New Social Art School Projects - Tillydrone Lorna
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Lorna with proofs for the Tillydrone book, artist's flat, May 2007
Lorna principal community learning worker
I went to Portal Community Centre and met Lorna very early on when I moved here. She told me about her work and experience in the community and I remember feeling very comfortable in her company. Afterwards I was thinking that, if I ever needed help here, I would go to her. Like a mentor she was. But I never went so this is only the second time we speak. Lorna is 55 years old.
I have never lived in Tillydrone. But I’ve been visiting since I was in my pram. My grandparents lived here most of their married life; they moved from Hilton down to a bungalow at number 1 Hayton Road, then moved to 107 Hayton Road. The present post office was their garden. They kept ducks and hens and my grandfather was a great fisherman, so it was good living beside the Don. They were a big family with nine children. Both my uncles and my grandfather worked in the paper mills. My mum is 80, and she was a baby when they moved here, so it would be around 1930, oh ages ago! She speaks about it like they were living in the country. I don’t think there was much else other than Hayton Road. They used to walk across the fields to get to Sunnybank School. The history of Tillydrone is really interesting. But local folk have a lot more knowledge about that.
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I came to Tillydrone to work and I hoped that there would still be the sense of community that I picked up from my grandparents’ time. But I also knew the reputation that Tillydrone had. I felt that I could do a lot of work with local people. That’s 13 years ago. It has lived up to my expectations and it’s always fresh. If I felt I wasn’t bringing anything new to the post and that my enthusiasm wasn’t there, then I would leave. You seriously have to think whether you’re doing the community any good or not. When I came initially, we had a classroom in the old Tillydrone School, which has been knocked down now. It was opposite the Tilly Youth Project on the big green field. My remit is adult learning and the school, being old, was not a very inviting atmosphere to bring learners into. We couldn’t make it the way we wanted. But St Machar Primary School and the present Centre was being redeveloped. I was lucky enough to be involved with the architects. A lot of what I felt was important was incorporated. We did look at safety and that’s why my desk sits so that I can see right through both offices to the front door. Also it’s important to me that, when people walk through that front door, it’s welcoming. We are an official building and, for some people, anything official is very frightening. We do have some very confident people coming in, but for other folk it’s the unknown.
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If you’ve gone through school and not had a very good experience, you might think you can’t learn anything. That’s not our belief. People learn every day of their lives. It doesn’t matter how highly qualified you are, we all learn something new every day. That’s the exciting thing. But I’m also quite careful with the whole learning aspect, especially when people first come in. Helping them to feel comfortable is important. It’s about being part of something. We have what we call first-step classes for people who have been out of learning for a long time, for whatever reason. The craft group is lovely; people sit and chat and make things. The tutor is super. She comes up with ideas, but also asks folk and they get so involved and excited because they can see a completed item. I would love to have time to sit and make things too! The cooking group has lots of messages to give people. I mean, we’re all bombarded with information, saying that we should eat more healthily. That’s fine but, if you’re living on benefit and on your own with children, life can be a bit of a struggle. Part of you says, I know I should do that, but where do I start? We advise in a nice and informal way. In general there’s lots of conversation going on. We encourage people to believe in themselves and to feel more confident about approaching other people and agencies.
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I think there is a lot of prejudice in the city about where you live. There is a perception that people who live in Tillydrone are just waiting for the day they can move out. That’s not the case at all. People want to live here and they feel a sense of community. The families are the extended support system. People have grown up here; they want their children to grow up here. When the consultants came up to look at the regeneration plans they spoke to local people. They came back and told us, ‘We can’t believe it, Tillydrone is a fabulous area, near the river and the university, and lots of green spaces.’ It was nice to have someone, who didn’t come from Aberdeen, saying, ‘Wow, with a little regeneration this could really be something.’ I hope that the local people, sitting at that meeting thought, Yeah, that’s what we feel too.
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We have a Regeneration Network group where people come together to look at the issues and how we can improve the area. Time and time again the social issues are raised. It’s good getting the buildings improved but the problems won’t go away. There is a history in the regeneration areas like Tillydrone, where there is a lot of turnover in the housing stock. If somebody is having problems in other areas, and they need to be moved, the housing department move them here because there are empty houses.
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People in Tillydrone are realistic. They don’t want the problems to stay but, by the same token, they will say that the folk with problems are residents of Tillydrone as well. It’s not a case of getting rid of anybody with a problem. They recognise that it’s exactly what’s happened here and it’s not the answer. So how can we overcome the problems? It’s not easy and we’re looking at long-term solutions. But, more and more, the agencies are working together. They recognise that they need to have professionals in the area - not sitting in public buildings, miles removed from local areas. They need to be on the ground and they need to be working with local people. Since the community wardens came along for example, they have made a lot of contact with people and hear first hand about issues. I’m all for using Portal and the Community Flat for agencies to meet with local people. Folk come and go all the time so if, for example, you’re coming to get support from Drugs Action, nobody knows that, and we treat everything confidentially.
