Posted by Professor Amelia Lake, Fuse Deputy Director, and Professor of Public Health Nutrition at Teesside University
How do we create a future where every child has access to healthy, affordable food?
That question took centre stage at the British Nutrition Foundation annual conference, which brought together academics, policymakers, and practitioners to tackle one of the most pressing public health challenges of our time: improving the diets of children and young people.
The event was given a special highlight with the attendance of Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, Patron of the British Nutrition Foundation, who delivered a powerful address on the importance of food in society and education.
Professor Amelia Lake and collegues meeting Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal
Children’s health and children’s diets are hugely important. Yet, rising rates of obesity, food insecurity, and exposure to unhealthy food environments challenge the ability to have affordable and healthy food.
This conference explored both the challenges and solutions, offering evidence-based insights and practical strategies.
I spoke in the morning session alongside my Fuse colleague Professor Greta Defeyter (Northumbria University) and Professor Maria Bryant (University of York). A great representation of Northern University academics!
Profs Maria Bryant, Greta Defeyter, Amelia Lake (L-R)
Our morning session had a very special guest in the audience, Patron of the British Nutrition Foundation, Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal. Earlier the speakers were invited to meet The Princess Royal and individually talk to her about our work. A good ear for accents, Her Royal Highness. quickly recognised I wasn’t a Teesside native. Those who know me will be aware that I am from Northern Ireland, and I very much sound like I am.
My talk was titled: “Unpacking the Food Environment: Implications for Children and Families” and I discussed Healthy Planning and was able to introduce the audience not just to our academic evidence but also our evidence informed free online training on the topic aimed both at public health and planning teams in local authorities.
I presented our recent ‘Dark Kitchens’ research. The rise of online meal delivery and “dark kitchens” is reshaping how families access food, increasing exposure to calorie-dense options at the click of a button and increasing the availability of accessibility of less-healthy food choices.
While planning allows us to shape our food environment there is much we can do around food retail to create healthier food environments. I discussed some findings from our Fuse Foodscape study funded by the NIHR School for Public Health Research.
We cannot describe the food environment without acknowledging that many households face significant barriers to accessing affordable, healthy food, with direct consequences for children’s health and wellbeing. Food insecurity is real and affects families across the UK. At Teesside, we have worked with communities and organisations using innovative methods to produce healthy food within local social supermarkets such as our healthy ready meal.
Amelia speaking at the event
I called for stronger planning policies and interventions to create healthier food environments, emphasising the importance of collaboration between communities, professionals within local authorities, government and industry.
Improving dietary health isn’t simply about individual choice - it’s about transforming the food environments in which those choices are made.
Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal has been patron of the British Nutrition Foundation since 1988 and delivered a powerful speech at the conference, emphasising the importance of food in society and within education. Her remarks reinforced the British Nutrition Foundation’s mission to ensure every family can access a healthy, sustainable diets.
The conference showcased many impactful speakers and left us with the key message that Nourishing our tomorrow, needs to start today.
Posted by Laura Navin, Health and Social Care student, Northumbria University
Picture by Laura Navin
Negative media representations of disabled people still exist in society and this needs to be addressed. I have dyspraxia which is a learning difficulty, and I sometimes struggle with my co-ordination, communication, processing and speed but it has not stopped me from achieving my goals!
In the media, disability tends to be portrayed through a medical or deficit model, with disabled people often treated as pathetic.1,2,3 TV charity shows such as Children in Need encourage pity for disabled people2 and people with disabilities are still seen as “the heavy burden of care”; “the helpless victim”.3 Yet even when well-meaning, encouraging pity is discriminatory as it creates stereotypical and negative assumptions about disabled people2. These negative representations can decrease a disabled person’s self-esteem and make them feel like they are not part of society.1,4
The issue is heightened by the absence of disabled people and their voices within mainstream media which might help to reclaim the narrative and counter negative stereotypes. As Caroline Casey, founder of The Valuable 500, a global movement putting disability on the business leadership agenda, has suggested “from daytime TV to adverts on social media, to the articles which publications run, representation and visibility of persons with disabilities simply does not reflect our society”. This was brought to light recently for example, when Sia’s decision to cast a neurotypical actress in the role of an autistic female protagonist in her upcoming film was widely criticised.
