The Big Debate

The Big Debate turned out to be a little debate with no more than six floor questions and a lobsided panel to answer them. No audience participation or any real feeling of progress and consultation. The issues were central to the question an increase in housing stocks - the panel were economic in mindset and the question of regeneration and the buzz word sustainability was banded about without any sense of direction.
The auditorium was made up of all white (bar one - the panelist; Dr. Rosemin Najmudin) 40+ well off - upper and middle-class people, I was one of only a handful, if that, of adults under the age of 40. I wager that the majority of the audience also live outside the city. There were many good points about the need for joined up thinking, healthcare and education, development of rural areas as well as brown field sites. There were also fears raised about losing a sense of rural identity.

Here I had a point I would have liked to have made; The problem with identity is in difference, Worcester City behaves like a suburb and there is no division between a metropolitan area, a market town, it's suburbs or the outlying villages - Investment in the city is key to making it a different destination for tourism, new smart industry and creative industry. Young professionals need to be developed with interesting spin off employment opportunities in the service, science and media sectors. We should celebrate the rural idyl and invest in those communities through direct consultation within the individual villages - but they are not islands and they will have to bear an increase in both social and private affordable housing. The first and primary investment should come in the City, raising living standards through a joined up programme of sustained investment. From my point of view as an artist I believe a different attitude is needed, the arts and culture were not mentioned once at the meeting. Culture is what can make identity, culture gives hope and grows ambition, creative vision is the key ingredient in a sustainable future and yet no one raised this issue. Healthcare, education and having somewhere where to live keeps us going, allows our community to survive, but what for, when all there is to survive for is the same torrid, baron landscape of 'affordable' poorly designed housing, the pub and the local health-care centres - where are the science museums, contemporary arts centres, modern art museums, the theaters, the arts groups, the life of the city. It wouldn't be so bad, but we don't have them now, let alone in the future. These are tools for developing a standard of living, if you get that right you can solve many other social problems.
I'm not saying transport, healthcare and education aren't important, of course they are, especially in supporting the minorities and the poorer, but if you do not support culture then what are we trying to improve? Long term vision and Big Debates should include representatives from the arts, sport, healthcare, education, welfare, transport, entertainment, heritage and accommodation as a part of the course, with each given the same courtesy, influence and standing..