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It’s about how you reach folk. We are all aware that resources are scarcer than they ever were - or it appears like that. I mean, in a lot of ways we have a lot more than we ever did. But in today’s society I think everybody would say that we could always do with more. It’s a case of pooling what we’ve got so that we can make the best use of it.
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To local people I’m Lorna that works in Portal; often it’s Lorna that reinforces the rules! I’m fine with that because the rules are there for people to be comfortable. These are the boundaries, okay, and then let’s forget about them, we’ve done that, how much fun can we have now?
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Aberdeen doesn’t like having a reputation connected to drugs. I think that it is unfair that Drugs Action have to come to the network to ask for money to do more work with drug users and their families. But it’s what we’re up against. At the moment the best we can do is short-term funding and that’s not good enough. We all know that. But we have to work as best as we can. We know there are huge problems with alcohol in the area as well. People live, what we call, chaotic lives. When I say people, I don’t mean everyone. That’s the problem; you tend to label and folk then assume that you speak about the whole community. Not at all. Tillydrone is such a varied community. People wouldn’t believe how diverse it is. Until you come in and meet folk, you don’t know.
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The involvement of some of the local folk is truly amazing. Often they volunteer to work in a Centre or in the other projects in the area. They are part of a management committee, the Community Council, or the Network where they’re looking at massive things. In a variety of ways people get involved and they are passionate about it. That amazes me.
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Children that I’ve seen as babies are now going to secondary school. That’s what makes you feel old. Oohhh! I’ve seen young women who left school with no qualifications; they had children and they felt that their education was at an end. But then they come back into the Centre. Maybe they come to put their children into the crèche or to go a group, for example the craft group. For two hours they can be themselves again and, lo and behold, they find they can learn something and it’s not like school. They can keep going to groups where it’s light hearted and fun. But we have some young women who have been going to our classes for a while and are now working towards an HNC. They are meeting in Donbank School because there’s such a big group of them, too big for the centre. It’s not an easy option; it’s a hard course. The University of Dundee told us that, if anybody wanted to go on to do the Community Work course, they would be accepted into year two of the course. Now, to be able to tell a group of local people that they are doing first-year university work here, is magical because they did not think that they could achieve that.
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I have been here so long that I can speak about when computers became the thing! That helped attract men to our classes. Women like groups and courses. Men don’t find this as comfortable. So it’s about finding something that men will feel comfortable about coming to. It was the computing classes that really brought them in, but not many. In our parent and toddler group we are now seeing dads coming in, playing with their children. It’s a nice thing to see. I once employed a male childcare worker and suddenly the dads appeared out of the woodwork. It was almost as if someone had given them permission. I think, the way society is now, men feel vulnerable around children given all the headlines we see in the news and papers. But if there is a man involved it feels like; it’s okay for me to be there now. Folk won’t think; oh, what’s he doing with all those children? I mean, what kind of society is it when, as a dad, you have to feel like that? I do think that sometimes we have to have positive discrimination, where we need men to encourage other men.
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I think the future is exciting. With the regeneration coming – I know it’s very difficult because we’re speaking 10, 15, 20 years. That is a long time. Folk are quite concerned about their homes. Is it being pulled down, should I decorate, what should I do? Part of my role is helping people through that. There is potential for local employment. If we are building new houses there are skills needed that we could start focusing on; decorating and gardening for example. I think, within the regeneration, we have an opportunity to start changing people’s perception of Tillydrone. Hey, the folk who have lived here all these years, they love it! Look what’s happening here. Stop looking at Tillydrone and saying, Oh God! Look at the positives. That’s where I get my buzz and freshness. There is positivity.
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Things don’t change overnight, it’s a balancing act and it’s about taking people with you. Because it is hard when it’s long-term, hard to see that the future is going to get better when you’re struggling with today. The public officials have to listen to people. And I have to encourage local people to come to events and meetings and help the area move forward. Let’s tell them what we would like, so that the bodies dealing with planning and building understand why we want it like that. It’s the local folk who are the experienced ones; they are the ones who live here. The biggest thing I hear is that there are not enough houses in Tillydrone. We need more family properties, properties with a front door. If you have two children, a three-bedroom property is very difficult to come by. And people don’t want to move; they are converting bedrooms rather than moving away. That’s where it’s important to build up people’s confidence. Everybody needs to listen to each other and it’s important that, if the officials know that some things can’t happen, they tell people why. People are entitled to know. Even though they think it’s Council business, we are the Council! All of us. And folk know when they are being talked down to.
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With a bit of time and a bit of patience we can work together and make improvements. It’s not the big, big stuff because that is too hard and it just reinforces the difficulties, the told-you-I-couldn’t-do-it. It’s about the tiny little steps. It’s about the person gaining confidence, which enables them to make small changes. These are small changes but, within the community, it can be a big thing. People feel more confident, more positive and more in control of what’s going on. They start seeing that they do have power. And that’s what keeps me going.
Recorded 26th April 2007