Between 1984 and 2000 the population of Wolfen has fallen from 32,000 to 20,500 - many of the the young people have moved away. Of course it is quite usual for young people to leave home. However when they leave the district altogether the age structure of a place goes sharply upwards. The older generation see themselves now too old ever again to find paid employment or are already pensioners. The average age in large parts of Wolfen Nord are 40 to 50. At such an age, when the youngsters leave home, it is not uncommon that people have a mid life crisis. One's own parents die. One's own role as a parent is largely over - often in conditions of great family conflict with young people aggressively asserting their independence, doing the things that their parents do not want partly because the parents do not want it, and then either leaving or being thrown out. One is confronted by one's own mortality, a sense of powerlessness and meaninglessness because there are no more things left for one to do. In many societies older people can at least have a role as grandparents and use their greater worldly wisdom and time in support of their grandchildren. When their own children leave the area however they have not only lost their work role but their family role for older age. It would be surprising therefore not to find a pervasive psychological crisis in Wolfen Nord in which lots of people will be finding it increasingly difficult to push away a sense of fulility. There will be a temptation to many perhaps, in order to survive, simply to switch off all thinking and critical capacities because to think critically leads to too many emotionally painful conclusions. When this happens to those around you a place can sink into a sort of collective depression. In such a depression the thoughts run sluggishly. There is no energy and no motivation. If there is nothing positive and interesting to look forward to, when the road to one's inevitable death is a straight one that is empty and without any beautiful scenery, then it is difficult not to be invaded by terrified thoughts of that inevitable day and the thought that one might die without really having much existed. This is the thought that must be pushed away at all costs or smothered by the blanket of depression. One is tense. Over a long time one habituates oneself to breath in a shallow fashion. The energy level in the body sinks. The mind is like a fire denied oxygen. The spirit of the people dims - the collective Geist exists but can no more create. As the clock creeps forward one measures out one's life from small event to small event. Often one wakes in despair and has only one's meal to look forward to so life focuses on food and the preparation of food - from breakfast to lunch to evening meal. It is not surprising that so many people in Wolfen Nord seem overweight. Food is consolation and eating one of the few meaningful activities of the day. If a visit to the supermarket is also a high point is it any wonder that people come back loaded up. Parts of Wolfen become physically fat and spiritually poor.People who are in the midst of such psychological turmoil and depression cannot easily turn themselves around. They need something else to push them into action. This force for change must come from the outside because their is not enough energy inside the lives of individuals, families, or community to generate any momentum. It is like a car that has a flat battery. When it has first been pushed a little then it's battery will recharge and it can regenerate from its own internal energies. In this case the push comes from the economics of so many empty flats. When many blocks of flats are 60% or more empty it is economically impossible to keep them in use. To keep them goin would lead to the bankrupcy of the owners of the flats. Because so many people have already gone of their own free will in the search for work and a new life many of those who remain will now have to move whether they like it or not. There are too many flats without curtains. Even newly renovated show flats renovated with EXPO money are standing empty.
The inevitability of this move may be a blessing if it is used positively. At the age of 80 my own mother decided that she would have to move into a smaller flat closer to other people. A few years ago she says she could not have organised such a move. My father would have organised it. But he is dead now and over many years she had learned to look after the house. Her skills and confidence grew. At the age of 80 she feels proud that she was able to organise something as complex as a house sale and a move. She has grown through the experience. It is never too late to start to live - to start to shape one's own destiny.
The prospect of having to organise a move when one is depressed, anxious and feeling vulnerable can, however, feel terrifying. One should say so openly in order that people do not feel ashamed to reach for help. Moving home is widely acknowledged to be perhaps the stressful and complex thing in ordinary life - only the death of a partner or other close relation is more traumatic. There are difficulties in the logistics of moving frniture and possessions but emotional difficulties in losing contact with familiar places and people and going to a place where one is perhaps a stranger. This starts before the move because people one knows begin to move away - including people one has relied on as friends. Then shops and other local facilities close. It makes no sense to repair a place that will be pulled down - therefore small and not so small repair jobs are no longer done and even those places which are not planned for immediate demolition begin to deteriorate rapidly. Being on one's own in an emply flat can make one feel very vulerable. The demolition process nearby may be dusty, dirty and noisy. It is a constant reminder that one's world is falling apart. Research studies have shown that demolition programmes in which people are forced to move can lead to mental health problems for years afterwards - probably because of the disorientation, powerlessness and insecurity unleashed by the dissolution and loss of one's surroundings and relationships.
In Nottingham 25 years ago I was the chairperson of a residents association in a "clearance area" (a neighbourhood that was going to be demolished). Other areas in Nottingham also had tenants and residents associations with offices which fought for the rights of residents in such areas. We fought the local city council in the courts to do necessary repairs even though houses would be knocked down in a year. We fought the council to agree that when neighbours moved that they could move together so that their relationships were not broken up. In some cases we fought in the legal process against the demolition of some areas (and won!). At the end, however, the last campaign aound which people united was to demolish their homes and move as quickly as possible. Many years later one can say that this work helped to create the foundations for a thriving sector of community groups and local organisations. Many people like myself had out first experience of community work in and through these groups. Other people went into local politics. It was like a training ground. It could be so also in Wolfen.
