There is a deficit in our media, where control of the platforms we depend on to inform us about the world and each other, are increasingly distant and far removed from the places that we live. In this episode I share some thoughts about how and why this matters, and where we can begin to rebalance our media decentred.co.uk/decentered-m… #democraticdeficit #mediareform

This is the interesting challenge, because that is the assumption that is often made. My experience of living in Leicester, however, is that the high-levels of immigration are not well integrated. Leicester does well not to descend into antagonism (though it does happen), can be a foreboding and isolating experience for anyone, and the risk of sectarianism is pretty high these days. From my experience wandering around the city centre is that the spaces and places where people interact the most are places like TK Maxx, Primark and the supermarkets. I don't go to pubs, I tend to go to cafés, but there is not a lot of interaction in these places between people who have different cultural and social expectations. Leicester has not had an active social cohesion policy since the start of the 2010s. So its hard to know what is working and what isn't. As @rakibehsan has said, the multicultural model certainly isn't fit for purpose. There has been a strong focus on 'bonding' social capital in Leicester, where people come together around their heritage identity and build tight-knit social activities. There is less focus, however, on 'bridging' social capital, that otherwise enables people to interact across different groups. I suppose it is easier to let water flow downhill and see where it pools! This is definitely a generational thing, and a class thing. Spend any time in the City Centre, and its esy to spot the dividing lines. Greggs has a good spread of customers from different communities, but it is mostly working class. John Lewis, is much more defined by shoppers who visit from outside the city, i.e. the white British population. Cultural institutions like Curve Theatre and Phoenix Arts Cinema, for example, tend to follow the money and draw together a predominantly older white British audience, who travel in to the city, then travel out again. Unfortunately, while our local universities talk-the-talk about being engaged with Leicester as a place, it feels like they do it from on-high and at a distance. They do drive-by analysis, as most people employed at these institutions don't live in the city. A few do, but not many. Where are the large-scale ethnographic, sociological and cultural studies taking place by UK academic institutions that can track and account for the many changes we are seeing and living through. UK universities are too busy chasing international research projects. They know more about what is happening in South America, or Southern Africa, with their efforts to decolonise in the name of the 'global majority', but they don't have a clue what is happening on their doorstep. I need to understand this, because the work I do to support #communitymedia is dependent on having a functional, practical and pragmatic model and evidence base. The best I've found is @BelongNetwork and the work of @TedCantle, @growsocialcapit @thepl_network I support @soarsounduk and @radiolearUK with the aim of promoting intercultural engagement for social cohesion, among other factors. I'm not really interested in how things were in the 1980s (though that is important to acknowledge and understand), I'm more focussed on what things can be like in the 2030s and 40s, as emerging generations come to the fore, and different media platforms enable them to interact in different ways. We need to be investing in new forms of meaningful and symbolic spaces, as cultural and social institutions, so we can meet the needs of the future. As @HFreinacht puts it - and I endlessly repeat - "after the deconstruction must come the reconstruction." I would add, post-modernism doesn't really do community development...