Abstract
In this final chapter of Part II, I focus specifically on the ways in which the work of recovery was co-produced by a network of residents and responders. Through the lens of an exhibition that was held in the summer of 2009, I am able to illustrate the way in which my narrative of Toll Bar becomes a story of hope, regeneration and survivance.
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Notes
- 1.
This is a government survey across England which ‘measures’ deprivation as discussed in Chapter 2.
- 2.
Indeed, in 2012, the Doncaster Emergency Planners continue to have to try and protect the storage space in which they keep the exhibition material. There have been repeated suggestions that this should be cleared away and the space made available for other things.
- 3.
In 2001, Lancaster University researchers had undertaken a major study of life in Cumbria after the Foot and Mouth Disease disaster and their methods had included working with the community on various exhibitions of art and other creations produced by the affected communities. As I learnt more about this through my studies at Lancaster, I began to consider its applicability to my own work.
- 4.
The reactions of the children of Toll Bar, to further heavy rainfall, has been one of the most distressing aspects of my time in the village. On a number of occasions, I have watched children become extremely upset when it has rained or when the weather has been discussed. Residents and responders have also told me that they have witnessed them wetting themselves. Although the school was at the heart of work to rebuild the village, it also served as a reminder to the children of the day itself when the floodwater came so quickly and many of them had to be carried out by their parents and teachers. I presented this aspect of my study in an emergency management conference programme. Presenting alongside me was the team tasked with managing psychological health of Londoners after the 7 July 2005 terrorist attacks. After our talks, the lead psychologist expressed his concern that this level of anxiety was left unacknowledged (and unresourced) in Toll Bar because the politicians’ focus was on places like London. Erikson (1976) also discusses very similar impacts on a community’s children.
- 5.
I was particularly touched to be featured in a post-disaster quilt as I had read about their importance and symbolism in the work of Elaine Enarson (2000: 53). She writes about how the colourful scraps become collective projects for people affected by disaster and united by donated pieces of fabric. They are also often important symbols of opposition by the women making them.
- 6.
I work as a trainer for the Cabinet Office Emergency Planning College which delivers ‘national’ guidance in emergency planning to local planners. It is a large county house set within a Yorkshire village and was previously a college for ‘Civil Defence’.
- 7.
The play was performed inside a caravan, with room for just a few audience members, and had featured in the press, an edition of Newsnight and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The residents travelled to the Royal Court in London to see the play although later funding was acquired through the Environment Agency to stage the play in a number of villages in Doncaster, including Toll Bar.
- 8.
It was not a case of sparing my feelings as they had certainly claimed this event as their own so it was certainly not perceived as something that ‘Lucy had put on’. And I am not sure they would have spared my feelings anyway!
- 9.
Just one of many powerful narratives is the ‘takeover’ by volunteers of a warehouse on the Chelsea Piers in New York. This became a focal point for the distribution of goods and services. People dropped off donated goods and offered their assistance. However, as soon as the ‘official recoverers’ arrived, there was a clash between “the highly functional bottom-up organization” within the warehouse and the “top-down structure” of the emergency responders (Solnit 2009: 206).
- 10.
When presenting this research at a conference in New Zealand (I-REC 2008), I was struck by one presenters description of the dangers of trying to re-introduce the ‘ingredients’ of Social Capital in a false, ‘ersatz’ way through government initiatives. The powerful example he gave was attempts by the local government to re-introduce jazz bands to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina without acknowledgement of the way in which jazz bands were embedded in cultural history and had grown up over many generations.
- 11.
Since 2007, I have been privileged to present this research in Washington, New Zealand and at various conferences in the UK.
- 12.
My mind was made up to problematise this concept within this chapter, after my visit to Christchurch, New Zealand (see the Conclusions chapter), when one resident said to me ‘God, we hate that word Social Capital…it’s social capital this and social capital that’ using their fingers to make speech marks around the words.
- 13.
In May 2012, they organised funding and support to produce a book of stories of the ‘Recovery of Toll Bar’.
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Easthope, L. (2018). Co-production of ‘Afterwards’: Survivance in Toll Bar. In: The Recovery Myth . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74555-8_7
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