There are more positive portrayals of disability in the media however. Harry Potter star, Daniel Radcliffe has dyspraxia and acted as an inspiration to many when saying, “do not let it stop you. It has never held me back.”. In 2018, Lee Ridley from the North East won Britain’s Got Talent and in 2021, EastEnders star Rose Ayling-Ellis became the first deaf contestant on Strictly Come Dancing. Even these more positive representations are emblematic of the failure to represent disabled people as everyday, ordinary citizens however. As Lee Ridley claims, “Our government has a very weird relationship with disabled people. We are either seen as superhuman or as some sort of burden”.
Portrayals of disabled people as a burden on society have been shown throughout both austerity and the Coronavirus pandemic. Disabled people have been mocked as ‘scroungers’ in television shows and newspapers, with arguments that incapacity benefit had become a ‘lifestyle choice’ for the lazy, and that a disability benefit crisis was responsible for the UK economic crash resulting in the disproportionate targeting of disabled people within austerity measures.5,6 Covid has been argued to be one of the biggest media outbreaks medicalising disabled people.1,7 During the pandemic, disabled people were seen as ‘vulnerable’ and had to isolate from society.5,8 ‘Vulnerable’ is a label that is often rejected by people with disabilities and its adoption does not portray the importance of disabled people’s rights and viewpoints.9 Labels such as ‘vulnerable’ or ‘immunocompromised’ when used to explain differential susceptibility to illness have also been argued to result in an unreasonable, unpleasant message about the value of disabled people’s lives. The sunflower lanyard which could be worn by disabled people to show they were exempt from wearing face masks helped in some ways to increase disability awareness and create more understanding, support and respect towards disabled people. However, this is another form of labelling, and not all disabled people want to identify their disability to the world. Greater understanding and training on disability ethics is urgently needed to avoid this sort of discrimination and support disabled rights more systemically.9,10
It is also important that disabled voices are heard in society and that the media represents disabled people in a more positive light. Sometimes when I tell people about my dyspraxia they feel pity for me, but this is not what I want. I am telling my story to inspire others, not create sympathy, so please do not feel sad for me, feel happy for me! I have succeeded in my academic studies and graduated from university with second-class honours as a student with dyspraxia. I have been involved in podcasts and dissertation writing to raise my voice as a disabled person and in doing so I hope to give others the confidence to do the same. I am now studying for a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) to teach health and social care. I hope to continue to raise my voice and to inspire others.
Part of our Fuse blog Student Series
The Fuse blog Student Series showcases posts by students who have been challenged to write a blog as part of their studies at one of the universities in the Fuse collaboration, the NIHR School for Public Health Research, or perhaps further afield. The authors may be new to blogging and we hope to provide a 'safe space' for the students to explore their subject and find their voice in the world of public health research.
The views and opinions expressed by the author are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Northumbria University or Fuse, the Centre for Translational Research in Public Health.
References
1) Cameron, C. (2014) Disability Studies: A student’s guide. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
2) Barnes, C. (1992) Disabling imagery and the media: an exploration of the principles for media representations of disabled people. Halifax, England: The British Council of Organisations and Disabled People and Ryburn Publishing Limited.
3) Goethals, T. et al. (2020) ‘I am not your metaphor: frames and counter-frames in the representation of disability’, Disability & Society, 12 (1), pp.1-19. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2020.1836478.
5) Ryan, F. (2019) Crippled: austerity and the demonization of disabled people. London: Verso.
6) Briant, E. et al. (2013) ‘Reporting disability in the age of austerity: the changing face of media representation of disability and disabled people in the United Kingdom and the creation of new ‘folk devils’, Disability & Society, 28 (6), pp.874-889. DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2013.813837.
7) Shakespeare, T. et al. (2021) ‘Triple jeopardy: disabled people and the COVID-19 pandemic’, The Lancet, 397(10282), pp.1331-1333. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00625-5.
8) Courtenay, K. and Perera, B. (2020) ‘COVID-19 and people with intellectual disability: impacts of a pandemic’, Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, 37, pp.231-236. DOI: 10.1017/ipm.2020.45.
