香港六合彩中特网

This article originally appeared in the 香港六合彩中特网 Policy Lab Magazine.

It can feel like the default mode of British politics in recent years is division and despair. The debate is stuck in a doom loop, a cycle of intractable problems and faltering systems.

This is why speaking to the two people leading Our Future鈥檚 transformative work in Grimsby, Emily Bolton and Jason Stockwood, is such a joy. It is a chance to break away from the doom-scrolling and charts of crisis, to glimpse and imagine a country alive with possibility.

Emily is passionate about the need to break out of the negativity and build something for the future: 鈥淭he project is about building a better future. And so, for example, if we look at housing, we are working to support building the houses of the future in a model of the future.

鈥淪o, everything is about building the future. And that doesn鈥檛 mean that today鈥檚 issues don鈥檛 need to be fixed, but it does mean we can try to break out of that cycle.鈥�

Grimsby is a special place. This part of North Lincolnshire is flat, and the skies go on forever, where the Humber Wash meets the fens and the North Sea beyond. The town, so long the home to the English fishing fleet, has been hit hard by changes to the industry and a shift in economic fortunes

Lab鈥檚 Ordinary Hope project wants to learn from, as we seek new ideas about how to tackle the entrenched disadvantages that blight so many communities in the UK today.

Key to the early success of Our Future has been working in direct partnership with the local football club, Grimsby Town, drawing on its enormous power as a civic institution trusted by many.

It is a role about which Jason Stockwood, a local Grimsby lad, hugely successful business leader and now owner of the club, was passionate about. He understood the unique role the club could play in bringing the community together.

鈥淔ootball seems to express the whole range and scope of human experience,鈥� he says. 鈥淔ootball clubs cut across politics and culture. Of course, there are lots of things wrong with football, but there is something about people coming together for something we care about collectively, in a sense of solidarity and community.鈥�

Wherever you look at the moment, you can see football providing the country with a space for national reflection. Playwright and 香港六合彩中特网 Policy Lab Hon Professor James Graham鈥檚 most recent play Dear England uses national men鈥檚 team manager, Gareth Southgate, to tell a new story of the country, questioning its past, present and future.听

Graham makes us realise that storytelling and bringing people together at an emotional level has far too often been considered secondary to the 鈥榮erious鈥� work of technical policymaking. It is a theme which appears over and again in 香港六合彩中特网 Policy Lab Director, Marc Stears鈥� work too, including as the centrepiece of his recent book, Out of the Ordinary.

Grimsby and Our Future offers another rebuke to the outdated model of policymaker that Stears鈥�

work critcises. Bolton and Stockwood show us that Westminster does not always know best, not because those working in Westminster do not care, but because people all over the country want to play their own part in reshaping the future.

In this way, the experience of Our Future also offers a way out of the division of the present. It reminds us that when you bring people together - be it community groups, national politicians, or local government 鈥� they often agree on far more than you might imagine. Making progress, is all about break down the old barriers that stop us from working together.

鈥淧eople feel like policies are done to them,鈥� says Stockwood. 鈥淵ou know, there鈥檚 no sense of, like, let鈥檚 have a conversation about what the town needs.鈥�

This does not necessarily mean that the direction of national policy is unimportant, but that we need that alongside local community voice and involvement.

鈥淚 think you need both. I think you do need a large- scale centralised government industrial strategy. But that alone doesn鈥檛 feel connected to what a community wants, then the probability of its success is significantly diminished because people don鈥檛 buy into it. And it鈥檚 so obvious to me, and I鈥檓 careful not to talk about top- down and bottom-up, it鈥檚 more about one coherent story rather than hierarchical thinking.鈥� Jason says.

Grimsby鈥檚 story is a prime example of the post-industrial decline faced in towns and cities around the world. The loss of the fishing industry led to regional economic decline, widespread unemployment and a loss of cultural confidence too.

This has led to a fundamental change in the way of life in the town as the identity and one of the backbones of community connection disappeared. The region still faces the interlinked challenges of intergenerational poverty, high unemployment, and widespread distrust

in institutions. Five wards in NE Linconshire are in the top 10% in the country鈥檚 Index of Multiple Deprivation, with two in the top 1% in England.

But a sense of purpose and hope has come with the project, a purpose grounded not in abstract slogans but in the everyday work of renewal.

鈥淣one of these communities have come here overnight. And so changing this isn鈥檛 the work of a, 15-year budget, a 15-month budget period or even a five-year parliament. It is the work of at least a decade if not decades. We must be creative about how we can sit outside government spending cycles to deliver long-term change.鈥� Emily says.

Walking around Grimsby and meeting people involved with the project and you quickly see how it has infused many with this optimism and sense of possibility. But you have to remind yourself of size of the task ahead. As Bolton says, this isn鈥檛 a two or even five-year project; it has taken decades to get here and it鈥檒l take decades to rebuild. But you do not doubt the community is up for it. Emily Bolton and Jason Stockwood are just two of the committed players on the team.

Stockwood does not shy away from the challenges, but is clear about the joy of collaborating on this kind of shared vision: 鈥淲orking with Emily in the friendship we have in the partnership and wisdom that she has that I鈥檓 learning from... [and] the depth of the relationships

to a place I love dearly, reconnecting with my town, with my tribe, with my people, my friends, my family, and a lot of new people as well. It鈥檚 been so rewarding for me.鈥�

For Bolton, the work has played a pivotal role in her recovery from long COVID: 鈥淚 certainly think that this work on a personal level has been critical to my recovery,鈥� she said, and this recovery has gone hand in hand with rediscovering hope for the community and the country beyond.

鈥淲hilst there are awesome people in Grimsby that we work with that I love dearly, I don鈥檛 believe that this is unique,鈥� she said. 鈥淏rilliant people exist up and down our country. It鈥檚 possible to create this collective change, and I genuinely believe it can happen in more places than Grimsby.鈥�

I leave my chat with Emily and Jason with a sense of place on the move, engaged and emboldened to create a better future. And there are lessons for the UK on mobilising institutions, communities and ideas to build something better.

The next day as we walk around the town and stroll along the seafront talking to people about the project, I am taken back to my visits here as a kid. Growing up in the East Midlands, I鈥檇 come to this part of the coast for weekends away. It was a magical place that felt like an escape.

Being here now, far from the grind of political point-scoring, you cannot help but have a similar feeling.

There鈥檚 something special brewing on this edge of England, where the sky meets the sea, and the possibility of something new comes ashore.