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Case Study: Building relationships

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Name of project: We Walworth

Led by: Southwark Council and Pembroke House (Walworth based VCS anchor organisation)

Summary: In Walworth, the council worked with cross-sector partners to build on an existing network of community relationships. This allowed them to work towards an ambitious target to have conversations with 80% of the neighbourhood to surface new leaders and their ideas about food and inequality. At time of writing, the project is still ongoing.

The situation: In 2019, Southwark Council agreed a new approach to community engagement. This centred around creating and nurturing relationships with and between the community, listening to the experiences of the community, and building the capacity of communities to get involved in decision making.

The following year existing inequalities in the area were laid bare by the covid pandemic, particularly around food insecurity. Residents with the least social capital were the most vulnerable to the shocks caused by the pandemic. In response, local partners set out to build local resilience by strengthening neighbourhood relationships.

The approach: ‘We Walworth’ was launched to engage everyone in Walworth around a range of local issues, starting with food insecurity and inequality. The project was funded through the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ Partnerships for People and Place programme, and was coordinated by the council and Pembroke House.

The We Walworth model comprised of three elements:

Mass engagement: Through interactive events and 1:1s, the project aimed to talk to 80% of the neighbourhood to find out what matters to local people.

Working groups: Interested residents, local organisations and central and local government staff worked together on issues that emerged during the first phase through a series of engagement and creation challenges. They then presented the vision back to their community at a Ward Forum, then to decision-makers at the council.

Implementation & stewardship: The aim is for the groups to work in collaboration with local decision-makers to implement their vision, bringing policy to life in practical solutions to local issues. The cohort would work directly with local decision-makers and government representatives to explore more effective ways of working together in local contexts. During this phase the resident leaders will gain training and support to be able to deliver elements of future work and their own local social action projects.

The detail: Starting with an initial prompt of food and inequality, the pilot programme hosted seven mass engagement events with 160 Walworth residents, plus government staff and local organisations. By going out into the community to undertake on-street connecting conversations these individuals together held 1:1 conversations with 1000 local people about their personal experiences of food inequality in the neighbourhood. Taking place in person, these neighbourhood conversations facilitated a different kind of interaction to the council’s usual methods of engagement.

These conversations surfaced the issue of the controversial closure of the BBQs in Burgess Park and the diminishing community asset of Walworth’s East Street Market.

To address these challenges, working groups were established made up of interested residents, local organisations and government representatives. To do this, the group took on an eight-week challenge that involved reaching out to allies, engaging sceptics, surfacing challenges, ideas and opportunities, identifying necessary resources and pitching deliverable ideas to the wider community and local decision makers.

As part of this, each working group met with frontline staff from Southwark Council for a ‘walk and talk’ to better understand the challenges. Different forms of engagement were used such as door-knocking, call banking, and, in the case of East Street Market challenge, hosting a market stall.

Using the insights gained through these conversations, the groups held a number of ‘creation sessions’ to collaboratively build future visions that aimed to meet the needs of the wider community. The visions, which included considerations about resourcing, accountability and access were presented at a local Ward Forum for further community input, before being shared with decision makers in the council.

Although these challenges seem hyper-local, each surfaced wider systemic issues around the cost of living, the gentrification of inner-city areas, how class and racial politics limit access to public space and more.

Challenges: The goal to build social capital around food and inequality, and to influence culture change within local and central government within a one-year project was very ambitious. The project wanted to try very different ways of working locally and in partnership, which meant testing new ideas as they were developed, learning and iterating (working in an ‘emergent’ way). The intensity and ambiguity of this proved challenging at times, and it was not always easy to articulate the story of the work and its aims. However, the team remained committed to creating space for other people’s ideas, avoiding a top-down approach, and learning and adapting in real time. Through feedback gathered after project meetings, week notes, blogs and team reflections, much of which was published on a dedicated, open-access website, partners were able to ensure accountability to each other, to the aspirations of the project, and to the local community..

Top lessons:

  • Radically trust in the power of the relationship: Relationships between partners, between residents, and between residents and partners, were the glue that made this project succeed. From the earliest engagement it was clear just how important it was to leverage existing relationships in order to encourage people to take part in events and conversations. This is particularly true of relationships between residents which often start from a position of trust that might be missing between institutions and communities.
  • Prepare to be more flexible and adaptable than you might expect: Delivering this work required the team to respond to each engagement event as it played out and, where necessary, shift direction based on what was learnt. At many points throughout the project, plans pivoted sharply. Whether that was dates for neighbourhood events, the start date and design of the working groups, or approaches to engagement, it was vital for the team to become comfortable with a certain degree of ambiguity.

