BLOGS

Historic meeting for Housing Campaign

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It’s five years since communities in London Citizens camped in tents outside City Hall, to put pressure on the then Mayor Ken Livingstone to live up to his promises on a Community Land Trust.

Above: CTC Director Angus Ritchie (left) in a delegation of London Citizens leaders meeting Mayor Livingstone in July 2005, at the end of their encampment – reported by the BBC and Times

The Contextual Theology Centre, its partner churches and its Jellicoe interns have been at the heart of this campaign.  We are now celebrating success as the owners of the St. Clement’s Hospital site in Bow, East London have now agreed not to sell of the hospital site this summer.  Instead, they will be meeting with London Citizens local leaders to draw up plans for establishing London’s first ever Community Land Trust.

It’s a fitting piece of news to be blogging, 75 years to the day after Fr Basil Jellicoe died!

Celebrating Fr Basil

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Over 200 worshippers gathered on Sunday evening to honour Fr Basil Jellicoe, in this 75th anniversary year of his death.  The service, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, included readings and prayers by Jellicoe Interns, and a sermon by the Bishop of London.  This was followed by a reception with presentations by the interns on their work this month and songs from Jellicoe: The Musical – first performed in 2003.

St Martin’s was chosen because Fr Basil ministered there towards the end of his life.  The evening included testimony from the daughter of the then Vicar, who recalled his ministry in the parish.

We are grateful to Origin Housing – the successor body to Fr Basil’s St Pancras House Improvement Society – for helping to fund the reception, and for St Martin’s for hosting this inspiring event.

Two weeks in Newham

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Daniel Stone is a Jellicoe Intern based in Newham, East London – and a student of Economics and Management at St Peter’s College Oxford.  He blogs on his first two weeks on placement:

From the Barclays Tower in Canary Wharf to a small church hall in Stratford, the life of a Community Organiser is never dull! Two weeks ago I would have thought that people from such disparate ways of life would have nothing in common save their constant disappointment with the England football team! But I now realise that the link of commonality that binds people together runs deeper than material similarities towards motivations, frustrations and the answer to the famous community organisers’ question ‘What makes you angry?’

For many people in London regardless of their background; inner-city violence and the unneccessary death of countless numbers of young people makes them angry. The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (meeting in Barclays Tower) is connected to countless numbers of people motivated by their faith, commitment to social justice or the heartache of personal bereavment, in wanting to make a difference so that future generations aren’t bound in a culture of fear and violence.

What is perhaps of greater concern is the sense of hopelessness that people find themselves in – a hopelessness that sees the 22 teenage deaths that have occured over the last 18 months as being something that is out of control and out of their hands. This simply isn’t the case and I have been encouraged by the organisations I have seen so far who are attempting to take up the gauntlet thrown down by the City Safe campaign, to tackle knife crime head on instead of passing responsibility onto the police.

One such community is that of the ARC based in Forest Gate, a church that 5 years ago was galvanized into action by the murder of one of their young people, Charlotte Polius. The vision of the church leadership and the enthusiasm of their young people has meant that rather than stirring up interest, the emphasis of my internship has been on building relationships and opening lines of communication with other members of their local community to act together for change.

I have come to realise the simplicity of community organising and just how beautiful this simplicity is! It is based purely on relationships – talking and acting with your neighbour – and is then something that we should all do naturally as relational beings. We introduced a number of young people to the City Safe campaign last week. During the meeting a young lady said that there wasn’t enough for young people to do and that one possible solution could be to encourage young people to take up boxing. Earlier that very same day we had been speaking to a former Ugandan Olympic boxer who wanted to expand his boxing programme to include more young people from Forest Gate!
The mission statement of the ARC is ‘keeping it simple, keeping it radical and always keeping it real’. For me this perhaps best sums up the aims of City Safe in that the issues of knife crime won’t be solved over night but by taking small steps to implement what we still sadly consider to be ‘radical’ ideas of community cohesion we can perhaps begin to change things.

From a programme to a movement

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The Jellicoe Community began as a programme for summer and year-round interns.  Out of this is beginning to grow a broader movement of students and young people committed to prayer, reflection and action.  The Mercers Company has just given the Contextual Theology Centre a grant which will enable it to employ Laurence Mills – one of the first Jellicoe Interns – to spend the autumn developing this wider community of young Christians.  So watch this space…

Summer internship: reflections on week one

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Tom Daggett is one of fourteen students currently interning with the Jellicoe Community.  He is based at the Salvation Army in Stepney. Here he writes about his experiences in the first week:
Community organising was something new to me when I was introduced to the Jellicoe Community, but when it was explained, it made so much sense, and I couldn’t wait to get involved. Much more than with typical internships, undertaken by typical Oxbridge students, this one excited me because of the prospect of engaging with people’s actual lives, of dealing with what it is that makes us human, of being able to offer my own experiences in dialogue with others’.

In the past two weeks, I’ve grappled with and reflected upon drug abuse, generational conflict, disability, racism, overcrowding, idleness, death, fear, and the relationship of these to faith. It would be easy to draw very negative conclusions about the Ocean Estate (supposedly one of the most economically deprived in the country), but I now know that there are people who are genuinely changing the area through friendship, leadership, and belief in God. I’ve had meetings with: exciting new committees on the estate; with people who have turned their lives around and who now inspire others through their own amazing stories; with local churches; with civil servants; with Oxbridge professionals; with the elderly; with evangelists; and with those sceptical of what I’m doing.

