Social Sciences

As the popular four-part series of Town, presented by Nicholas Crane, is released on DVD, Platform talks to the OU’s Dr Gerry Mooney, academic advisor to the programme. A staff tutor in Social Sciences and a senior lecturer for The Open University in Scotland, Dr Gerry Mooney was one of two academic advisors looking at some of the key social sciences issues of today, including community, sustainability, inequality, diversity and power, as Town was filmed. Using stunning aerials and enhanced 3D graphics, Nicholas Crane explores four iconic British towns: Scarborough, Ludlow, Perth and Totnes…

What does an academic advisor do on a television programme?

All Open University and BBC co-productions have at least one academic advisor on the team. Our role is to help incorporate the most up to date issues and academic debates into the filming, so that the final programme is as relevant as possible. We also help to set the specific things addressed in the programme into a wider context, through the extra content we help develop for the OU’s OpenLearn website and, for Towns, the free booklet.

What do the OpenLearn resources add to the series?

OpenLearn is the OU’s free-to-access website which offers topical and interactive content, from expert blogs, to videos and games, often linked to OU/BBC programmes. The centrepiece of our Town content on OpenLearn is the interactive game My Town, Your Town, Whose Town? It lets you step into the shoes of a community leader and see what kind of decisions work - and which ones don’t.

As you play you can gather feedback from residents on all the issues, including a new shopping centre, closing a factory, library cuts, new roads and social housing. Then once you’ve made your decision, you can see what the impact is and how similar decisions have worked in real life towns.

Open University tutors have also written special essays on each town, but they’ve also expanded the reach of the series with essays on five extra locations: Paisley in West Central Scotland, Newry in Northern Ireland, Athlone in the centre of Ireland, Wrexham, the largest town in North Wales, and Corby in Northamptonshire. It gives us a chance to explore other kinds of towns, such as declining or ex-industrial towns, looking at questions of employment, diversity and migration.

Which of the programmes were you involved in?

I was involved with shooting for two of the four towns, Perth and Scarborough. At Perth I spent a day with the team at the recycling plant at Glenfarg, looking at how refuse for a large town is sorted and disposed of. Recycling needs to be cleverly managed to make the best use of resources. The plant carefully predicts the amount of waste a town the size of Perth is likely to produce, so that it is sustainable in the long term.

In Scarborough we visited one of the few remaining bus manufacturers. Scarborough is a very small town but it can still support small scale manufacturers. When we think of Scarborough we mostly think of holidays by the sea, bucket and spade in hand, but there’s a thriving industry below the surface.

Which town do you have the greatest personal connection with?

I was born, studied in and still live in Paisley. While it does merge in part with Glasgow, its much larger neighbour, Paisley has a clear identity of its own. The name is most commonly associated with the well known fabric pattern, seen on shirts everywhere in the 1970s, but Paisley’s economic heyday as a textiles centre has gone.

It is still Scotland’s largest town, but like many other towns it faces major issues about unemployment, poverty and other social problems. It is also a town that has undergone significant change. It was a large textile town and while many of the mills have been demolished, some have been converted into flats, but we still need to generate more employment, especially good quality employment opportunities. The Paisley area has a rich cultural tradition, not least in relation to music, film and theatre – it has produced some well known artists, including David Tennant, John Byrne, Gerard Butler, Paulo Nutini and the late Gerry Rafferty.

So how are towns looking to the future?

There’s no ‘one size fits all’ solution.Taking Paisley as an example, it has many things in common with other ex-industrial towns, but also unique assets. In different ways their unique pasts and geographical locations are being used to help shape their future developments.

Of course, any plans for the future are also shaped by the wider society in which they’re located: towns are important to many more people than just their immediate residents – they’re products of a much wider constituency. In turn, they’re an important part of the British landscape and serve huge communities around them.

What are some of the biggest issues facing towns at the moment?

One of the themes which came up again and again as we filmed each town was sustainability: environmental, economic and social. In different ways each town was trying to imagine a sustainable future. Ludlow, for example, maintained a focus on local farmers and local producers with its large farmers’ market, and Totnes is addressing economic and environmental concerns through its status as a ‘transition town’. However, sustainability is also about wider social issues too, how to make all residents of a town feel they are part of it and able to contribute to shaping its future direction.

On a personal level, if you could pick one town to explore further, which would it be?

