Tuesday, 22 January 2008

Today was my first day of leave. So what did I do? I went to a Community Engagement conference at Campus West in Welwyn Garden City. This was very good and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was good to see so many friends there - and especially good to see Emma Gadesby and Catherine Harris from WBC. The event was pulled together by Natalie Webb who has done an excellent job stimulating debate and producing helpful guidance.

The only lowlight of the day was learning the definitions provided by the Department of Communities and Local Government: Community Empowerment is the giving of confidence, skills, and power to communicate to shape and influence what public bodies do for or with them. Community engagement is the process whereby public bodies reach out to communities to create empowerment opportunities. What utter tosh! These definitions fail utterly from every conceivable perspective. It is hard to think of worse definitions. How did they get it so badly wrong on so many different levels?

In the evening (rather against my better judgement) I listened to some of the radio commentary from White Hart Lane. After nearly a decade of failing to beat “the other north London team”, Tottenham finally triumphed 5-1. Nice.