Sisters in the city

On Thursday, I was taken to lunch by the two Leeds Co-Chairs of the Sister Cities of Louisville project. Sylvia Bruton and Diane Bailey-Boulet. Two fascinating women in their own right, it was interesting to hear about their connections to Leeds, and the idea of sister cities and their thoughts on how we can develop the relatively new relationship between Leeds and Louisville. Diane in particular, does a great impression of her father, a Yorkshireman, talking about teaching French in Sheffield many years ago. And the sometimes challenging attitudes parents had towards internationalising their kids; "why does he need to speak French when he's coming to work in' factory wi' me."

I know the "twin towns' phenomena had its routes in the post-war desire to make closer connections between different places and to foster stronger international bonds at more personal levels. I wonder if the time has come to have a 21st century refresh of those ambitions. In an increasingly global, increasingly accessible communications age, have we lost sight of that desire to actually experience and understand other cultures? The 21 year old woman who served me in the mobile phone shop said: "oh i've lived here my whole life, I could never go to Europe, I don't know anyone there". And don't get me wrong, it's hard to be "foreign". I've done it and survived it in places much more different to me than Louisville - but there is still that feeling of shame when you have absolutely no idea what someone is on about. (Biscuits? With my boiled egg!?; Half and half or creamer? Er, no thanks, just some milk in my coffee please.)

I'm staying in the same hotel as many of the Congressional Medal of Honour holders, whose convention is in town this weekend. And when I'm in the lift they never fail to ask me where I'm from and what I'm doing here. And it truly is amazing the impact that a non-American accent has on them. (Admittedly, I am starting to sound more and more like Mary Poppins as I ramp it up a notch or two, for fear of sounding like I'm taking the mic in imitating the gorgeous Kentucky drawl). But it reminds me, that even though most of the industrialised Western cities house people from all different backgrounds, we don't all get to feel that delicious sense of freedom of being "foreign" ourselves. And I think it's something everyone should get to do, at least once in our lives. If for no other reason, at least to see where your own accent ends up.

Floats like a butterfly

I spent most of Wednesday afternoon in the Muhammad Ali Center, a multimedia centre that is part biographical museum of Ali's life, and part education centre promoting the core values of: respect, conviction, confidence, dedication, giving and spirituality.

It is a phenomenally well put together exhibition, with a great balance of Ali's own life story and the history of the America he grew up in, fought for and sometimes fought against.

The exhibits themselves, whilst engaging and accessible to a school aged audience, are equally compelling and intriguing to adults. I entered at the same time as three men, each from different parts of the US, and it was fascinating for me to hear from each of them about what brought them to the centre, and what their "connection" to Ali was. One older man was from Birmingham, Alabama and he remembers the divisions from his childhood quite vividly. He said there are divisions still, they're just harder to see these days. But he remembers hearing Muhammad Ali on the radio, and thinking how it wasn't possible that that cheeky, irepressible and defiant voice could have been "a colored like me", quickly, proudly, clarifying: "a black man". The other men, smiled when he said that. One is a boxing coach working in some of the toughest areas of Chicago. He said he was looking at a way of bringing some of the kids he works with to the centre, but he added, he's not sure he's yet up to the challenge of a road trip with the kids he's working with at the moment. The third, a preacher in the area came into his own at that point: "that's why you gotta". As I walked around the rest of the exhibit. I found myself hoping that he would.

I'm meeting with the some of the Ali Center staff an trustees next week, so I'll find out more then. But it struck me that this might well be one of the few places where class, colour and identity are openly displayed for debate. Though for an exhibition that (excuse the pun) pulls no punches elsewhere, I was surprised that possibly Ali's second most famous quote was mysteriously absent in the section about his conscription: "No VietCong ever called me n****r". I wonder if that it just a step too far in Kentucky, even for a place that is pushing the boundaries on intercultural understanding.

First impressions...

