Lecture at Ripon Cathedral addresses issues of building community

A free lecture taking place at Ripon Cathedral will address some interesting issues surrounding community, when Professor Margaret Harris delivers the latest St Wilfrid Lecture on ‘Volunteers and Voluntary Organisations at the Neighbourhood Level: Challenges of Building Community in the 21^st Century’on Thursday 25 April.

Margaret Harris Ph.D. is Emeritus Professor, Aston University, Birmingham; Visiting Professor at Birkbeck, University of London; and Senior Research Adviser to IVAR (Institute for Voluntary Action Research). She was formerly Assistant Director of the LSE’s Centre for Voluntary Organisation and also worked in London local government and in the voluntary sector as a volunteer and trainer. She has also published numerous book chapters and articles in the academic and professional press.

Professor Harris’s lecture will draw on the experiences of her own grandfather, as an immigrant to England, to sketch a picture of Victorian and Edwardian community and charity. Harris argues that this essentially self-help scenario “is not that far removed from the mental image held by our politicians and policy makers when they urge us all to ‘active citizenship’, volunteering and philanthropy” as ways to deal with social problems. The lecture will contrast the situation 100 years ago with the challenges of building community in the 21^st Century.

As a way forward for building communities in the 21st century, Harris suggests drawing on the concept of ‘civil society’. She says: “It reminds us to make distinctions between the public space in which citizens do things, un-coerced, for one another, and two other spheres of life: government and business. It reminds us of our right to think through independently what we want our local communities to be – how we assess local need, how we meet those needs, how we employ the resources of time, money and physical assets available to us within our communities, and how we identify where we need help from outside – from governments, business, charitable foundations and so on. Most important perhaps, the concept reminds us that we need to be proactive. If we don’t assert our right to independent thought and action about our own communities, then we cannot be surprised when governments and corporations impose their priorities on us”.

In welcoming Professor Harris to the St Wilfrid series, the Dean of Ripon commented: “The 2013 St Wilfrid Lectures bring together an exciting range of speakers who will challenge those attending to think about the issues of community cohesion, multi-culturalism, inter-religious dialogue, school communities, lessons learnt from living ‘in community’, the European experiment and the voluntary sector. Margaret Harris will bring to us a lifetime’s involvement and interest in the voluntary sector and also a passionate understanding of the role of the people of faith in all that. Without the voluntary sector, most communities would be unable to function in the rich way that they do. Those who are engaged in voluntary services, not only make considerable impact on people’s lives but also challenge governments and statutory section organisations to make adequate arrangements for ‘social services’ and community well-being.  This will be a hugely important lecture and one in which we will all be challenged in terms of our own desire to serve others”

The St Wilfrid lectures, named in honour of Ripon Cathedral’s founder, have been running since 2009.  They are jointly organised and sponsored by York St John University, Ripon Cathedral, the Methodist District of York and Hull, and Ripon and Leeds Diocese.  Previous lectures have ranged widely over questions of faith and public life, with high profile speakers including the Most Revd and Rt Hon Dr John Sentamu, Lord Inderjit Singh, Ruth Gledhill, Baroness Estelle Morris, Professor Terry Eagleton, and Professor Mona Siddiqui.