Hope in Gipton, hope in Leeds

I recently met with Jane Stageman, who represents Leeds City Council and Becky Malby, director at the Centre for Innovation in Health Management (CIHM) at the University of Leeds. Our aim was to discuss leadership work in the city. The meeting flowed with ideas and visions for the future. I've written this post as a way to recall the discussions and offer them as ways forward to a better, brighter city for all.

Becky shared the work of project called Action for Gipton Elderly which she had recently visited. 

This project seeks to offer support and care for the elderly who live in the Gipton area. It works to make sure elderly people have food in cold icy weather when they cannot venture out. It coordinates a team of volunteers who visit the elderly and it has an arrangement with local fish and chip shops to provide some free meals. The link to health and wellbeing is clear. Elderly people are offered contact and support and loneliness is challenged by community action. Elderly people will have fewer falls and possibly fewer hospital admissions as they won't have to venture outdoors in ice and snow to buy food and milk. They will also have local people to call if they have issues and difficulties. This is real community action in practice. It tells us that people and communities have answers and assets that we need to hear and support. Local answers from local people are a powerful health and wellbeing force. These projects also tell us something about what we human beings can do and be at our best - that we can care, organise and change things. The greatest enemy of human development is the attitude and spirit that says it can't be done or won't work. Projects like this say that it can and is being done, and the effect is the improved health and wellbeing of our elderly people.

The vision we talked of was around the concept of Leeds as an international centre of culture. This discussion led us to ask what 'good culture' or 'best culture' looks like. Is it nice statues or beautiful buildings? Is it well kept parks or first rate arts productions? Of course it is. Yet it has to be something more - something much more. In its last days, Ancient Rome had fine temples, buildings and sports, yet it was collapsing from within. No one was or is suggesting that Leeds is collapsing from within but what we did see in the discussion was that good culture was that which values and inspires people. The best culture is one where people can dream, hope and have compassion.

We have a real need to dream. Albert Einstein, probably the greatest scientist of the 20th century once said that, 'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.' This is so important as it calls us to use our imagination to forge our future and plans. It's not without significance that the great Martin Luther King didn't say 'I have a policy' or 'I have a document', but rather 'I have a dream.' Hope is key too, but what is hope? We venture the answer that hope is the belief that we can work things through and make things better, despite whatever might block us or stand in our way. In the ancient world and in works like Aesop's fables, hope was represented by the swallow. This is because the swallow was seen as one of the first birds that appeared at the end of winter and the start of spring. Lastly is compassion, hearing the call of another and respond from the heart to them in their need. For us to be a centre of culture is to be a city that engenders and inspires these qualities. If we create a city of hope, compassion and imagination, that would be a city where the best in humankind will be at the centre of all we try to do and great culture will be second nature.

We so often hear that a society and humankind can be measured by how it treats its elderly. All across the city, people and communities are committing to projects that place elderly people at their centre. In Beeston, Nicola Dumphy has embarked on a project that supports the people with dementia (and their carers), and aims to build a supportive and connected dementia friendly city. This project will change the experience of living with dementia in Leeds for many by inspiring co-produced services that meet the needs of the city. Projects like these are conceived and thrive on hope, compassion and imagination. In embracing these as a city we can hold our heads high when others, as well as ourselves, look to measure our society and our culture.

The community initiative in Gipton, the commitment to build a dementia friendly city and the vision of good culture for Leeds are part of what this city offers to its people. Leeds is changing all around us. Great people are doing amazing things. This is both a sign and a source of our future. If we can do this now, what else can we achieve in the future? What would our city, a centre of culture look like? We hope this article can be a contribution to why and how we can create those cultures, conversations and communities where people care, hope and dream.

John Walsh, York Street Health Practice

Natalie Leach, Centre For Innovation In Health Management

Jane Stageman, Leeds City Council