When Keith Brown moved into a narrowboat moored on London’s Regent’s Canal, he was keen to get to know his houseboating neighbours. “I wanted to find out how other people got into it, what their lives were like,” he says. “I’m naturally curious, and living on a boat is not something people do in the part of America I’m from.”
His interest and enthusiasm would steer him towards a fascinating career as a community organiser, helping ensure people’s voices are listened to.
Brown’s journey started with a meeting held by the houseboat community to discuss mooring changes planned by British Waterways (now the Canal & River Trust). “We challenged those changes, and we won,” he recalls.
A non-profit organisation called Locality suggested that the houseboat community appoint a community organiser, who Locality would recruit and train. Brown was helping find suitable applicants when someone pointed out that perhaps he himself was the ideal candidate. “I was handing out flyers, and a guy that I knew was like: ‘Are you applying for this?’” Brown told him he wasn’t. His friend replied: “You do all of this. I read this flyer, and that’s you.”
Brown got the job, and spent the next two years as a community organiser on the waterways, before going on to travel the country on his narrowboat delivering training to others. Today, he works as the community organiser for Nationwide Building Society, which is sponsoring the Oakfield housing development in Swindon. The not-for-profit project aims to create 239 homes on a brownfield site and challenge the major housebuilders’ grip on the property market.
A model of the Oakfield development
Brown knocked on 600 doors to find out what locals wanted from the development. He listened to their concerns and ensured that these were taken on board as part of the project. “My goal is getting the people who wouldn’t be heard, heard,” he says, “And letting them know their opinions matter.”
The area around the Oakfield development is predominantly working class, and Brown found that many people felt their views wouldn’t be listened to. “Some people who live across the street from the site thought that because they were council tenants, they didn’t have a voice,” says Brown. “I was like: ‘No, this is your neighbourhood and this is your house. We want to hear your thoughts.’”
Oakfield will have communal gardens, a park, a play area and a community hub. People’s enthusiasm for Dutch-style shared-space roads without raised pavements has also influenced the design, though Brown uncovered an important issue. “I met a blind man, and he told me that guide dogs are confused by shared streets that don’t have pavements that drop down on to the road.” As a result, Nationwide had a meeting with the Royal National Institute of Blind People, and ended up altering the site plan.
Other changes to address local feedback have included alterations to the road layout to avoid a potential rat run, as well as an increase in the number of parking spaces. Brown also supported an event where local teenage students cooked a meal for elderly residents, which sparked discussions about intergenerational living. The desire for younger and older people to live closer together came up on the doorstep too, so the development will include maisonettes that allow the two to live side-by-side.
When Nationwide advertised for a community organiser, Brown was initially wary about working for a financial institution. But Nationwide’s ethos and community-based plan for Oakfield convinced him to apply. That ethos is guided by Nationwide’s 19th-century origins as a mutual society set up to enable working-class people to come together to save and borrow to buy or build their own homes. It has informed Nationwide’s efforts at Oakfield to bring communities together and put their needs first.
“I see a lot of the same language [around involving the community] being used by the big developers, but I don’t see them taking action on the ground in the same way,” he says. “There’s a lot of talk. But I don’t see the walk as much.”
Brown certainly did a lot of walking – and door knocking – while consulting the community near the Oakfield site, where 30% of the homes will be affordable rent or shared ownership.
Nationwide’s planning application was approved in 2019 without a single formal objection – an endorsement of Brown’s work. It’s an approach Nationwide hopes others will follow, with the aim of galvanising a movement to improve housing issues.
Brown is now training others to become organisers themselves. He says: “If I can leave behind a group of people who are active in the community, listening to those who aren’t usually heard, and be sure that they are having an impact, that, for me, is wonderful.”
Bright future
Head to the Nationwide website to find out more about Oakfield and follow its progress
