Kevin: I think in terms of the personal reactions of residents, it has been regenerative – I’ve noticed a change. They’re very direct, the people of Castleford. They’re very sceptical. One bloke said to me, ‘It’ll never work’. Even with the finished bridge they were saying it would be useless. Many people are now realising they are going to have to eat their words. It’s because as a community, they’ve been badly let down over the past 50 years. Now they’ve got real results. Will it yield wider projects? We’ll go back and find out.
Kevin: The big lesson to learn from the series is that we have, for the past 40 years, become a society where responsibility has been increasingly lessened, where it’s always the council’s problem, the government’s problem; always the responsibility of other people. It’s ludicrous. In principle, we need to feel that we own, that we can change. That change can be effected by communities.
It doesn’t need the design process to do that – although the great advantage of that process is that you get projects five years on that are still beautiful and that have still not been trashed. The pride people have in Castleford is glorious. Take the local park as an example – the community has made a great effort with it, which in turn has helped with its maintenance and local policing of it. The Parks Department have been so excited about looking after it, they’ve won a green flag award for it.
Trying to do things top down doesn’t work. Trying to do things bottom up, using Gandhian optics, that’s where the power is, that’s where the energy is - in society. Reading reports in newspapers about ‘another initiative, another government programme’ fills my heart with dread. It’s great that the money is available, of course; it’s great to know your way around the grant system, but social change happens from the bottom up.
Kevin: Go and speak to some of the people in Castleford. What’s really quite interesting is that it’s not a large town. In places like Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow, there were gifted and charismatic drivers in the planning department. Lots of the little local authorities around the country are understaffed, so it’s really hard to get stuff done. I talked to the man who runs Birmingham City Council about their regeneration and he said it happened because they had a critical mass working with local developers. There’s no way a smaller town can do this.
What works are community projects. The community projects in Castleford were great; the council-led ones less so. Arguably, the bridge was a council-led project, but the choice of architect and choice of design was really thanks to the insistence and drive of one or two people in the community.
I want to make a point about volunteer labour driving these projects. This usually adds up to what’s there in terms of investment – so, if you put in £3 million, you’ll get the same in terms of volunteer labour. This wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for government pensions or disability benefits – these are the people who the have time to get involved – they’re mums whose children have grown up, pensioners or people on disability benefits – all this money gives them the time to do these projects. In a strange way, they’re an important part of the process.
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