I am delighted to be the producer of Our Garden – Sacred Spaces of Balsall Heath, a project in which we are making a beautiful map showing Balsall Heath as a place of trees, bees, and blue and green spaces rather than roads. We have three brilliant artists –Shaheen Ahmed, Rachel Pilkington and Dave Gray – a great project manager in Abbas Shah and a steering group made up of representatives from two mosques and a church.

It was my idea.

For almost ten years I have been fantasising about creating an artists’ map showing the waterways and wildlife of Birmingham, so that, even in the UK’s second city, we can imagine ourselves as people of nature.

Through gathering together project partners in the form of the United Church of St Paul’s, the Hazrat Sultan Bahu Trust and the Al-Abbas Islamic Centre, all in Balsall Heath, we became a Creative City Project generously funded by Birmingham City Council programmed by the Birmingham 2022 Festival.

Now we are forming relationships, praying together under stars, planting fruit trees and planning to make beautiful art.

I didn’t start my professional creative life as a producer. I started out writing books. I was aged 21, straight from university when I wrote Fat is a Spiritual Issue, followed a decade later by Memories of Bliss.

With both books, I remember the point at which I sent them off to their publishers, a point at which nobody else had read them in their entirety apart from me. Writing books was a solitary activity. I discussed the content with others, but nobody read what I had written, commented on it or steered me along the way.

In writing, there was an intimacy between me and the page. It was a place through which I grafted and despaired and became. When I finally got to the point where I could say: “So THAT’s what I needed to write,” it was as much of a surprise to me as it was to anyone else. The great river of creativity had carried me to a place that had been hidden even from me.

Having done that twice, the day came when a publisher said: “What do you want to write next? I don’t mind what it is. Tell us what you want to write and we’ll publish it.” It was an enviable offer by any standards and yet, for reasons that alluded me at the time, I found myself thinking: “Nah…”

Looking back, I can say I stopped writing books.

That brings me to today and Our Garden – Sacred Spaces of Balsall Heath. Unlike my books, which were written entirely by me, this is a project I couldn’t possibly do by myself. And that is the very thing that touches me. I go out of the room to make tea and when I come back the artists are talking about the nature map and making it their own. The project manager is forming relationships in ways that I couldn’t. The Chamberlain Highbury Trust gives us fruit trees. The mosques are inviting us to Iftars I hadn’t imagined. It’s humbling. It fills me with gratitude. It’s where I want to be.

At the same time, I am working on UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK, a celebration of creativity taking place in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales during the summer of 2022.  In the interests of simplicity, it calls itself a celebration of creativity, but it’s actually a particular kind of creativity that it’s celebrating – not personal self-expression but creative collaboration.  It’s about what happens when you bring together people form science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics; what happens when you bring established organisations together with emerging artists. It’s about our creativity and its power to change the world.

I am excited by this because this is the kind of creativity I want to experience in my life right now.

Am I saying that I will never write a book again? Of course not. Anything might happen.  I can only go with the flow of the river of creativity and be surprised at where it takes me. I’m not into goals, aims and predictions.

But I AM saying that, when I was in young, I was very concerned with the question of what I was doing with my life. It was a question that had an urgency that drove me. Today it’s not even a question that interests me. “What are we doing together?” That’s the question that drives me now.

The conference centre, familiar to me through schmoozy celebrations with Birmingham’s film and TV industry, was now being run with military precision.

There were St John Ambulance volunteers in green tee-shirts wiping down chairs and showing the way. I was shown to three desks, two waiting areas and one clinical space. At each point, people smiled. There was welcome, clarity and a quiet seriousness about it all.

I felt humbled and grateful. I was humbled by the scale of the horror that had brought us all to this place; by the skill of the scientists; by the dedication of healthcare staff; by the urgency of the roll-out programme. I was in my home city, but I felt connected to the globe.

This little jab was one small step towards saving lives, giving children their education and healing the world. Some people had their jabs in cathedrals. Millennium Point was cathedral for me.