Such work will be necessary in Wolfen and local organisations will need to pick this support work for the local community up.....or new organisations will need to be founded to do the job. The demolition of the old and a move can be exiciting and positive because it is a new beginning. It can be the real impulse which forces people to focus on how they want to live in the future. With who they want to live. What kind of home they want. How much they want to rebuild and decorate it themselves. A move is not just loss it can be gain. The issue is how much strength, skill and influence one can bring to bear and gain in the process. In Wolfen Nord the issue is even more important because, in the space of a few years, many people will feel that they have lost virtually everything. First they lost their jobs. Then they lost their children and role as grandparents - either because of alienated relationships and/or because their own children have moved from the area - now they will lose the place they have lived in and the network of relationships in that place. It is not surprising then if a lot of people are in a state of psychological denial. These are things they are not prepared to hear and consider, that are to be pushed out of consciousness. Yet at the same time this change can be incredibly positive. When I worked at the Bauhaus my colleagues talked endlessly about the "impulses" for change - as if new ideas alone would change the world. But there was never anyone to take up these impulses. Now the real impulse will force everyone to change. The issue is whether this impulse will be an improvement, if it is used for positive change, or will be be an impulse to social chaos, greater disintegration, conflict and mental ill health.
The question is, will there be enough people to organise and lead such tenants and residents work, to support people in moving, to help in the emotional work, to fight for a collective reorientation. The question is still open. The people who are now taking the decisions about Wolfen Nord are all people who all live in other places. The people who live there are perhaps too lacking in the skills of organisation, or too demoralised or to frightened to pick up the issues - or perhaps they are not interested in getting engaged in a process when they themselves see their future elsewhere. While it is perhaps inevitable that people will get involved in and use services and campaigns - will they actually get committed and devote energy and feeling to a place and community that may soon dissolve? Is it not more realistic to see the change process as coming from the edge - from people in the Alt Stadt, the old town or the parts of Wolfen Nord near Jessnitz that will still survive. Here people still have friends and relatives in Wolfen Nord - a feeling for the people and place but are not under immediate pressure themselves. Wounds heal from the edges. Positive change must grow out of still healthy people and places that also feel the need to stop chaos infecting their own community.
Many of the people taking decisions about Wolfen Nord regret the lack of citizen involvement but perhaps, as have shown that is to a degree inevitable. There is also a question of whether the alleged lack of "actors" among local people in Wolfen Nord is also in part because the people looking for them are from outside and do not know the place and its formal and informal networks well enough. For example when I posed the question about the lack of active and involved people/ local organisers to women from the women's centre they told me that there were lots of associations and organisations active socially locally - e.g. the humanists and so on. The question is whether they have been well enough researched and whether they have formal and informal networks that can be used for initiatives - or whether the actual administrators and organisers of these groups are themselves fully committed and unable to do more than the are already.
What seems from one side as a issue of lack of involvemet may often seem from the other side
as a lack of relevance or accessibility. One can go along to meetings organised by others. One can sit and hear these other people as they speak knowledgeably in the languages of planning, of economics, of law about processes that they are working on and thinking about 40 hours in the week and understand inside out. One feels stupid simply because one does not as much and it is very difficult to participate. One fears to go to the meetings and say nothing as one feels oneself to be a failure. Yet this then creates a vicious circle for things are then even more left to outsiders who may perhaps plan things which are based on ideas from elsewhere and are not adapted to local conditions.
Like the Kreativeszentrum itself. On reflection what is striking about this project is perhaps that it is not adapted to local conditions. It is a "good idea" transplanted from outside Wolfen but it does not have any facilities for creativity in the fields where one would expect local Wolfen people to be able to use their own specific knowledge - in film and photograhy. If I am not mistaken there is no dark room and film developing facility. There are no facilities where people can experiment carrying over local traditions into video and computer video techniques.....which might be the starting point for performance and other arts and crafts....Perhaps one reason people might not use the pottery, woodwork and metalwork workshops is that they do not have the skills - and there are no facilities to match the skills they do have.....
In conclusion. Suggestions for future work.
1. Exploration of psycho-social dynamics of the moving process and dissolution of the community - through discussions with local psychologists and medical services but also in public discussions on the radio and public meetings. Mourning loss. Dissolution of families and relationships etc. Need to get discussions going so that people do not feel that they are alone but that lots of people are feeling the same thing - this will probably strike a chord and draw people - forming the basis for collective responses.
2. Discussion of the role of local institutions in the conditions of the moving process and the dissolution of the local community - responding to collective problems with collective solutions.
3. What are the positive sides of moving? What can be learned and gained from the process?
What is their to be looked forward to with pleasurable anticipation in Wolfen Nord? The cultural response to the situation.
4. Exploration and search for other local activity networks and "actors" - how they see their role and whether they can take on new responsibilities or are already overwhelmed. Do their members see themselves as staying or going?
5. Where are the sources of positive change - where are projects and groups best located geographically?
6. What are the access and relavance problems for citizen involvement? Why is it difficult to participate?
7. How can the skills of local people be best preserved and used in the cultural proces - in particular in relation to film and photography. (Not can the last person leaving turn the light out or on but can they take the last picture to docment the process.....)How can their horizons be widened through the process?
Brian Davey
12th July 2000
© BRIAN DAVEY