I had the pleasure of attending an excellent meeting of a sub-group of the North East Social Capital Forum yesterday afternoon. This sub-group was established to draft a response from the Forum to the Regional Development Agencies ‘Regional Economic Strategy’.
At the meeting, I was struck by the understanding of the need to create an appropriate and effective environment for sustaining change within deprived communities.
As I was returning home, I began to reflect on the meeting and, as ever, many ideas came to mind on what the primary outcome of the meeting was for me. Suddenly, the phrase ‘content is king’ came into my mind. This is a term heralded by the (unsuccessful) Internet-based .com companies, and, at on stage, I think the Microsoft Corporation.
Content, however, seems to amount to nothing unless it is related to its function and form within the surrounding environment. This, for me, is the real significance of context.
Any sustainable strategy for regeneration needs to be placed within an appropriate political, social and economic context. The Regional Economic Strategy heralds economic regeneration as the primary driver which somewhat tends to take the process out of context, so, in terms of a response to the Strategy, context could be ‘everything’!