For around the past thirty years, I’ve been aware that I live in a city, the second largest metropolis in the UK to be precise.

I thought I was surrounded by buildings (mainly ugly ones), a spaghetti of junctions and a blast of cars. I just saw miles and miles of hideous sprawl wherever I happened to be.

But in recent years, my perception has changed. I haven’t moved city. I  haven’t even moved house. But now I feel that I live amongst fields, trees, wildlife and glorious sky.

Last week the BBC published an article: How much of your area is built on?

It was reporting on the Co-ordination of Information on the Environment (Corine) project initiated by the European Commission in 1985 which found only six per cent of the UK is actually built on.

A whopping 21 per cent of Birmingham is classed as ‘green urban’ – namely parks, gardens and sports fields. The map shows that where I live is indeed very green.

The point made by journalist Mark Easton in his blog Five mind-blowing facts about what the UK looks like, is that our perception of our nations is at odds with the reality – a mere 0.1 per cent of the UK is classed as ‘continuous urban fabric’.

My sense of where I live has evolved gradually over the years through small changes in my practice. I walk through parks to get to church rather than catch the bus. And I’ve discovered the secret fields of Birmingham through taking my son to football matches.

I’ve also cultivated the habit of looking at the sky.  When I walk down the street, I choose to look up, notice the sun or the moon and remember I’m standing on a beautiful sphere that’s circling other spheres. It’s an awareness that’s always available but helped just by glancing skyward.

Now when I’m out and about in my city, instead of being conscious of buildings (mainly ugly), cars and roads, I see myself in a field with trees,  birds, flowers, gardens and an ever-changing sky.  It just so happens that my little bit is paved. That’s all.

So what was that thing?
Last week, I was on the school run and I was in a rush, as usual.  I needed some cash so I parked as near to the NatWest Bank as I legally could, ran out of the car, punched my number into the hole in the wall, drew out fifty quid and then ran back to the car…leaving my money in the slot in the ATM.

Just imagine how cross I felt with myself when I later reached for my purse. I saw I had no cash and realised my mistake.

You can probably guess, from the headline, the outcome of this story.  I returned to the bank and asked if anyone had handed in the money.  Someone had.  Can you believe it? I was given my fifty pounds.

I was very, very surprised.  This was Kings Heath High Street after all.

And I was delighted – delighted to have my money back, of course, and very delighted by that act of honesty and kindness from someone I will probably never meet and never be able to thank.

This random act of kindness kept me happy all day, for many days actually.  Whenever I recalled it, I felt hopeful. It was a tiny act but, because it was close, it dwarfed Brexit, Trump and all the other things that sometimes make me miserable.

We have more personal power than we suppose. We really can engender in each other feelings of warmth and hope and gratitude.

And stranger.  Whoever you are, whether you are my brother, my sister, my older, my younger. Thank you. Thank you for handing in my fifty pounds at the NatWest Bank. Thank you.

Cue Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi. What? No, I didn’t expect that either.

Tony Iommi and Birmingham Cathedral

A stunning collaboration between the heavy metal legend and Birmingham Cathedral has helped me figure what to do with my helplessness at our Ununited Kingdom – make art.

The lead guitarist who created the music rooted in metal-bashing Birmingham worked with his friend, the Very Reverend Catherine Ogle, to devise How Good It Is.  The composition blends his electric guitar with the strains of Birmingham Cathedral Choir.

It’s beautiful.

How good it is

The sound alone would be enough but on top of that, there are the words, which are derived from Psalm 133: “How good it is when strangers meet and find a home.”

In a world where so many pick up their children and flee from their homes, in a world where others are lining the streets in sleeping bags, in a world where referendums and elections are won on the promise of borders and walls that will keep the strangers out, those words seem exquisitely and ethereally subversive.