9) Singh, S. (2020) ‘Disability ethics in the coronavirus crisis’, Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care, 9 (5), pp.2167-2171. DOI: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_588_20.
10) McLean, S. and Williamson, L. (2007) Impairment and disability: Law and ethics at the beginning and end of life. Oxon: Routledge-Cavendish.
Posted by Stephen Crossley, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, Northumbria University
On this day, 17th October, in 1987, at the instigation Father Joseph Wresinski, the founder of ATD Fourth World, an anti-poverty movement, around 100,000 people congregated in Paris to honour victims of poverty, hunger, violence and fear. Five years later, and following the death of Father Wresinski, the United Nations announced the day as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, and published a resolution by the General Assembly that, amongst other things, ‘invited all states to devote the day to presenting and promoting, as appropriate in the national context, concrete activities with regard to the eradication of poverty and destitution’.
This year is the 27th anniversary of that resolution and the theme of this year’s observance is ‘Acting Together to Empower Children, their Families and Communities to End Poverty’. Themes such as this matter. How people in poverty are spoken about has consequences for how they are viewed, and the solutions that are put forward to address poverty. Discourses of empowerment are often used by governments and service providers to encourage people to view themselves as active agents with the ability, if not the responsibility, to change their circumstances for the better. This reflects attention away from what governments themselves can do.
In an examination of ‘dimensions of family empowerment’ within the ‘troubled families’ discourse in England, Sue Bond-Taylor (2014) highlights the merging of empowerment talk with encouraging families to take responsibility for both their situation and the improvement of it. This occurs not only in the ‘troubled families’ discourse, but also in the practices of family workers, suggesting that families are empowered ‘only in so much as they are compliant and accept the normalising discourses of the services through engagement with their agendas for change’ (2014: 12). She argues that families’ participation in the programme ‘merely legitimates existing power relations under a veneer of empowerment discourses’ (2014: 8).
In another similar research project examining how education services engaged with disadvantaged families, Fretwell et al (2018: 1056) highlight how a project exhorted parents to take greater responsibility for the educational performance of their children and to take measures to address it. Notions of empowerment were deployed, particularly when discussing employment:
This aspect of the programme was couched in a discourse of empowerment. The parameters of choice are firmly circumscribed, though. Parents can choose which activities to pursue, but they are not free to choose just anything; they must make the right choices. Empowerment is thus restricted to making choices within conditional limits and is itself a strategy of government; a sanctioned means for producing the kind of active citizen demanded by neoliberalism (2018: 1056).
One of the most powerful organisations in the world
is encouraging us to 'act together' to end poverty
It is therefore interesting, perhaps even worrying, to note that one of the most powerful organisations in the world, made up of over 190 national governments, is encouraging us to ‘act together’ to ‘empower children, their families and communities to end poverty’, as if the responsibility for ending poverty lies primarily with ‘us’ as individuals or with the people experiencing poverty. Not only are impoverished groups expected to deal with and be ‘resilient’ about their own hardship, and the problems that come with it, but they’re now also expected to be the solution. Nelson Mandela argued powerfully that overcoming poverty was an act of justice, not a gesture of charity, and John Veit-Wilson (2000, 144) has noted that the responsibility for ending poverty ultimately rests with governments:
“Ensuring that all the members of society, residents in or citizens of a nation state, have enough money is a clear role which governments can adopt or reject, but they cannot deny they have the ultimate power over net income distribution.”
It is shameful that this is where we are at in 2019. Poverty continues to exist because of political and economic decisions, by powerful groups, regarding the allocation of resources, both nationally and globally. Impoverished communities lack political power because they lack economic power. Nobody feels the need to empower millionaires or politicians to take greater control of their lives. Perhaps if we increased the economic power of those living in poverty, we might find that they were more fully able to participate in society and there might be less need for ‘empowering’ projects and services. That would be the responsible thing to do.
