Josiah lives in Edinburgh with his wife and has worked with a variety of community groups and projects across the city that are pushing for social change. He currently co-ordinates the Grassmarket Community Project in Edinburgh City Centre which provides sanctuary, support and skills training to people who have experienced social isolation.
Plywood People-Duncan McFadzean: How would you describe what you do in your day job? And where’s that going?
Josiah Lockhart: Explaining my ‘job’ to people is surprisingly hard and I’m not sure I’ve ever described it the same way twice, in fact my official job title has changed three times now in the past year as it becomes more and more difficult to pigeon hole it. I would probably describe it as a mediator; a mediator between ideas, between individuals, and between social structures. The framework for my job is one that pushes me to create a setting not where social barriers are overcome, but where those barriers aren’t allowed room to exist. On paper, I am responsible for the co-ordinating of a centre here in Edinburgh that offers a range of activities and events. The most structured of these are our craft and skill based workshops where individuals can develop their skills in woodwork, textiles, art, music, herb gardening, cooking and agriculture. Working with your hands is an amazing act, and in many ways it is a catalyst for people to begin looking at and reflecting on their own self, their relationship with others, and how they perceive others to view them. Our remit is working with adults with a history of ‘isolation,’ which is anything from individuals with a history of homelessness, addictions, mental health, abuse, depression, boredom, fear, loneliness and so on… In reality all of us have experienced isolation and as such our project reflects that with people from all walks of life. The centre has been going through changes and over the past 17 months has been making the transition from a soup kitchen, started in the late 1860′s, into a centre which challenges the very way that we view our communities. Just this week we had a public lecture where we invited an academic to come in and give a talk about the negative effects labelling people as ‘ex offenders’ or ‘young offenders’ or ‘asbo’ (that’s anti social behaviour order, for those americans of you reading this). In the room there were around 45 people, including about 20 people who currently have those labels, the chief of police, local residents and academics. It was an electric evening and getting those people together in that way to have a constructive critique of how we perceive each other is exactly what we’re about. What I actually do in my job is anything that provides that environment. It can be sitting and having a cup of coffee with a street drinker one day, to meeting with politicians and representatives of the Queen the next, to helping to make a clock in the wood workshop.
Plywood People: You’re enabling empowerment and providing dignity to people. In what situations do you think social enterprise is a better model than charity for doing this?
Josiah: This is an interesting question to be asked, mainly because I am highly sceptical of social enterprise as a model. I think any ‘model’ has its flaws particularly one where social and business aims have to be managed side by side. In the same way I have grown sceptical of the traditional ‘charity’ model as well as it tends to always devolve into a detached form of giving that comes with detached social targets. That being said you do find gems of goodness within both models that should not be thrown out as they are critiqued. In my work we have tried to incorporate positive aspects of social enterprise, such as sustainability and independence into some of our projects, such as our woodwork shop, and have acknowledged that some projects, such as our arts and crafts group, will never be able to do that. We’ve been finding that a you can achieve a healthy and sustainable project through a mix of enterprise activity and charitable work can produce an environment where business and social aims don’t have to be in conflict (contrary to what I heard an investor from a national bank say yesterday).
Plywood People: You’re involved with a number of entrepreneurial projects around the city in various guises. What’s inspiring you and what would you like to see happen?
Josiah: It’s funny that I’m asked me about entrepreneurial projects around the city, because Duncan knows very well that I don’t describe them as ‘entrepreneurial.’ That being said I do have my fingers in lots of pies, or at least am in regular contact with quite a few initiatives popping up across the city. A good friend of mine is known to describe Edinburgh as an archipelago, a place where there are all these projects existing as individual islands. Its amazing to discover that people who live so close to each other have been trying to do the same things for years but never knew about each other. What is inspiring me about the city is seeing all of those islands start to find each other and the electricity that happens when a city starts to link up and seek change at both a local and national level. Over the past few years we’ve seen a change in the way people look at their environment and their communities and its starting to happened exponentially. Just introduce two people together and watch their ideas synthesis and things take off.
Plywood People: How important is living locally, engaging with local politics and engaging with the community you are in to both the work you do and the change that you want to see happen in the city?
Josiah: Edinburgh has been known for its social philosophers over the years, but a lesser known Edinburgh resident was Patrick Geddes who challenged society to ‘think globally, act locally.’ Although the phrase is a bit cliché these days there is an important principal in what he is saying. We are rooted in a context, and we can’t get around that fact. In the past communities had a type of internal dependency. Individuals relied on their neighbours for their food, their clothes, their transport, and their well being, but in the past 50 years we have exported that dependency out of our communities and no longer see dependency as important. It’s policy here in Scotland to help people move towards ‘independent living’ and to structure ourselves in a way that discourages dependence, but we forget that a healthy family has always been about positive dependency, a dependency where all participants give at times and take at other times. For me, living locally and engaging with local issues and with the people who live and work around me is central to the work I do and the change that I see happening around me. We deceive ourselves if we think that we are independent of our surroundings, its about purposeful action and engagement with what we find we are apart of.