I arrived in Louisville in the early hours of Monday morning, following a moderately horrendous journey. Technical difficulties with our intended aircraft led to a 3 hours delay in departure, which led to a 4 hour delayed arrival in Chicago, which meant too many flights arriving at the same time for immigration, which took 2 horus to clear, which led to comedy half running through Chicago airport to get to the last flight to Louisville, which was then of course ... delayed. I won't go on too much about then flying into a storm in a small plane which had so much turbulence it left the woman next to me crying and praying. But needless to say, after my total 27 hours journey time, I have been taking it gently and giving all my joints a good rest and chance to acclimatise.

That said, I had a pootle around the downtown area of Louisville yesterday, and found it to have a very gentle elegance and style all of its own. There are some fine civic buildings and wide open boulevards, that give it the feel (at least to my cultchie eye) of a much larger city. There is a great selection of museum and galleries all clustered on Main Street that agian, seem luxurious for a city of this size. On the other hand for a city that stands so proudly on the banks of the Ohio river, there seems to be very little made of the waterfront. As I discovered when following what semed like to logical route on the map from Main Street to the Belle of Louisville, and ended up practically wading through the muddy underpass - much to the amusement of passing motorists. (Those sandals will never be right again!)

Today I have a little more sightseeing, before starting interviews and observations in earnest on Wednesday. Have a good day y'all y'hear.

A licence to think...

In less than 3 weeks now I will start on my Winston Churchill fellowship to look at how other places plan for and put in place conditions that enable communities and cities to be "harmonious".  If nothing else, I am genuinely excited and thrilled at being given a licence to think. Now, I don't want in any way imply that the work I'm involved in in Leeds is "unthinking", but I don't suspect I'm giving away a state secret when I say that in any number of ways it has gotten harder to take time to think consciously and plan deliberately in the last year. The combined impact of cuts across the public and third sector, increased demand from the most vulnerable and a heightened sense of scrutiny of every penny spent, has in my opinion led to a retrenchment in thinking at precisely the time we needs to appeal to the finest creative and beautifully devious minds we can persuade to get involved.

I'll raise my hand and say I'm one of the worst offenders at putting off fighting for the big changes, in order to focus on what can realistically get done now. But I'm also convinced that they are not mutually exclusive concepts. I'm in the very lucky position of living in walking distance from work, and I have gotten into the habit of doing something of an inventory on the way to and from work. My walk to work involves conducting the wholly unscientific "harmony sniff test". As I walk through the city centre of Leeds, I watch and listen - and I count up the instances of generosity shown, courtesy between strangers or even the number of people looking out at the day and smiling and engaging with the city around them - and subtract from that incidences of casual rudeness, palpable tension or the lost and broken looks of people who don't see that the city has anything to offer them. It's a daily reminder that there is much to be done, but there's much to build upon. And it's that idea of the fabric of the city - where it's strong and where it's getting a little frayed - that gets me thinking about how we can be so much smarter in how we plan for and help support communities. If we could get under the skin of city - see where it's doing well and where it needs a helping hand - we'd be so much nearer to making the big changes happen. And that's my homeward journey. Did I chip away at the big changes, do I understand them more, or have I got others engaged in the thinking? Or did I spend my time fighting fires: small, large and imaginary - but not really making any headway. Do I even know what headway looks like in this climate? \

I love having this daily ritual time to think, imagine and reflect, but it's all to often too short, too shallow or I'm too shy with it to make the difference in my "real" job. I think that's what I'm looking forward to most with my fellowship: time to think, and time to plan what to do with the thinking.  In equal measures I'm excited, impatient and panic-stricken by the knowledge of everything I have to do here before I go. But on my "commute" this morning, as the first signs of autumn made the city start to look different, I remembered a phrase I used to use: "change the way you look at things, and the things you look at change". In just 3 weeks, I hope to be doing just that. And like the parking metres in Leeds sometimes say: "change is possible", but what the parking metres don't tell you is that you have to make it possible.