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Angela Sarkis
Chief Executive, Church Urban Fund
and part-time Adviser to the Social Exclusion Unit

It is kind of you to welcome me here today and particularly to invite me to talk on a subject which is close to my heart.

For years now, in my role as Chief Executive of the Church Urban Fund and as part-time adviser to the Government’s Social Exclusion Unit, I’ve been pushing for a greater recognition of the importance of recognising and involving faith communities in the regeneration of the most disadvantaged and socially excluded neighbourhoods of this country. Let me also say that although this area is the focus of my address today, I firmly believe that faith communities have a significant role to play in all aspects of British life and that we should resist the temptation to limit or devalue our potential for political expedience.

Having got that off my chest, let’s turn to religion and regeneration. To some people, the idea of involving religion of any kind in anything as pragmatic as regeneration is anathema. But to many of us in this room, and increasingly to Government and those working in our public and voluntary sectors across the country, it’s starting to make perfect sense.

We have at last woken up to the fact that people create communities and that communities provide the foundation on which our society depends. We are now getting a clearer picture of where and why policies have failed through, for example, government research and the research of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and, critically, from listening to communities.

We know that previous attempts at urban regeneration failed because communities were left out of the equation. Those living in regeneration areas often cited a lack of consultation and opportunity for involvement and subsequent lack of local ownership as key factors for such failures. Today we have too many examples of ill thought through plans: estates where no one wants to live, areas which cannot attract employment or retail outlets and areas which have become the repository of our poorest public services. To use a well known phrase "what have become no go areas for some have become no exit areas for others"

So what have we learned? As a starting point, that people matter. In a multicultural society a proper recognition of diversity is essential for equity and social inclusion. How we approach different cultures and faiths matters.

Faith groups have been active in our disadvantaged communities for decades. I am of course being very modest here as many of our public institutions originated from within church communities. Today we see a burgeoning of community activities across the major faith groups. We are also seeing a decisive shift in our activities from solely service providers to involvement in policy formation and implementation. In other words faith groups are becoming more active in shaping the agenda on issues of social inclusion and urban regeneration.

I want to give you some examples from my experience of what it means to bear this out in practice.

My starting points are the Home Office report of the Policy Action Team on Community Self-Help, which was published in April 1999 and the National Strategy on Neighbourhood Renewal consultation document published in April this year. Both of these contain positive statements about the experience and potential of faith communities in helping to regenerate disadvantaged communities.

The Team was tasked by the Government to examine the barriers to community activity in poor neighbourhoods and draw up an action plan to:

• raise the numbers involved in volunteering and community activity in poor neighbourhoods
• increase the viability of community groups and services they deliver
• encourage the growth of informal mutual support

A key passage in the report reads as follows:

Faith groups collectively represent a large and relatively well resourced part of the voluntary and community sector in the United Kingdom, having at their disposal networks of mutual aid, service provision, community development activities and community organising capacity.

An example of a government initiative to involve faith communities comes from the work of the Church Urban Fund in partnership with Church Action on Poverty, Churches Community Workers Alliance and the DETR. Last year, we developed an initiative called Flourishing Communities. It examined church involvement in the £800 million Government initiative New Deal for Communities, which included in depth research in 7 areas and made recommendations as to how that engagement could be strengthened. It was eagerly read by councils, local authorities and even theoreticians in universities and faith communities.

This work confirmed the level and quality of work already being undertaken in these areas and made clear recommendations to both government and faith communities for even greater impact. Key issues identified were barriers for faith groups in accessing information and resources and difficulties in working in partnership from an inter faith perspective in the absence of clearly agreed guidelines.

The next stage of research, using Flourishing Communities as a template, will seek to assess the level of involvement of black majority churches and the other major faiths and is being led by the ICRC and will incorporate all faith groups. I see this aspect of the work as particularly important for two reasons. Firstly that minority ethnic communities are highly concentrated in disadvantaged areas and are more easily able to identify with a faith group from their own community and secondly that these faith groups, although still largely invisible to policy makers, are well placed to ensure that the right support is given in areas of greatest need.

I hope those of you in this room will actively cooperate with this work and in ensuring that any subsequent recommendations are carried through. At the Church Urban Fund we have already made inter faith work and working with Black majority churches one of our priorities.

But if the wilderness years are over for faith groups, if we have been given a place at the table of regeneration by right, and not solely by invitation, this confers responsibilities upon us. The spotlight is now on us. At the same time as we are recognised as players, the onus is on us to examine our practice and increase our impact¾ at the same time as continuing to care.

It seems to me that there is another challenge implicit in this. We see ourselves as partners, but we are expected to be leaders as well. Policy makers are now expected to pursue a diversity agenda based on equal opportunities and need to work with partners who can help create and implement that agenda. This is particularly the case in working with minority ethnic communities.

To achieve these things, we need to follow good practice. But we also need to work with each other. As we know this is not always easy as faith groups have been slow in breaking down the barriers which divide us. My view on this is a pragmatic but I hope not naive one. Many of us are agreed about speaking out against poverty, social disadvantage and racism. Finding constructive ways of working together is more challenging. This is not to say that we must all be the same, indeed our added value and strength is in our very diversity and the breadth of our combined experiences.

The co-operation of the ICRC and the Inter Faith Network is an excellent starting place. We need to recognise that collaboration is needed at a strategic as well as a practical level and be willing to work with our colleagues to achieve that.