Sources

Name of project: We Walworth

Led by: Southwark Council and Pembroke House (Walworth based VCS anchor organisation)

Summary: In Walworth, the council worked with cross-sector partners to build on an existing network of community relationships. This allowed them to work towards an ambitious target to have conversations with 80% of the neighbourhood to surface new leaders and their ideas about food and inequality. At time of writing, the project is still ongoing.

The situation: In 2019, Southwark Council agreed a new approach to community engagement. This centred around creating and nurturing relationships with and between the community, listening to the experiences of the community, and building the capacity of communities to get involved in decision making.

The following year existing inequalities in the area were laid bare by the covid pandemic, particularly around food insecurity. Residents with the least social capital were the most vulnerable to the shocks caused by the pandemic. In response, local partners set out to build local resilience by strengthening neighbourhood relationships.

The approach: ‘We Walworth’ was launched to engage everyone in Walworth around a range of local issues, starting with food insecurity and inequality. The project was funded through the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities’ Partnerships for People and Place programme, and was coordinated by the council and Pembroke House.

The We Walworth model comprised of three elements:

Mass engagement: Through interactive events and 1:1s, the project aimed to talk to 80% of the neighbourhood to find out what matters to local people.

Working groups: Interested residents, local organisations and central and local government staff worked together on issues that emerged during the first phase through a series of engagement and creation challenges. They then presented the vision back to their community at a Ward Forum, then to decision-makers at the council.

Implementation & stewardship: The aim is for the groups to work in collaboration with local decision-makers to implement their vision, bringing policy to life in practical solutions to local issues. The cohort would work directly with local decision-makers and government representatives to explore more effective ways of working together in local contexts. During this phase the resident leaders will gain training and support to be able to deliver elements of future work and their own local social action projects.

The detail: Starting with an initial prompt of food and inequality, the pilot programme hosted seven mass engagement events with 160 Walworth residents, plus government staff and local organisations. By going out into the community to undertake on-street connecting conversations these individuals together held 1:1 conversations with 1000 local people about their personal experiences of food inequality in the neighbourhood. Taking place in person, these neighbourhood conversations facilitated a different kind of interaction to the council’s usual methods of engagement.

These conversations surfaced the issue of the controversial closure of the BBQs in Burgess Park and the diminishing community asset of Walworth’s East Street Market.

To address these challenges, working groups were established made up of interested residents, local organisations and government representatives. To do this, the group took on an eight-week challenge that involved reaching out to allies, engaging sceptics, surfacing challenges, ideas and opportunities, identifying necessary resources and pitching deliverable ideas to the wider community and local decision makers.

As part of this, each working group met with frontline staff from Southwark Council for a ‘walk and talk’ to better understand the challenges. Different forms of engagement were used such as door-knocking, call banking, and, in the case of East Street Market challenge, hosting a market stall.

Using the insights gained through these conversations, the groups held a number of ‘creation sessions’ to collaboratively build future visions that aimed to meet the needs of the wider community. The visions, which included considerations about resourcing, accountability and access were presented at a local Ward Forum for further community input, before being shared with decision makers in the council.

Although these challenges seem hyper-local, each surfaced wider systemic issues around the cost of living, the gentrification of inner-city areas, how class and racial politics limit access to public space and more.

Challenges: The goal to build social capital around food and inequality, and to influence culture change within local and central government within a one-year project was very ambitious. The project wanted to try very different ways of working locally and in partnership, which meant testing new ideas as they were developed, learning and iterating (working in an ‘emergent’ way). The intensity and ambiguity of this proved challenging at times, and it was not always easy to articulate the story of the work and its aims. However, the team remained committed to creating space for other people’s ideas, avoiding a top-down approach, and learning and adapting in real time. Through feedback gathered after project meetings, week notes, blogs and team reflections, much of which was published on a dedicated, open-access website, partners were able to ensure accountability to each other, to the aspirations of the project, and to the local community..

Top lessons:

  • Radically trust in the power of the relationship: Relationships between partners, between residents, and between residents and partners, were the glue that made this project succeed. From the earliest engagement it was clear just how important it was to leverage existing relationships in order to encourage people to take part in events and conversations. This is particularly true of relationships between residents which often start from a position of trust that might be missing between institutions and communities.
  • Prepare to be more flexible and adaptable than you might expect: Delivering this work required the team to respond to each engagement event as it played out and, where necessary, shift direction based on what was learnt. At many points throughout the project, plans pivoted sharply. Whether that was dates for neighbourhood events, the start date and design of the working groups, or approaches to engagement, it was vital for the team to become comfortable with a certain degree of ambiguity.

Sources

Page last updated: 29 Jan 2024, 09:15 AM