The 30 year plan?

You may or may not be aware of the “City Centre 2050 City Centre Development Framework Consultation Draft.”  It contains all of the usual images and language of development plan hand outs. While it mentions people and nods in the direction of community. It also mentioned all of the developer type key words, such as; diversity, world leading, national significance, social inclusion, economic competitiveness and so on. But there is not much about the “people who make Glasgow” apart from generic comments, stats and that we all should love it. 

Where the long term benefits of these projects should be to the community. What we see is a sea of privately funded initiatives, and public money going to ubiquitous private contractors who some actually participate in many of the problems we have through their employment and business practices. Practices that encourage cost cutting for the benefit of their shareholders and to the detriment of their employees. This when we need to be asking why are so many of our citizens constantly clinging to the edge of survival? Be it freezing in our streets, or having to holding down at least two jobs to pay the rent. The only kind of jobs the master plan looks to be promising. (for ordinary people)

The Survey

So the Social Energy Collective will work to create a comparative report to the, Centre Strategic Development Famework 2050 and how we can ensure a positive and sustainable outcome for local people. We will do this by working with established and newer community groups in collaboration by looking at existing resources for community needs in our City. Looking at models of development and developing new ones.

To do this work

We will be us using a variety of mediums; mapping, drone photography, film, screenings, interviews, surveys, on line work and and other medium such as art, drama, performance, music and poetry. The idea being to use anything available to us that can carry a message and encourage participation.

Finding what connects us

So the first year will be about Building tools for conviviality. (Illich) or Building tools for constructive conversation and actions. We will set out to support and build the critical connections between a variety of community groups with different kinds of remits and activities to find avenues of solidarity. We will try to achieve this by not creating more work for people but by sharing and expanding on work already done or being developed.

Filming |Archiving

We have a collection of equipment for filming and screening and archive as best we can activities, talks and commentary check City Strolls Youtube Channel and will probably start another one dedicated to this project. We are always looking for helpers with lugging gear and people that know their way around photography and video and post production. And of course to record the people and groups that have something to add to the discussion.

We have the technology

We have been working with drones and fancy 360 degree cameras and videoing areas of land and city scapes we wish to hone in on, particularly in the east end of the city or parts of the city that less attention is paid to. We have a Glasgow User Map of places of community and historical interest. We hope eventually to set up some training ideas and collabourations with other people and film groups to collate footage. At present we are few, so at this point we are looking for folk using this media to help out.