My idea to solve the fragmentation of local communities is to implement strategies to coalesce local community after COVID 19. I have often looked at the institutions within a local community and been saddened at the separation between them. For instance, most communities have institutions such as play groups, schools, churches, Fire Stations, Police Stations, Village Halls, Nursing Homes or Aged Housing and Pubs – all existing separately alongside each other. We have resources such as schools and churches that are used at specific times and the rest of the time these buildings are left empty. We have Fire Stations and Police Stations that exist in a community but which do not foster relations between other institutions in the locality. My idea is to foster a relationship between all these separate institutions so that a community becomes a community where individuals (from different facets of the locale – age and demographics) are known to each other and good relationships are fostered. For instance, the personnel of Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, Fire Stations, Police Stations could be encouraged to adopt classes in the local schools, regularly going into the school and participating in the life of the school. In this way, the young people of the community would be personally known to the official personnel of the community – right from being young children up into adulthood. Some communities have terrible problems with kids vandalising ambulances or fire engines when they attend emergencies, if individual children are known by (and know) these personnel, then this type of problem would not happen. Children in classes could also participate in the life in the institutions, for example, helping to keep the gardens around the Police Station, Church or Fire Station looking good through planting flowers or even vegetables. Children could go to the Fire Station or Police Station to help wash a Fire Engine or Police Car. Personnel from these institutions could teach children first aid or other life enhancing skills. School buildings could be opened to the community in the evenings so that ad hoc singing groups could use pianos or musical instruments, or the hall or classrooms for dancing, or learning other hobbies that might need blackboards. Play groups could be run from Nursing Homes or Aged Housing communities with the children encouraged to visit the older residents and older residents encouraged to come to the Play Group and read stories or tell the children about their lives. Schools too, could encourage older people to come into their classrooms to give oral history accounts. We know too, that after COVID 19 our high streets will never be the same. I lived in Holland for over twenty years and saw how the high streets in communities were very different to in this country. Most high streets there consist of small shops with residential homes above them or around them, within a fifteen minute walk away. The high street, therefore, becomes a communal meeting place. People will meet for coffee with their neighbours or go to a café for breakfast. Small delicatessens sell speciality foods and most people shop every day for their food rather than doing a large once a week shop. The high street is usually a pedestrian only area as most people (because they live so close to the high street) can walk or ride their bicycles. Therefore, there are lots of green areas around with benches so people can sit and chat. Other shops exist in the high street too, but these are usually, interesting life style shops such as florists or artisan bakers or bookshops or speciality meats or organic foods. Because it is such a lovely place to be, the high street is a dynamic place and almost becomes an extension of an individual’s home living space. A community that can incorporate a relaxed high street with residential homes very close and an integrated community where demographic groups cross over and meet each other, so that children are befriended and known by key workers in the community and those same key workers are respected by young people, and that resources are utilised and shared by all, is a community in which individuals will not be isolated in an emergency such as a pandemic. A sense of belonging to the community will be fostered which, of course, encourages the people living there to be even more community minded.
1808-11