Stephen is currently working with Kayleigh Garthwaite (University of Birmingham) and Ruth Patrick (University of York) on an online project exploring representations of people living in poverty in the UK. This blog also appears on their website www.whatstheproblem.org.uk
References:
Bond-Taylor, S. (2015) Dimensions of Family Empowerment in Work with So-Called ‘Troubled’ Families, Social Policy and Society, 14 (3): 371-384. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746414000359
Fretwell, N., Osgood, J., O’Toole, G. and Tsouroufli, M. Governing through trust: Community‐based link workers and parental engagement in education, British Educational Research Journal, 44 (6): 1047-1063. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3478
Veit-Wilson J (2000) Horses for Discourses: poverty, purpose and closure in minimum incomes standards policy. In: Gordon D and Townsend P (eds) Breadline Europe: The Measurement of Poverty. The Policy Press, Bristol, pp 141-164. https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/breadline-europe
'I like the campaign so far, Bob- I've already made my poverty history' by David Austin via University of Kent, British Cartoon Archive (Reference number: 86494, Published by: The Guardian, 02 July 2005, with thanks to Copyright holder: Janet Slee): https://archive.cartoons.ac.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=86494
“It’s time to act! It’s time this country gave every child the right to food!” Such a powerful statement. But, these aren’t the words of a politician addressing Parliament or a celebrity on a new mission to make a difference. These are the words of Corey - a 15-year-old, Young Food Ambassador who sat on a stage in Westminster and bravely told an audience about her experiences of food insecurity. As a carer for her disabled mum, Corey takes responsibility for making sure her family have access to food by collecting food parcels when needed and sharing her own meals to make sure there is enough food to go around.
This was just one account shared at the launch of the Children’s Future Food Inquiry report on 25 April 2019. As a researcher involved in work around food insecurity, I was invited to attend this event. I’ve been fortunate enough to attend lots of fantastic events on children’s food in recent years, but this one was by far the most thought-provoking.
The event attracted some high profile speakers, including Children’s Future Food Inquiry Ambassador, Dame Emma Thompson. She spoke passionately about the need for us as adults to listen to what children are saying about their circumstances and take action to make a change. Children and Families Minister, Nadhim Zahawi, also addressed the audience acknowledging the importance of children’s views. But then came what Dame Emma Thompson described as “the real VIPs” and six Young Food Ambassadors took to the stage and I was blown away!
I was struck by the confidence and clarity with which these young people spoke. They weren’t there telling their stories to gain sympathy; they meant business and were there to demand action. They gave accounts of parents who struggled to make ends meet, working yet still unable to attain a healthy diet. They questioned the motives of a society where unhealthy food is promoted to them through shiny promotions and easy access. They highlighted the stigma associated with food insecurity and the need to reduce this within food systems set up to support them. These young people know what they should be eating but have had enough of not being able to access it.
The young people highlighted policies and practices that hinder their access to healthy food. Policies and practices that were probably implemented by adults. As adults, I think we have a responsibility to use the knowledge, skills and resources we have to support young people to make a change, but this needs to be done with input from the young people who are affected by these changes.
Young Food Ambassadors talk about their experiences
A great example of the difference that can be made when children are listened to was described by Richard ‘Beef’ Frankland from Prospex Youth Centre (who stars in the film above). He talked about how the staff at the youth centre began providing toast and progressed to cooking full meals, all at the request of the young people. The young people are also growing herbs, trying new foods and learning about where their food comes from in response to their queries about why the vegetables being prepared for cooking at the youth centre are covered in soil. From research I’ve worked on previously around breakfast and holiday clubs, I know that Beef’s work is just one example of the difference school and community groups are making by listening to the needs of those they are working with.
I left the event wanting to do more. Reading the Children’s Future Food Inquiry report on the way home, I found that research I’ve been involved in with the Healthy Living lab at Northumbria University had been cited. It’s always nice to see your work cited, knowing it’s not filed away unread, but this occasion was bitter sweet. Children are still going hungry and missing out on valuable nutritious food so there’s still more work to do. Going forward, I’m keen to do more research around food insecurity involving young people and people like Beef, who know their communities and are committed to making a difference.
Posted by Mandy Cheetham, Research Associate, Teesside University and colleagues.
