THE DRUM - CLOSING IT WOULD BE A STRATEGIC ERROR!

The Drum, in New Town, Birmingham, United Kingdom

The Drum is a multi-function community facility in New Town, Birmingham, United Kingdom, which has been earmarked for closure by the end of June 2016. At a time when the British government is forging ahead with its austerity programme and cutting local governments' funding, it is not surprising that said local governments, in turn, are going to cut the services they are providing for their residents. In this respect, it is probably not surprising that The Drum should have been condemned to be cut.

One can imagine that the only community facilities to be spared are those which, for whatever political reasons, are deemed worth of being spared during the current or planned rounds of cut.  These, along with those whose patrons can successfully plead their case for 'special status', again, for whatever community or other reasons. Politicians make their decisions to cut services and the timing of their implementation on financial, economic and political reasons.

The Drum is a community facility which is catering for the social, community and leisure needs of local people, especially the young, and, probably, significantly black users. Can Birmingham City Council and the government continue to weigh the value of community facilities such as The Drum in purely monetary terms, and close them down if they are not able to become financially self-sufficient?

And what else is to be the basis of this proposed or planned closure? Is it to be because the users does not have a sufficiently strong political clout and are comparatively powerless when compared with council-funded community facilities for other communities?

If one does not have community facilities such as The Drum, then it can adversely impact on how the community is able to develop and expresses its identity and social persona as 'a community.' This includes limiting the opportunities for young people within the community; people who are probably already suffering disproportionately from the effects of underachievement in the education system, unemployment, poverty, getting caught up in anti-social and criminal behaviour, over-representation in all aspects of the criminal justice system, and from government cuts in services. 

Community facilities, such as youth clubs, dance hall, community centres, libraries, are vital for the healthy development and maintenance of healthy communities; they are the hearts, the lungs, the kidneys, the lives, the brains and, yes, the 'souls' of local communities in western societies. Getting rid of them constitutes a crime against the communities which they are serving, and especially against the young people who are so often the more disenfranchised element of the community. 

Like a carefully tended garden, diversity needs to be cultivated or promoted

Without these organs of a dynamic community, you cannot achieve the goal of bringing people from different ethnic and religious groups together and facilitate the development of an inclusive society. This is partly because of the fact that, in the absence of what I would call 'secular' community centres, libraries, youth centres, etc, the different ethnic communities are then forced to turn inward and develop or rely more on their own uni-cultural and religious amenities. 

This then promotes what you could consider to be 'separate' or 'segregated' development along uni-ethnic, religious and cultural lines. A situation which could result in the enhanced empowerment of 'extremist' religious and political voices in these communities, while dis-empowering the progressive voices within them. Not having vibrant community resources is more likely to result in having a disparate community comprising individuals and groups 'doing their own thing', but with little or no effective communication and cooperating between them; an absence of 'community spirit', of 'feeling that you are part of an integrated whole.' 

A speaker at a recent event at The Drum

Community facilities like The Drum do not only provide a venue for the community, and young people in particular, to interact with and participate in activities which promotes self- and community development, they have a strategic role to play in western countries, and Britain, in this case, in helping to develop and promote a peaceful and inclusive multi-ethnic society.

Closing The Drum would be a myopic step and one which could prove more costly, and not only in economic terms, but in a missed opportunity to bring people together and promote ethnic, cultural and social cohesion.

A Druming Trio at a recent event at The Drum