City Council and Hope in the Cities conduct dialogue on creating diverse workforce
'The day will come when it is impossible to imagine that a young man should be murdered by white thugs on the streets of Liverpool simply because he was Black. Tragically, that day has not yet come, neither in Liverpool nor in any other British city.’
These were the opening words of David Fleming, director of National Museums Liverpool, at a dinner celebrating the opening of the new International Slavery Museum at the Albert Dock in Liverpool on 23 August, 2007.
They were words which affected us deeply as we, a team from the Initiatives of Change programme Hope in the Cities, made our way to this European Capital of Culture 2008 in September. We were there to talk to the City Council about a dialogue the council had invited us to facilitate, looking at how to create a workforce which truly reflected the city’s diversity.
All our cities are places of invisible boundaries. These boundaries make it safe or unsafe for people in different parts of the city. In Liverpool, the city centre is a place where many people do not feel safe. The percentages of people from the black and minority ethnic communities, both employed and visiting the centre, are extremely low and the ‘black pound’ is spent elsewhere. When asked about the Capital of Culture, the reply is ‘Whose culture is being celebrated?’
Hope in the Cities operates as a small team, facilitating dialogues and training facilitators. We go wherever we can be of service to communities, particularly those who do not normally talk together at the level of how things ‘feel’ as opposed to what we ‘think’. All who come to the conversations do so because they care about the situation and want to see change happen. But the perception of that change is nearly always different for each participant.
On this basis, a group of 30 people from the business community and the Black and Racial Minority (BRM) in Liverpool met in September, to talk about how to find common ground from which they could move forward together to transform access to employment in the city. Denzil Nurse from Huddersfield and I, representing Hope in the Cities, conducted the day-long dialogue.
After six hours of conversation - some of which was uncomfortable, some frustrating, but much enlightening and educative - we came to a place where 11 joint action steps were agreed. These will be taken forward to create new ‘best practice’ between the two communities. We heard that some of the new developments in the city centre would be recruiting soon and the management of these areas want to create the new diverse workforce which everyone at the table desired.
The dialogue however is only the first step on this journey. Now we are charged with keeping up the links made between people as they talked around the table and through the breaks in the ‘honest conversation’ dialogues. The role of Hope in the Cities is to enable and support change in the hearts of individuals, by having the kind of honest conversation which opens up thinking and creates possibilities which could not be realise without each other. The aim is to work together to break down the barriers created by assumption and stereotyping, historic divides and lack of trust.
How do we create the cities and towns where the words of David Fleming are no longer true? How do we as individuals play our part? It could be by analysing our own inner assumptions about people who are different from us, whether through race, gender or religion. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by listening to each other, and dialogue gives us that opportunity. Liverpool City Council sponsored Hope in the Cities in this dialogue process. We are now working together with the council and with other authorities in the country to incorporate dialogue and listening as a tool for cohesion between communities.
Phoebe Gill is Programme Director, Hope in the Cities UK
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