We may need to do this through making our resources, both information and financial, available to each other, and this is one of the forms which the Church Urban Fund’s inter faith work takes. For example, CUF is currently supporting the conversion of a church hall in a deprived area of Bolton to a community centre, representing educational and social opportunities for local people. The local mosque is an adapted terraced house and cannot cater for the religious and social events of the Asian population. These will also be accommodated in the centre.

So that is the practical level of sharing resources. But there are other needs, the greatest of which is work to overcome the suspicion and mistrust that can exist between communities.

In East Lancashire, there is an interesting project called Building Bridges. The former mill town of Nelson has struggled since the demise of the cotton industry, and there is a lack of understanding between the indigenous population and the large Asian community. There are pockets of ethnic tension, particularly evident amongst young people. Building Bridges works through outreach in local schools, community groups, regular inter faith discussion meetings and also through the establishment of a faith-oriented resource and information centre, available to the whole community.

The work of Building Bridges is primarily education and outreach, but there are other ways to achieve this. For example, Luton Inter Faith Forum, which operates in an area affected by poor housing, overcrowding, low educational attainment and unemployment. Relations between different racial groups in the town are difficult, with very little interaction between the communities. Together with Luton Council, local firms and an SRB partnership, the project is attempting to bring these groups together to achieve urban regeneration. Over the past three years, the Forum has gained recognition for its vital expertise in building social cohesion.

Even where there is good will between faith groups, relationships can suffer from the widespread ignorance of the traditions and needs of the different groups.

Through our development programme, we were one of the sponsors of the Inter Faith Network’s Local Inter Faith Guide, produced in association with the Inner Cities Religious Council. This gives information on how to work with different faiths in each area. This is an important step along the road to involving members of all faiths in urban regeneration so that the whole community may be represented. This is a good start in beginning to help build the capacity of inter faith groups and councils to engage in urban regeneration. Part of this capacity building must be our willingness to share knowledge and to open doors for faith partners who have so far been denied access.

To encourage this to happen in the context of regeneration, CUF and the New Economics Foundation have been running a series of workshops, entitled Taking Part. They aim to help local people and religious organisations to participate more effectively in regeneration and other partnerships with the authorities by sharing experience, building skills and confidence and providing information about the processes and funding.

What are the pitfalls?

So far I have spoken positively about the emerging role for faith communities in social inclusion and urban regeneration. I would however also like to raise a few words of caution. Faith communities are clearly enjoying a greater degree of recognition that ever before across all our political parties. We cannot and should not take this for granted in the future. We must, as I have already said, be guided by our own agenda. An agenda which I believe must necessarily be more radical and passionate about justice and equity than any government policy might hope to achieve. This is the critical cutting edge which defines us in our own communities and the wider voluntary sector.

We must define and stick to our own message. Power may corrupt, or it may just take our eye off the ball. Despite the wider awareness of disadvantage and in particular how this impacts on black and minority ethnic communities we continue to be critically aware of new and emerging government policies which do little to inspire confidence in our communities. The current thinking on immigration and asylum, criminal justice, and education are good examples. Yes there is much to be done in seeking to enrich the urban regeneration agenda but let us not stop there.

Faith groups, and in particular faith groups which are in direct contact with the alienated and disadvantaged groups in our society, have much to contribute in helping to create well thought through policies and in being prepared to swim against the tide when necessary. And we need to say these things, as faith groups, as brothers and sisters, with a united voice.

Question: It has been suggested to me by somebody fairly close to central government thinking that the mood is actually changing away from involving faith groups. Have you got any comments on that?

Angela Sarkis: I don’t know that I share that mood. What I am saying is that Government really has recognised that it is totally unable to fulfil its agenda at a local level unless it uses all of the resources it has at grass roots voluntary sector level. That is where faith groups, I think, are very strong. Now, if there is a move away from this, I think we need to be very clear from our faith perspective that we continue to speak out very loudly and keep the cutting edge that I have talked about. We won’t always be saying what government wants to hear! That may well be responsible for some of the views that you are picking up, but that is all the more reason to say them more loudly.

Question: You may recall that some 18 months ago you spoke to an employment forum in North East England. Since then it is good that the published unemployment figures have shown an improvement. Perhaps you could comment on its continuing incidence, especially in the areas that we are concerned with today.

Angela Sarkis: That has been an ongoing challenge for all of us, and I think that many of you will know of the Churches’ report on the future of work and unemployment. We know that it is an ongoing problem. Certainly from the Church Urban Fund point of view, we are very aware that, in many of our projects, the prevailing problem in many disadvantaged communities is finding good and sustainable work and projects just don’t fit the bill. We need to look at something that is longer term. This is a real challenge for government, and there are real problems in attracting certain types of employment to certain parts of the country. That is a real problem and we shouldn’t deny it and pretend it is not there. However, what is crucial from a faith perspective, is that we are seeking to build the capacity of local areas where finding employment is difficult.

If I could just give you quickly one tangible example. In the Church Urban Fund, we have recently launched an initiative looking at the ex-coalfield areas, which are affected by mass unemployment – looking at raising the capacity at local level and actually re-skilling local people to be more flexible and more adaptable about the types of employment that they are able to take. I know that is a small drop in the ocean but we need to have more and more of those initiatives. Ultimately, working together, we do need to keep our critical edge by pressuring government to continue to try and ensure that work - and good work - is attracted to the most disadvantaged areas in this country.

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