I listened to the budget in October 2018 in anticipation of an announcement about Universal Credit. We had just completed a study commissioned by Gateshead Council about the impact of the roll out of Universal Credit. I had been profoundly moved by the accounts of Universal Credit claimants with health conditions and disabilities who participated in the research. In a budget for “strivers, grafters and carers”, Philip Hammond announced that the “period of austerity was coming to an end”. He promised an additional £1 billion over five years to ‘smooth the transition’ to Universal Credit. Despite acknowledging “genuine concerns” about implementation of the programme, “Universal Credit is here to stay” Hammond asserted.
Two weeks after the budget announcement, I had the pleasure of meeting Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, who was visiting the North East as part of his UK tour. We presented the findings of the Universal Credit research and he asked probing questions about the implications. We were not alone in drawing attention to concerns about the adverse effects of Universal Credit on people with disabilities. A statement of Alston’s conclusions can be found here.
Our research report was published on 15 November and the findings covered by the Guardian and Independent newspapers, local radio and television news. Doctors’ concerns about Universal Credit were also highlighted in a British Medical Journal feature which cites our research.
The research team and Gateshead's Director of Public Health have received emails from people sharing their experiences and thanking us for raising this important subject. It has been highlighted by the Association of Directors of Public Health. I have met with local MPs, elected members, and senior managers in the Council and voluntary sector in Gateshead where I work as an embedded researcher. The findings have been shared with Department for Work and Pensions staff and we have been invited to the House of Lords. This kind of (inter)national interest is rare and a bit overwhelming! The research was made possible, because Gateshead Council commissioned it. Independent academic research of this kind is essential if we are to understand the impact of government policy on North East communities.
The findings raise questions (again) about public health advocacy and research. What is our role if not to work with communities whose voices are often unheard or ignored in policy to enable their views and experiences to contribute to debates (Smith and Stewart 2017[1]). This research demonstrates the power those voices can have when assembled using robust qualitative research methods and in the absence of any other data. The policy changes taking place under the guise of welfare ‘reform’ present huge challenges to public health and wider efforts to address health inequalities. If Universal Credit continues to be rolled out, vulnerable claimants will continue to endure hardship and destitution. Suicide rates will rise and the human and financial costs to the health and social care system will increase. As public health researchers, we have a duty to raise awareness of the effects of a policy which is undermining the health and wellbeing, employment prospects, food, financial and housing security of the most vulnerable people in society. It remains to be seen whether the government is listening to a growing body of evidence (Arie 2018[2], Cheetham et al 2018[3], Walton 2018[4]) about the impact of Universal Credit or whether, as Philip Alston (2018: 1) observed, ministers will continue to dismiss concerns and doggedly resist change in response to the many problems highlighted.
Mandy will present her research at the Fuse Quarterly Research Meeting: The impact of Universal Credit on health & wellbeing in Gateshead. Find out more on the Fuse website.
About the authors:
Dr Mandy Cheetham Research Associate, Teesside University
Dr Suzanne Moffatt Reader in Social Gerontology, Newcastle University
Dr Michelle Addison Research Associate, Newcastle University
Alice Wiseman, FFPH, Director of Public Health Gateshead Council
The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the author's employer or organisation.
References:
Smith and Stewart (2017) Academic advocacy in public health: Disciplinary 'duty' or political 'propaganda'? Social Science and Medicine Sep;189:35-43. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.07.014. Epub 2017 Jul 21.
Arie, S. (2018) Doctors concerns over universal credit are mounting BMJ 363: doi: 10.1136/bmj.k5131 5th December
Walton, E. (2018) Life and Times A truth universally acknowledged: moving to Universal Credit leads to large debt and poor mental health British Journal of General Practice 68 (677): 577. doi: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp18X699977.
Posted by Natalie Forster, Senior Research Assistant at Northumbria University and Fuse, and Helen Jones, CEO, Leeds Gypsy and Traveller Exchange
Fascination. Not the word you expected? Then read on to find out why we find it so problematic when people say they are ‘fascinated by’ Gypsy and Traveller Communities.