I want to listen to them over and over again.  And I have done. And you can too.  (YouTube: How Good It Is)

Make art

And this in itself points me to a way forward in my despondency. I know what to do now.  I want to make art. Find your truth – the thing that you believe in – and sing it, write it, paint it, make theatre out of it.  Knit it. Spray the town with it. Keep doing it. Keep saying what you believe as beautifully and as lovingly as you can.

And the world will change.  It will.

Thank you Tony Iommi.  Thank you Catherine Ogle. Thank you Birmingham Cathedral Choir. Thank you Paul Leddington Wright for the choral arrangement.  Thank you Marcus Huxley for directing the choir. Thank you Sam Bagnall for the photographs.  Thank you Edwin Ellis Creative Media for letting me use them.

Loneliness: Accident or Injustice was commissioned by the Diocese of Oxford (Board of Mission) and the Archway Foundation in response to research by the Church of England and Church Urban Fund which found social isolation was the most wide-spread social concern of our time.

I was invited to write a publication that looked at the prevalence of loneliness, what the churches are doing to help build communities and reflect theologically on my findings.

The Church in Action report found social isolation is not restricted to parish size or social class. It’s more often noted in deprived parishes (81 per cent) than affluent ones – but even amongst the well-off, 55 per cent of leaders say loneliness is a significant cause of concern.

It was an absolute delight to be using my journalism skills again as I sat and listened to people talking about their sadness.  At times I felt over-whelmed and needed to go for long walks to take care of myself.

But it was also hopeful and beautiful to see and to celebrate the small, ordinary acts of kindness being done in church halls, between neighbours, on sofas in community centres with knitting and nattering.

To read extracts from Loneliness: Accident or Injustice? click on the following links:

• What does loneliness look like?
• Loneliness and mental health
• Loneliness and older people
• Loneliness and younger people
• Loneliness and new communities
• Loneliness and rural communities

You can also download the whole publication: Loneliness Accident or Injustice by Jo Ind (PDF 536KB)

• Loneliness: Accident or Injustice? will be launched at the Wesley Memorial Methodist Church, Oxford on Tuesday, 19 January 2016.

Rural communities are becoming older communities as people move to the countryside to retire and young people, unable to afford the rising house prices, find they have to move out. In rural areas 23% of the population is over retirement age compared to 18% in urban areas.^[1]

“In rural areas, you find people whose families have lived there for three or four generations,” says Glyn Evans, Rural Officer, Diocese of Oxford. “When their children have to live elsewhere, they experience a loneliness that is about more than not being able to see much of their grandchildren. There’s a sense of bewilderment and failure that their children weren’t able to stay as they had expected.” The younger generation can feel dislocated too. Many move to new estates, where the housing is affordable, but they mourn the loss of being close to their families and the rural way of life.

Poor service infrastructure in rural communities

There are no buses. The church takes me to Soup Saturday once a month and my neighbour takes me out for a coffee. I use dial-a-ride to do my shopping once a week. Without those things, I’m stuck here. (Phylis, aged 90, Oxfordshire)

Older people living in the countryside are vulnerable to loneliness in the same way as those who live in cities (see page 9) but in rural areas, the loneliness is compounded by poor service infrastructure. A lack of public transport is the most significant issue facing older people in the countryside.^[2] Services like pubs, village stores, post offices and healthcare are declining at a faster rate in rural than in urban areas,  making it difficult for those without cars to get what they need, including company[3]. Even the church can be seen as a depleting resource, with one vicar now serving as many as 12 parishes.

A church’s response to loneliness in rural communities

Recognising that weekends can be particularly lonely times in the countryside, parishioner Lin Mills set up a monthly Soup Saturday at St Mary’s, Bloxham, Oxfordshire, where more than 40 people share soup made and served by people in the village.  Local taxi driver, Jimmy, picks people up free of charge. Judy Marshall, Soup Saturday co-ordinator, says: “There seems to be a growing awareness at the church of the need to look after people who are on their own.  We have always done it, but there’s a movement to do it more.”

