Storylines
Storyman
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London has been my home for half my
life. I came to West Norwood on Valentine’s Day 1986 and
I have been here ever since so it has pretty much encompassed all my working
life. Which is appropriate because if
London is about anything, it is about making money. But not only have I worked in London, London
has also been my work – and not in the grand sense but in its many particular
localities. I have worked or lived as a
community worker in most of the inner London Boroughs and a few of the outer
ones.
This page links to the writing that has
come out of this work. My work has been
in the general area of urban mission, particularly as a community development worker, although I did work for three
years as a lay pastor.
But to the details of my work and the
writing that has increasingly flowed from this work. I started off working for the Baptist Union in Holborn
where I ran a volunteer scheme. What I
enjoyed most about this was the contact I had with small inner city Baptist
churches, so when I moved to Clapham to live in the house of the canon
missioner of Southwark cathedral, Ivor Smith Cameron I started attending the
Baptist church at the end of the road. I
liked the little church and its multi racial congregation, enjoyed running a
Bible study with one of its Jamaican deacons and watching in awe when a
Trinidadian preacher ignited the normally quiet congregation with a spark of
Holy Spirit fire. I had by now moved on
to working for the Zebra Project which worked for racial justice and
partnership amongst black and white Christian in East London. It was a rather wonderful opportunity to work
with inner London Christianity in all its amazing variety: the Caribbean diaspora,
Cherubim and Seraphim churches, Kurdish refugees, Marxist activists, not to
mention the full range of more established denominations. I stayed there five years but had already got
involved with the Evangelical Coalition for Urban Mission which promoted a
brand of radical urban evangelicalism that is still, in many ways, my
theological touchstone. I moved on from
Zebra and worked for ECUM for a number of years developing many interests in
different aspects of urban mission such as training, theological reflection and
urban spirituality. During this time I
was also trying to equip myself for the work I was doing - I completed a
diploma at the Urban Theology Unit and a certificate at Birkbeck College. This particularly developed my interest in
gentrification and urban studies more generally. It was becoming increasingly clear to me that
my intellectual interests focused around the practical out-workings of the
boundary between theology and social science. I had by now moved to the Winstanley estate in Battersea where I was the
member of another Baptist church and became increasingly involved with the
community project run by the Anglican parish church. This estate, even to this day, still feels
like my spiritual home. Amongst its
towers and diverse peoples I learnt what community work might be about, found
my spiritual bearings and in many ways discovered my true self. When I first became involved in urban
mission, Colin Marchant, a longtime practitioner, advised me that it was
primarily about our own personal pilgrimage rather than helping people or
solving things and on the Winstanley I learnt the truth of this. It was a tough, harsh environment and I had
my a tough times there, but it was also a place of strange beauty and human
warmth. I will never forget how it
nourished me.
By now the funding for my ECUM work was
coming to an end but I managed to get a year’s work in Paddington where I put
to practical use my increasing interest in community profiling. I became more and more interested in research,
particularly those kinds which were participative and about working with people
rather than just exploiting them for data-gathering. Ultimately this led me to training at
Goldsmith’s College in community work where I did a Masters in Applied Anthropology
and Community and Youth Work. This
helpfully coalesced many of my interests. During this time I did another community profile for a URC church on an estate in South London. In the same year
(1996) I got married and my wife and I ended up moving on to the estate where I
worked as lay pastor. Although it had
its difficulties I was very glad to have this hands on experience of pastoral
work, as well as the discipline of weekly preaching. It also gave me a secure grounding in
understanding how small churches work.
I only worked for the church part time and
so was looking for other jobs. I started
working for the URC one day a week for the Urban Churches Support Group which
worked with urban churches in London. I
also started doing some work for Barnardos CANDL project which worked with
churches in East London. After leaving
the pastoral work this became my main employment for almost 10 years. Working for a large charity had its
frustrations after working for small grassroots organizations for years, but I
learnt a lot and it encouraged increasing amounts of writing and reflection.
We also moved to Hackney at the same
time. I enjoyed moving to a part of
London that I had worked in for many years. My writing also began to develop as did an increasing interest in
complexity theory and viewing the world as a living system. This has been greatly developed in recent
years by working with the RSA living systems group. I also continued to pick up pieces of freelance
work particularly with Mike Sheldon and WholeCare. This interest in health and disability began to
become an increasingly important part of my work. I have found in recent years that my working
life has more and more revolved around small groups of people that have enabled
me to engage with the issues that interest me. Particularly important has been the Breathing Space group where I have
worked with Geoffrey Court supporting and reflecting on my one to one work with
individuals that has slowly increased over the years. This has become more central to my life since
being made redundant by Barnardos at the end of 2008. I now work in a freelance capacity with the
various projects that come my way: sometimes paid, sometimes voluntary.
I recently watched a video by Andy
Goldsworthy about his work as an artist with natural phenomenon. He weaves stones, wood and earth into
beautiful shapes which reflect the transitory nature of life. This gave me an understanding of my work over
the years which no amount of words could do, as Goldsworthy walks over the
hills near his Scottish home and finds the components of his trade, weaving
them into something new and fresh, so I too, work with what presents itself and
try to make of that a reality which discovers its own beauty. He works with the rocks and trees and water, so
I try to work with people and their stories. |
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