One inspirational experience has been to witness the homeless football team, which Nick Coke, Salvation Army Captain, helps to run. Each with their own difficult histories (and some without, but who just enjoy a bit of sport), the lads (mostly early 20s, representing diverse racial backgrounds) come together once a week to play a tournament, have a free lunch in a local church, and are invited to attend a non-compulsory bible study, after the lunch. It was remarkable to see how many chose to stay, and how each took the study seriously, making wise contributions which pertained to their own stories. The brotherhood that was fostered around those fold-away tables was astounding, and after speaking openly with these guys, I felt part of it. I shall never forget it; in that church hall I discovered so much humility.

This month, I’ll be working towards a long-term plan that will help local institutions in Stepney to support each other in London Citizens’ “City Safe haven” scheme. My one-to-one meetings will drive my work, and it’ll be great to get these people involved. It’s been great to get to know the other interns, too, whether over a curry, or over a pint whilst watching the world cup final!

75 years on…

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Fr Basil Jellicoe – slum priest, housing reformer and the inspiration behind today’s Jellicoe Community – died 75 years ago.  The anniversary will be marked with a special Choral Evensong at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London – with a sermon by the Bishop of London, and a drinks reception with this summer’s Jellicoe InternsAll are welcome.

East End United

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The march from Stepney Green to Altab Ali park – clergy leading the march included (l to r) Revd Adam Atkinson (Contextual Theology Centre Senior Tutor), Fr Alan Green (Area Dean of Tower Hamlets – in the biretta)  and the Revd Angus Ritchie (Centre Director)

How does a neighbourhood respond when the forces of bigotry and division come to town? The English Defence League (EDL) threatened to come to Tower Hamlets on Sunday – bringing an all-too-familiar blend of and anti-Muslim vitriol and intimidation.

The EDL had picked this date to come to Tower Hamlets, and then discovered a controversial Islamic conference was to be on the same date, at the Troxy (just round the corner from the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, the home of the Jellicoe Community). This became the focus of their action – until Tower Hamlets Council exerted pressure on the Troxy to cancel the event.

The EDL claimed victory, and called their Sunday demo off – but earlier in the week a number of their members were in town, insulting local Muslims and spreading tension and anger.

The community’s reaction? A demonstration with over 2000 local people – and speakers from local churches and mosques, Jewish organisations and trade unions presenting a united front against the EDL. Some of the political speakers felt the need to score points against each other – a regrettable decision on a day which was about stressing what East End residents have in common, not the things which divide them.

And how did it feel? Sometimes rowdy and raw, but almost uniformly peaceful – and in a community where the EDL’s activities have provoked rumours, fear and mistrust, a really important declaration that people of all faiths and backgrounds are willing to turn out to stand up for one another.

The Revd Adam Atkinson and Angus Ritchie (who supervise the Jellicoe Interns in Shadwell) spoke at the rally and Jellicoe intern Ian Bhullar played an important role in organising the Christian turnout. All three are involved in the round-the-year organising that brings Tower Hamlets’ faiths together around issues of common concern. It’s that ongoing work which builds the trust and commitment which was counted for so much on Sunday. That provided an inspiration, and also a challenge – to redouble the organising work so that the people of Tower Hamlets are even more united in trust and hope.

This summer’s team

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Last night, CTC Director Angus Ritchie and Manager Ian Vijay Bhullar briefed this summer’s team of Jellicoe’s interns – a dynamic group of students from Oxford, Cambridge and London who will be developing congregational involvement in community organising.

This summer’s interns and their placement churches are:

Parish of the Divine Compassion, Plaistow & Canning Town – Simon Cuff, Holly Terry & Greg Tucker (Keble, Oxford)
St Mary’s Cable Street and E1 Community Church – Emma Priddin (Trinity, Oxford)
St John-at-Hackney – Jaya Carrier (Balliol, Oxford), Jim Barlow (Cuddesdon, Oxford) and Arabella Milbank (New College, Oxford)
St Mary & Michael RC Parish, Limehouse – Liliana Worth (Wadham, Oxford)
St Paul’s Shadwell – Josh Harris (Keble, Oxford), Ellen Harvey (Magdalen, Oxford) and Alena-Rose Crayden (Heythrop, London)
St Stephen’s RC Parish, Manor Park – Isaac Stanley (Pembroke, Cambridge)
Stepney Salvation Army – Tom Daggett (Lincoln, Oxford)
Trinity Chapel, Beckton – Daniel Stone (St Peter’s, Oxford), Rebecca Fay (Queen Mary, London) and Antonia Adebambo (Magdalen, Oxford)

Back to the roots…

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It has been an amazing few weeks for all of us involved in citizen organising. The May 3rd assembly catapulted the movement into the media limelight, and also yielding substantial relationships with and commitments from the then PM, the new PM and the new Deputy PM! Citizens UK Director Neil Jameson was in No 10 yesterday – and the meeting is reported on our sister blog there.

A key challenge is to convert this excitement back into tangible change at the really local level, That is where our Jellicoe interns come in! Last night, we had our last Community Evening with Megan Dilhoff and Theodore Wold, who return to the US after building significant new links with Catholic parishes in Shadwell & Wapping. They will be much missed, and go with all our thanks and prayers.

Amma Asante continues her work at the University of East London, and Ian Bhullar at St Mary’s Cable Street (and the newly-recruited E1 Community Church). They’ll be joined by around 18 summer interns, focusing mainly on the CitySafe campaign – very local relationship- and trust-building, which is the lifeblood of citizen organising. It’s from this local base that we build up to the amazing national successes – the end of child detention, local mutual banking and a Community Land Trust on the 2012 Olympic site.

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