[1] Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion, for Cabinet Office (2009)

[2] The Housing Support Needs of Older People in Rural Areas, Commission for Rural Communities and the Housing Corporation (2006)

[3] Smalley k, Warren J, Mental Health in Rural Areas found in Rural Mental Health (2014)

Stigma and loneliness in rural communities

There is a stigma around loneliness. Psychiatrist Jacqueline Olds has noted many patients seeking help for anxiety or depression are reluctant to admit that loneliness is their real problem. ‘We found it was very difficult for our patients to talk about their isolation, which seemed to fill them with deep shame,”[1] she says.

The evidence suggests this is particularly true in rural communities. “The impact of stigma is well-recognised in rural areas,” say Smalley and Warren.[2] “The level of stigma increases as the size of the community decreases.” There is also less anonymity.  In rural areas, it’s more likely a resident’s car will be spotted at a GP surgery or counselling service and that word will spread.  “As a result, rural residents with mental health concerns face increased burdens of isolation and loneliness.”

As a way of avoiding stigma, Age UK recommends providing opportunities for groups that focus on an activity rather than being advertised as a way of combating loneliness.[3] “In rural areas you can feel as though you live in a goldfish bowl as it is,” says Glyn Evans.  “The Farming Community Network tries to get over that stigma by emphasising that it’s OK to tell someone about your worries.  We encourage people not to wait until they are the end of their tether before they seek help. We say it’s OK to feel lonely.”

Fact file on loneliness in rural communties

• The Diocese of Oxford is classed as rural.^[4]
• Extrapolating from the rural-urban calculations, it’s estimated 75% of the population in Oxfordshire, 40% of those in Buckinghamshire and 85% in West Berkshire live in a rural community.^[5]
• The reduction in local amenities such as shops, post offices and doctors’ surgeries is greater in rural areas than in urban ones, resulting in exclusion from service provision.^[6]
• Broadband is not available in many rural areas. The average download speed in urban areas is 40 MB per second, compared with 14 MB per second in rural areas.[7]
• People in rural areas receive less social care per head than those in urban areas. Expenditure across the 12 inner London boroughs in 2009-10 was £1,750 per person aged 65+ compared to £773 per capita across the 27 shire counties.^[8]
• And yet older rural residents tend to downplay their experience of disadvantage.[9]

[1] Olds J and Schwartz R, The Lonely  American: Drifting Apart in the Twenty-first Century (2009)

[2] Smalley k, Warren J, Mental Health in Rural Areas found in Rural Mental Health (2014)

[3] Davidson s, Rossall P, Age UK Loneliness Evidence Review (Revised July 2014)

[4] Stronger as One? Amalgamations and Church Attendance, Church Growth Research Programme p14

[5] Department for Food and Rural Affairs, Rural-Urban Classification of Local Authority Districts in England, Office for National Statistics (2011)

[6] Burgess S The Report of the Rural Advocate, Commission for Rural Communities (2008)

[7] ISP Review July 2015

[8] The implications of national funding formulae for rural health and education funding, All Party Parliamentary Group on Rural Affairs, 2010

[9] Scharf T and Bartlam B, Ageing and Social Exclusion in Rural Communities, Rural Ageing: A Good Place to Grow Old? P97-108 (2008)

This is the sixth of a series of posts on loneliness. It is based on Loneliness Accident or Injustice by Jo Ind, a joint publication from the Diocese of Oxford (Board of Mission) and the Archway Foundation.

The housing estates being built in the Diocese of Oxford have never had post offices.  Known as new communities (euphemistically perhaps), they don’t even have post boxes at first.  Most don’t have pubs, shops, community centres, doctors’ surgeries or schools either.

Research has shown that when people have spaces in which to meet, friendships and social networks are sustained. People living in Manhattan, New York, for example, experience it as an urban village even though half of them live in lone households. This is because there are cafés and alternative places to hang out.[3] When people have nowhere to go, they experience a void rather than a heart. There’s a sense of isolation that generates a particular kind of feeling alone.