We frequently hear ‘fascination’ cited as a motivation for
working with Traveller Communities by practitioners
What though are the implications of this issue for health practitioners, researchers and the public? Of course, we recognise that many of our colleagues share our aversion to programmes such as Big Fat Gypsy Weddings and the hugely problematic representations of communities that these advance. Yet, the underpinning premise of these shows remain unchallenged by many, and we frequently hear ‘fascination’ cited as a motivation for working with Traveller Communities by practitioners.
Why do we feel uncomfortable when someone says they are ‘fascinated by’ Traveller Communities? The use of ‘fascination’ echoes the voyeuristic sentiment of many television programmes and reinforces notions of Traveller Community members as exotic and worthy of special attention or interest. When mentioning working with Traveller Communities, the very reference to these groups often appears to prompt greater interest, but why should this be the case?
It is problematic, we think, in its divisiveness; in the impression it gives of Traveller Communities as mysterious and ‘other’, and a community that ‘outsiders’ can only look into. This downplays the possibilities for seeing commonalities between Traveller Communities and other sections of society – Gypsies and Travellers are seen less as people ‘like us’, facing similar experiences or challenges in life, and more as groups we should find out ‘about’ or gather information ‘on’.
A sense of fascination also seems to shift the motivation away from the interests of Gypsy and Traveller Communities themselves, and towards fulfilling the agenda of those working with these groups. A desire to satisfy one’s own curiosity about Traveller Communities can result in questions that are insensitive, such as those about the cost of someone’s caravan, or aspects of culture that are unconnected with the purpose of a visit.
It is for these reasons that we call for the reconsideration of the use of ‘fascination’ in relation to Traveller Communities and other groups who are seldom heard, as well as for greater questioning of the assumptions that lie behind this term, and the interests it truly serves.
Posted by Peter van der Graaf, AskFuse Research Manager, Teesside University
Last week, I presented at the UK Knowledge Mobilisation Forum in Bristol, which is an annual event for all those with a passion for ensuring that knowledge makes a positive difference to society. The Forum brings together practitioners, researchers, students, administrators and public representatives who are engaged in the art and science of sharing knowledge and ensuring that it can be used.
One of the key note speaker, Dez Holmes who is the Director of Research in Practice with 20 years of experience in championing evidence-informed practice in social care, vented her frustration about a question she was often asked by people interested in knowledge mobilisation (KMb): where can I access training in this? Her response: you can’t! Knowledge sharing is personal and therefore a social skill that you can only develop by practising it.
The skills needed to practice KMb are everyday skills, such as listening, emotional intelligence and persuasion. Reciprocity and mutual respect are crucial in relationships and therefore in knowledge mobilisation. Knowledge mobilisers use these skills to make knowledge relatable and therefore relevant to people’s lives. Dez used a Japanese word to sum up these skills: ‘ikigai’ (meaning “reason for being”): if we can’t relate knowledge to people’s sense of self they won’t be inclined to use it.
Acknowledging feelings in knowledge mobilisation is therefore important, not least because implementation barriers for knowledge are often personal. Dez quoted the common misperception between practitioners and academics that are at the heart of the so-called knowledge-to-action gap: “scientist blame the stubbornness of practitioners for insisting on doing it their way, believing they know their patients best, while practitioners lamented the smugness of scientists who believe that if they publish it practitioners will use it”. These misperceptions signify emotions at work in the knowledge gap that need to be addressed before we can start mobilising knowledge.
A great example of on the job knowledge mobilisation learning was captured in a story told by Vicky Ward, Associate Professor in Knowledge Mobilisation at Leeds University and one of the organisers of the Forum, who reflected on her research about knowledge sharing between professionals in social care. The story, titled ‘Dealing with the carousal of knowledge’, illustrates how practitioners continuously added new and different types of knowledge to their team meetings but never really made use of this knowledge until Vicky started asking some ‘constructively clue less’ questions. These questions helped them to recognise the emotions they attached to the client cases that they were discussing and enabled them to discover patterns in their carousel of knowledge. Identifying patterns allowed the professionals to select knowledge that was most useful for each case and made this knowledge transferable.
