....make the task of first recognising our commonalities and then mobilizing them for the common good all the more urgent.