And these places in which people are vulnerable to loneliness, are being built right across the wider Thames Valley. In the Oxford Diocese, there are 38 new communities being created in ten Oxford deaneries affecting 48 parishes. Bicester will double in size, so will Aylesbury. Milton Keynes will get considerably larger.[4]

The role of the church combating loneliness in new communities

Within these estates, the church has a significant role to play. “Developers build houses, but churches seek to engage communities,” says Peter Morgan, New Communities Development Officer, Diocese of Oxford. By moving in, baking cakes as welcome gifts, writing newsletters, holding street parties and setting up mother and toddler groups, the church can help create places where people can flourish.

It can also act as a bridge between the developers and those who live on the estate. Developers have to provide schools and community centres but not before people have moved in and not necessarily in the way they need. There is a role for the church in forming relationships with planners and builders to help ensure the appropriate community facilities are written into plans and delivered on time. “There is no other resource on the estate,” said Captain John Bentley, New Community Minister, Kingsmere, Bicester. “We have created a means by which people can find out what’s happening, where to go and be a community.”

[1] The Network Change Programme was announced by the UK Government in May 2007 in response to declining use of post offices which was leading to unplanned closure of branches.

[2] Post Office Closures: Impact of the Network Change Programme, Consumer Focus Wales (2010)

[3] Weiss,  R. Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation Cambridge. MA: The MIT Press (1975)

[4] New Communities Group, Summary of Large-Scale Housing Development, Diocese of Oxford (2015)

The role of Facebook in developing new communities

Pros

• A residents Facebook page can be a way of letting people know about activities. A survey in Great Western Park showed it was far more effective than newsletters or word of mouth.
• Residents can use the page as a way of sharing information and advice.
• Many residents find Facebook a natural way to find others on the estate and suggest meeting up.
• A Facebook page can be used to conduct surveys on residents’ hopes and experience of facilities which can be used as data to present to developers.

Cons

• Not all estates have the broadband infrastructure meaning some residents can’t easily get online.
• Sometimes residents use Facebook to communicate where a face-to-face conversation would work better – such as complaining about the way a neighbour has parked a car.

Fact file on new communities in the Diocese of Oxford

• There is pressure on government to build houses. In 2004, the Barker Report recommended building 245,000 private sector homes per year.[1] This target has never been met. In England, 118,760 homes were completed in the 12 months to December 2014, which is 8 per cent higher than the previous year.[2]
• The wider Oxford Diocese is a popular place to live because it offers employment. For example, the Thames Valley, Berkshire is the most profitable part of the country aside from London. It has the fourth highest proportion of adults educated to degree level or above and the fifth lowest unemployment rates in the UK.[3]
• Between 2001 and 2011, parts of the Oxford Diocese had some of the largest population increases in the country – Milton Keynes (17 per cent), Slough (16.3 per cent), Oxford (12.1 per cent). By comparison the population across the whole of England and Wales increased by just 7 per cent.[4]
• It’s estimated that between 2015 and 2020, the population of Slough will have increased by 14.7 per cent, West Berkshire by 7.9 per cent, Reading by 6.4 per cent and Alyesbury Vale by 5.4 per cent. By 2030, the population of Slough will have increased by 35. 3 per cent, West Berkshire by 22 per cent, Reading by 18.8 per cent and Alyesbury Vale by 14.7 per cent. [5]

[1] Barker K, Review of Housing Supply Final Report – Recommendations Delivering Stability: Securing our Future Housing Needs: HM Treasury (2004)

[2] House Building: December Quarter 2014, England: Department for Communities and Local Government (2015)

[3] Housing Supply: Opportunities for Economic Growth: Barton Willmore p3 (2013)

[4]  Population and Household Estimates for England and Wales: Office for National Statistics (2012)

[5] Subnational Population Projections, 2012-based projection: Office for National Statistics (2014)

This is the fifth of a series of posts on loneliness. It is based on Loneliness Accident or Injustice by Jo Ind, a joint publication from the Diocese of Oxford (Board of Mission) and the Archway Foundation.

