Paul Richards has an excellent article in this week's Regeneration and Renewal magazine on Small talk with a big impact, where he urges the importance of stories and conversations to help people engage in neighbourhood renewal.
Paul's enthusiasm for stories and conversations reflects what knowledge management professionals are saying in other contexts - see my last post.
He writes: "In too many regeneration schemes, marketing and communications is an add-on, delivered by staff with little or no experience and consisting of traditional methods such as newsletters, posters and leaflets," he writes and then goes on to make the case for stories rather than statistics, and word of mouth to complement other methods methods.
"Haringey Heartlands, a £13 million Single Regeneration Budget project designed to regenerate Wood Green in north London, used simple metaphorical stories to make its point.
"It focussed on real people – a couple in their 85th year in the same house, a young actress, a teenage chef – whose lives had been changed by the regeneration partnership. The couple had their street transformed by new lights, footpaths and window boxes, and seen house prices soar; the actress had graduated from the local theatre school and gained a part in the West End; the teenager had won a competition and met celebrity chef Gary Rhodes. Through these individual lives, the bigger story was told. Sometimes you don’t need a massive advertising campaign: a few well-chosen stories can be just as powerful."
He adds: "One aspect of communications which is often omitted from official strategies, and yet is the most cost-effective and powerful of all, is word-of-mouth. In a limited geographical area – such as an NDC neighbourhood – with a defined population, the processes of spreading information, scotching rumours and moulding opinion via social networks should be a priority, not left to chance. Some NDCs look at who spreads word-of-mouth news, from estate agents to the local “gossips”, and how the existing matrix of NDC board members, outreach workers, neighbourhood wardens and front-line staff can be coordinated and managed to promote messages and collate feedback."
Paul Wastell, a regeneration communications adviser says: “People need to feel good about their area and to be able to tell each other how and why their area is getting better. Rather than telling the story through a series of abstract statistics and outcomes like the number of jobs created and safeguarded, it’s far more interesting to tell the story in terms of human interest and real lives. That’s what gets people talking and things happening.”
Paul Richards is a communication consultant and has written the Neighbourhood Renewal PR Toolkit for the UK government's Neighbourhood Renewal Unit
It seems to me that Paul's lessons are particularly important in neighbourhood renewal areas where literacy levels may be low, and word of mouth is the main channel for local knowledge. The challenge for renewal agencies is that supporting 'talkers' and developing story telling techniques can be threatening to those who prefer official channels, roles and reports. Tempting to push out another leaflet and then mutter about resident apathy (won't turn up to boring meetings) and rumours (people recycling old information or prejudices in the absence of anything else).... so good for those trying something different.
There are no web links in Paul's article, but I did find something online about one project he mentions, the South Kilburn New Deal for Communities Walking Talkers. I hope we will see more. The downside of local conversations is you don't always hear about them....
Of course rapidly rising house prices are not good for everyone - they probably mean the original occupants of the neighborhood will be replaced over the next decade or so. But what can you do?
Posted by: David Brake | July 17, 2004 at 09:06 PM