Resilient Ferguslie Park hungry for more participation
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Ferguslie Park in Renfrewshire is a community rich in spirit and in people willing to go an extra mile to help their neighbours. But in official figures it’s routinely described as one of Scotland’s most deprived neighborhoods.
It’s an unwanted stamp that has brought a lot of attention and funds to the area, the Queen arrived in her Rolls Royce twenty five years ago to open a new community centre now known as the Tannahill Centre and run by Ferguslie Park Housing Association.
Despite all the public funds invested in Ferguslie Park the stigma and the rank persists. Locals see things differently with some pointing out that the key to unlocking Ferguslie Park’s potential is within the community itself and that until recently they had no control over how funds should be invested in their community.
More recently people have been coming together not to try to fix each other’s ‘problems’ but to help Ferguslie flourish. Last year the Tannahill Centre brought in investment from the Scottish government but crucially, it was the people of Ferguslie who designed a participatory budgeting process to decide how to invest the money and made the final decisions themselves through a public vote open to all in the community. And flourish they did. Pals of the Privies, driven by five local women determined to create safe places for children to play, were awarded to funding which they used for ‘community events never seen before in Ferguslie’.
In July 2020 they achieved their ambition of bringing a play area back to life.
Jamie Mallan, Manager at the Tannahill Centre describes his job as re-engaging local people and he knows the lasting value of participatory budgeting, explaining that when Coronavirus and lockdown struck it was the community that took action for itself:
“A number of community groups banded together in Ferguslie to set up Ferguslie Support Group, delivering care packages and supporting the community. Nearly all were involved in the participatory budgeting process.”
The relationships and trust formed was vital:
“We were able to channel Scottish Government resources to community groups during lockdown in a fair, open and transparent way because of last year’s PB process. If we hadn’t run the PB process last year I don’t know how we would have gone about doing that.”
We reflect on another week of meeting lcoal needs as we continue helping Ferguslie flourish. An observation this week is a massive 40% increase in demand for food. Covid isn't over yet lets 'keep the heid' #OneCommunity #CaringCommunity #5KeyFocusAreas #CovidOpportunities pic.twitter.com/3wowAca5gV
— Darkwood Crew (@CrewDarkwood) August 30, 2020
The Darkwood Crew, a dynamic group of volunteers, have taken in a step further and as well as delivering supplies have helped keep the community connected during lockdown by bringing an outdoor bingo bus to Ferguslie Park, finishing off with a streetdance.
Jamie Mallan identifies participatory budgeting as key to the community response in Ferguslie and in its future plans:
“We are already thinking of our next PB event and bringing the steering group back together as a means of re-engaging after lockdown. The community response to COVID-19 has been very organic with informal groups taking the lead in supporting local people. Our experience of participatory budgeting is that these groups benefit most from the process as they are able to access public funds that are often out of reach to them due to bureaucracy. If we are to build back better we need to find a way to resource the work of those who were at the forefront of the COVID-19 pandemic in our local communities.”
Learning from Ferguslie Park matters across Scotland if we are to make good on our national ambition to “tackle poverty by sharing opportunities, wealth and power more equally”.
And it matters because evidence shows that people in our poorest communities report having the least influence on decisions that affect their neighborhood. Trust in politicians and election turnout is lowest in the areas we label most deprived.
Participatory budgeting offers a real and practical way to tackle this poverty of participation and we know people respond when a public body offers to share power over public money. While people respond, they need public sector partners to work with.
Happily, that looks possible in Renfrewshire with Celebrating Renfrewshire, a council fund and participatory budgeting process by young people, for young people – young people in Ferguslie Park and beyond can now decide on how best to invest £150,000 to make living as a young person in Renfrewshire better; giving opportunities and power for young people to flourish.
Fergulsie Park was featured in the PB Charter for Scotland.