The conference format itself acknowledged the relational and context-specific work involved in knowledge mobilisation: participants were encouraged to hone their skills in randomised coffee trials, open space discussions, interactive poster sessions, market stalls, short presentations and practical, interactive workshops. The programme was deliberately based on ‘unconference’ principles, which means that it focused on offering opportunities for conversations, creativity and collaborative learning, with much of the direction being driven by the participants instead of the conference organisers. In this sense, the conference was a training ground for knowledge mobilisers to practice and learn new skills.
Guest post by Stephen Crossley, Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at Northumbria University
With Hallowe’en nearly upon us, many parents will be telling their children tales of ghouls and ghosts that can be found in haunted houses. Adults will entertain themselves by watching horror movies and other productions where other-worldly creatures and monsters intrude upon peaceful and civilised spaces to threaten the status quo and the existing order of things. Most of us know that ghosts, spirits, and the like are the stuff of legend and lore and tend not to believe the mythology associated with them. But many people in contemporary society do believe in myths about groups of people that are different to the rest of ‘us’, who exhibit different social norms and values to the mainstream population, and who invoke fear and dread in many of us. Many people watch the behaviour of ‘the underclass’,[1] in the name of entertainment, with a mixture of fear, horror, fascination, and contempt. The ‘underclass’, it is believed, can be found in certain locations. There is a long history to such beliefs.
William Hogarth's depiction of London vice, Gin Lane.
In Victorian times, the middle and upper classes of London spent a great deal of time going ‘slumming’, visiting poorer parts of the East End for various reasons, including their amusement and titillation, and for philanthropic and journalistic purposes.[2] In 1883, George Sims, an English poet, journalist, dramatist and novelist, began his book How the Poor Live by inviting the reader to go a journey with him, not across oceans or land, but ‘into a region which lies at our own doors – into a dark continent that is within easy walking distance of the General Post Office’.[3] Sims hoped that this continent would be:
As interesting as any of those newly-explored lands which engage the attention of the Royal Geographic Society – the wild races who inhabit it will, I trust, gain public sympathy as easily as those savage tribes for whose benefit the Missionary Societies never cease to appeal for funds.
William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army argued in 1890 that certain areas of London were like parts of Africa that had just been discovered by explorers such as Henry Morton Stanley Africa, and were similarly full of primitives and savages. In 1977, the sociologist E.V. Walter noted that, whilst such beliefs had changed somewhat, traces of them remained:
In all parts of the world, some urban spaces are identified totally with danger, pain and chaos. The idea of dreadful space is probably as old as settled societies, and anyone familiar with the records of human fantasy, literary or clinical, will not dispute a suggestion that the recesses of the mind conceal primeval feelings that respond with ease to the message: ‘Beware that place: untold evils lurk behind the walls’. Cursed ground, forbidden forests, haunted houses are still universally recognised symbols, but after secularisation and urbanisation, the public expression of magical thinking limits the experience of menacing space to physical and emotional dangers.[4]
Indeed, in recent times, the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Ian Duncan Smith argued that the television programme Benefits Street offered the middle classes a window into the ‘twilight world’ of neighbourhoods where many people received financial support from the state.[5] The ‘twilight world’ of welfare dependency that Duncan Smith refers to elicits feelings of mystery, anxiety, and the unfamiliar, feelings of nervous excitement that the original social explorers must have felt in the late nineteenth century or what middle class travellers of today might experience whilst ‘doing the slum’ on foreign holidays.
Whilst the words have changed slightly, the myth of a dangerous ‘underclass’ who dwell in ‘dreadful enclosures’ or ‘sink estates’, and who represent a threat to wider society remains. If we want a real horror story for Hallowe’en, we need look no further than how large sections of society view a mythical ‘underclass’ and how they view the places associated with impoverished communities.
John Welshman, Underclass: A History of the Excluded Since 1880 (2nd edition), London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London, Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2004.
George Sims, How the poor live, London: Chatto & Windus, 1883, p1.
E.V. Walter, Dreadful Enclosures: Detoxifying and Urban Myth, European Journal of Sociology, Vol. 18, No. 1 (1977), p 154.
BBC News online, Benefits Street reaction shows poor 'ghettoised', says Duncan Smith, 23 January 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25866259 [Accessed 27 November 2016]
