What happened to those kids?
Reflecting on my 3 year project in North Philadelphia in 1996-8 #DeemingDreaming30Years
The following continues my reflections on my 30 years working professionally. #DeemingDreaming30Years. Post 5.
I was speaking to a retired Scottish Social Worker recently. She and I both shared the frustration at the big talk of the Scottish government related to children’s services, the copious amount of policy papers that sound AMAZING and the exceptional lack of investment and action where it counts. The failure to follow what works, what has worked, in light of ‘the next best thing’. The stats on education and health amongst children in Scotland in the past 15 years is damning indeed.
She spoke of the BIG ROOM where all these papers are housed, a library of utopian aspirations to model Alexandrian proportions. One thing is for certain Scotland certainly holds up a tradition of writers as these tomes suggest, but not for good reasons. She spoke of her despair, of how children she knew were failed and that she was made impotent to do anything about it. More papers, more meetings, more consultations, more quangos ad infinitum. With nothing left to do, she retired.
Metaphorically it reminds me of how Glasgow got rid of it’s tram system with the notion of the ‘cars being the future’ and cut motorways through thriving neighbourhoods. It seems we do not learn. In particular in important matters of preservation.
And whilst we can bemoan the lack of efficiency of the Scottish transportation system it’s failures are miniscule in comparison to the harms that can be done to children and our decisions therein.
I often refer to my local play park which has been broken for years. Yet every school in Scotland is educating kids on the ‘UN Rights of the Child’ (at £800 per school to become a ‘rights respecting school as if kids can magic up play equipment just by asserting their ‘right to play’. It’s such a slight of hand which will lead to a lot of frustration… and more.
Scotland is not alone in this. Between 1996-1998 I ran an Afterschool Performance and Creativity project for the Philadelphia Department of Recreation in North Philadelphia. This area has been blighted by poverty and violence for decades. Back then there was no internet, and drive by shootings were so frequent it never made the news. Arriving at the Community Centre, a concrete bunker that smelled of urine and had no windows I was not surprised when the children would share stories of people they knew being shot, of kids being made parentless and being passed to relatives, of violence of all sorts that even now breaks my heart.
There were good people trying to do good stuff. And of course I have to acknowledge the same goes for here in Scotland. There are good people amongst the dross. Good people who strive to do better in real terms in the face of endless bureaucracy and politics.
I was hailed for the work I did. I worked in three different locations 2 days a week for 3 years. I delivered workshops which led to performances the children did with enthusiasm. Work they (and I) were proud of.
Recently I found a big stack of evaluations from some of my sessions.
Going through my archive I am reminded what fun we had, what extraordinary creativity and promise each of those children held in the midst of chaos.
I also found this.
I remember that meeting. It felt really hopeful. The work I was doing was good. It was giving kids an island in the storm. It showed them life could be different. It could be fun and creative and safe. And that they could do that and be that.
Recently many videos have surfaced from the area I worked in North Philadelphia. The videos are called ‘Philadelphia Zombies’ as residents have fallen into the opioid epidemic. This makes me so very sad as I recall the hundreds of kids I worked with and how easily it could be one of them on the street. And it might. And I reflect on how whatever it was they took from that “Stop Violence” meeting that clearly did not work as they area faces greater blight then it ever did.
I hope (and I will never know) that the time I gave to them gave them a taste of what it means to check in through their own creative power rather then check out through artificial substances. Like that retired social worker, it’s all I can do- deliver something good, fun and true in the moment. And maybe that will be enough to buoy them in rough waters.
It seems in the face of our governments failing their roles as preservers of our children’s lives, we must become the ballast in whatever way we can.
#DeemingDreaming30Years
#DeemingDreaming