I would say Paisley, as I live there, but I would also like to explore Corby. A large percentage of the population in Corby are the descendents of families who moved from the West of Scotland. When the steel industry was declining in West Central Scotland during the 1920s and 30s, whole families moved to the then booming steel town of Corby in search of work. Although the steel industry has since fallen away, these families brought their unique accents and other Scottish ‘ways of life’ with them. We usually think of migration as being a large scale event across continents, but Corby shows how local cultures can be transported across a few hundred miles.
 

Town with Nicholas Crane is available now on DVD from OU Worldwide and you can win a copy by entering the Platform competition, which closes on 13 january 2012.

Pictured above is the OU's Gerry Mooney with TV presenter Nicholas Crane, and a copy of the DVD front cover

 

The value of the counselling profession to improve well-being and quality of life is increasingly recognised in society - and the the OU has just delivered the first graduates of its Foundation Degree in Counselling.

"As a counsellor this course has complemented what I do by enabling me to gain a better understanding in my current role from another perspective. The FD has enhanced my (dare I say it) 'credibility' in my work," said Shereen Glean, who graduated this year and works as a high school counsellor.

The foundation degree consists of 150 credits of Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body (CPCAB) work-based study, and 90 credits of Open University knowledge-based study. The CPCAB modules are delivered through a network of Further Education Colleges and other registered training providers, and the qualification takes three years to complete part-time.

There has been a significant growth in counselling over the last 10 years which is only likely to increase given the recognised value of this profession to improving quality of life and indeed the economic state of the nation. Counselling has moved from a largely voluntary activity into a profession with practitioners employed in primary care, industry, local authorities and many other workplaces.

Sherean added: "I obtained a diploma in counselling a few years ago and and the time this was the highest level ran by the Counselling and Psychotherapy Awarding Body. They have since collaborated with the OU and this has been the route I have taken. It has been extremely interesting, in particular my OU course in psychology."

Paula Cash, another of the first graduates, added:  "Having previously studied with OU for my psychology degree I knew I would enjoy the courses that the OU offered towards the foundation degree. I had hoped many years ago to become a clinical psychologist but due to life's twists and turns I ended up supporting a friend through a bereavement and then she helped me with my own bereavement. At this point I realised that clinical work was not what I wanted - that I wished to go into counselling. The foundation degree will certainly bode well for future jobs I apply for and will raise my credibility." 

The OU's Dr Andreas Vossler, Director of the Foundation Degree in Counselling, said: "The counselling profession is increasingly recognised for the value it adds in helping people to live with the problems they face during their lives.

"With the Foundation Degree in Counselling the OU provides in partnership with the Counselling and Psychotherapy Central Awarding Body (CPCAB), these students are equipped with the theoretical understanding and practical skills required to work with a diverse range of people and issues such as mental health problems, relationship problems, physical illness and trauma."

 

Useful links

• Study with the OU - Foundation Degree in Counselling
• More information about the Foundation Degree in Counselling

 

Organisations that have the trust of their workforce have a competitive advantage over their rivals, suggests a new book co-edited by Open University lecturer Dr Rosalind Searle.

Trust and Human Resource Management, co-edited by Dr Searle and Professor Denise Skinner of Coventry University is a well-timed look, given recent events in certain sections of the newspaper industry, at what has previously been a neglected area of human resource management (HRM).

The book brings together the most current thinking by key scholars into how organisations can build, develop and maintain the trust of their employees.

Studies have demonstrated that such employees put greater effort into their roles and work more co-operatively with others while those who do not trust their organisation work less effectively, engage in devious and counter-productive behaviours, or simply leave.

Dr Searle, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Psychology and Director Research Degrees Programme of the Faculty of Social Science said the effects of mistrust or misplaced trust were corrosive, particularly in cases of harassment or bullying where staff can be reluctant to report cases and organisations can be protective of bad managers.

Failure to deal effectively with bullying at work, the book concludes, can threaten an organisation’s on-going viability and sustainability.

Employees looked to an organisation for reassurance about behaviour but the old maxim ‘do as I say not what I do’ is still all too common said Dr Searle.

Organisations have mission statements and codes of practice, “But too often they are just pieces of paper,” she said.

The book looks at key areas of HRM where trust plays a pivotal role including recruitment, training, career progression, promotion and exit, including redundancy.

The book concludes that building, developing and maintaining trust has positive commercial benefits to an organisation and need not require an increased investment in HRM, “just increased transparency,” said Dr Searle.

But can a major shift in how organisations deal with the issue of trust find a place in the current climate when managers are often occupied with ‘fighting fires’?

“There has never been a better time,” said Dr Searle.

“Much of it is common sense and in the book we show why it works.

“And with trust, organisations will be better equipped to fight those fires,” she said.

• The Organisational Trust website