One reason is that younger people are more likely to be unemployed than older adults. The unemployment rate for 18 to 24-year-olds is 14% compared with 4.2% in the 25 to 49 bracket and 3.2% in the over 50s.[2]  Rachel Green is project manager for Starting Point, a charity based in Reading, Berkshire providing mentoring and work experience to young people not in education, employment or training.  She says loneliness is a pervasive issue amongst her clients.

“If you don’t get a job or go to university, you lose your peer group when you leave school and you can feel isolated very quickly. If our young people are applying for jobs, they might be getting constant rejections which can affect their self-esteem and make them feel lonely. They can then get into isolating habits like sleeping all day and being awake at night. It’s very easy to go on a downward spiral from there.”

But even young people who are surrounded by thousands of peers, like students, are vulnerable to loneliness. Kate Ward-Perkins, University of Reading Peer Support Co-ordinator, says: “Our sense of belonging comes from being known. When you arrive at university, you might be in a context where nobody knows you. That feeling of not being recognised can mean you lose your internal moorings and don’t know who you are. That’s a lonely feeling and people respond by either becoming frantically social or withdrawing.

“It’s also a time in life when the task is to separate from parents.  This separation means you become more dependent on your peers for your sense of wellbeing. That can make it difficult to acknowledge your vulnerability to your peers.  ‘Face’ becomes important – not losing face.  There’s a tendency for young people to develop a personae that others find acceptable. It can feel very lonely behind that face.”

[1] Aviva Healthcheck UK Report p 30 (2014). Also The Lonely Society? Mental Health Foundation p 22 (2010)

[2] Labour Market Statistics, May 2015

How technology impacts on loneliness

There are mixed views on whether the technology that connects people increases or decrease loneliness. Social media can reduce isolation by making it easy to stay in touch but it can compound loneliness when it’s used as a substitute for face-to-face contact. Almost one third of 18 to 24-year-olds (31%) say they spend too much time communicating with friends and family online when they should be seeing them in person.[1]

Psychologist Dr Aric Sigman has argued that social networking sites undermine social skills.[2] Rachel Green, of Starting Point, has noticed this too. She says some young people develop relationships online around a niche interest, like Japanese movies, at the expense of face-to-face friendships.  “When this happens they aren’t developing their social skills,” says Rachel.  “So if they get a job and there’s a difficult situation, they might not have learnt to deal with a confrontation and they might just walk out. You learn these skills through face-to-face relationships.”

On the other hand, social media can connect people who might otherwise feel lonely. Reading University has a society called R U Not Drinking Much? for students who don’t want to get smashed.  Its presence on Facebook helps students find each other before they even arrive. “I’m not a huge drinker,” posted a fresher-to-be. “I’m so glad I found this group.”

Fact file on loneliness and younger people

• More than a third (36%) of 18 to 34-year-olds worry about feeling lonely.[3]
• More than half (53%) of 18 to 34-year-olds have felt depressed because they have felt alone.[4]
• More than a quarter (27%) of 18 to 24-year-olds have suffered anxiety in the past year compared with 23% of 35 to 44-year-olds and 11% of people aged over 65.[5]
• And yet 42% per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds would be embarrassed to admit feeling lonely, compared with 23% of those aged 55 or more.[6]

[1] Griffin J, The Lonely Society? The Mental Health Foundation p 41 (2010)

[2] Sigman A, The Biological   Implications of Social Networking, The Biologist Vol 56, 1 (2009)

[3] Griffin J, The Lonely Society? The Mental Health Foundation p22 (2010)

[4] Griffin J, The Lonely Society? The Mental Health Foundation p22 (2010)

[5] The Aviva Healthcheck UK Report p 29-40 (2014)

[6] Griffin J, The Lonely Society? The Mental Health Foundation p 41 (2010)

This is the fourth of a series of posts on loneliness. It is based on Loneliness Accident or Injustice by Jo Ind, a joint publication from the Diocese of Oxford (Board of Mission) and the Archway Foundation.