Note from an online roundtable: Coronavirus - building community and connection 1
Note of an online meeting on the coronavirus crisis and the power of connection and community, 7 April 2020
Over 40 people joined our Zoom meeting, which started with speakers who set the scene, then went into 6 breakout groups, and came back into a plenary discussion in which the groups reported back.
Steve Wyler, co-convenor of the network, opened the meeting by saying that despite the terrible events facing individuals and organisations, there were also things already emerging from the crisis which might hold out the promise of a more positive future, and he hoped we might identify some of these today. The focus would be on identifying what is changing now that we’d like to keep for good.
Caroline Slocock, co-convenor of the network, said that the Call to Action for a Better Way, which was launched the previous November and reflected three years of discussion in the network, seemed particularly relevant to the current crisis. The disruption caused by the pandemic was starting to liberate the very power of connection and community celebrated in the Call to Action, in which:
Everyone is heard and believed in, given a fair opportunity to thrive, and the ability to influence the things that matter to them.
Every community comes together, looks out for each other, respects difference, and enables everyone to belong.
Society as a whole values and invests in everyone and in every community.
But the response was patchy, and power still lay in too few hands. The key to an even stronger response, she said, lay in the four action areas identified in the Call to Action:
Sharing power, including creating new platforms to enable different voices to be heard;
Changing practices, including incorporating more humanity and kindness;
Changing organisations, including creating connection and community, not just passive services;
Collaborative leadership, including becoming ‘systems leaders’ and working across silos.
One potential example of changing things for good was what was happening in the homeless sector, Caroline said, where people on the street were being provided with homes.
NEWS FROM THE FRONT LINE
Laura Seebohm, from Changing Lives, which works with people in crisis across the North of England, explained what they are doing to respond to the pandemic. They are under great pressure to fill in for public services which are at full stretch, and they are working with vulnerable groups, not least helping to resettle people coming out of prison and people in refuges. They are finding that more and more people are selling sex to make ends meet, not just former sex workers, and that many of the people they are working with do not even have a phone or internet access. So they are urgently seeking funds to enable them to connect up with them in new ways, for example providing mobile phones, and wondering how the people they support will weather the storm.
Laura said there were two things in the crisis that she would like to keep for good:
First, the flexibility being provided by funders, who have been incredibly supportive and are giving them them autonomy and the power to be responsive.
Second, the creativity and shared vision that is being shown.
Paulette Singer, from the Clitterhouse Farm Project, in North London, then spoke about how they are changing how they are operating in response to the crisis. They had already developed a strong sense of local needs and potential though through five years of door knocking in their community, and this has stood them in good stead. Barnet Council, where 70% of services have been privatised, was slow to respond to the crisis, and voluntary groups have been stepping in with a massive grass roots push.
Paulette noted the ward she works in is one of the most 10% deprived in the UK, and many people there do not have access to Wifi or technology. The new volunteers were mostly from outside and from the middle classes, and that is perhaps an indication that mutual aid has not flourished in recent years in de-industrialised areas and those experiencing deprivation.
In response to the crisis, the Clitterhouse Farm Project has had to move to a networking approach and carry out a ‘systems leader’ role, bringing different grass roots and volunteer groups together. This has had its challenges, as there is sometimes competition between different groups, and there can be problems with ego at every level.
Paulette noted that some excellent community groups and social enterprises, which have provided a lifeline to communities long before the crisis, will not survive, and she described this as an ‘unfolding tragedy’.
Looking to the positives, she said that the Clitterhouse Farm Project has been trying for the last five years to get Barnet Council to recognise and understand the work of groups like theirs and this had now been happening at great speed, although trusting in and handing over to local groups can be deeply uncomfortable for local authorities. She was also encouraged by the heroic efforts to step up and step in to deliver mutual aid across the country. ‘In chaos, there is great collaboration’ she concluded and she hoped this collaboration would continue.
Rachael Orr, from Placeshapers, explained that their housing association members across the country are those which are grounded in and committed to communities. She has just come back from maternity leave and is finding what is now happening in some ways really positive, as the crisis is pushing people to work in a better way. For example, many Placeshapers members are now phoning older or more vulnerable residents every week, and some are already asking themselves whether this new way of working should continue as business as usual when things become more normal.
The Placeshapers members, Rachel said, are being pragmatic and adaptive, for example repairs staff are now delivering goods to vulnerable people. They are also practising place-based collaborative leadership, though mostly at this point with public sector organisations..
The approach to date has been to ask ‘What do people need right now?’, but she said that this is also a moment to lift up our heads and start asking. ‘What more can we do, and how can we do things better, including in collaboration with smaller local bodies?’
CHANGE FOR GOOD
Participants then broke into smaller groups to discuss the question, ‘What is changing now that we’d like to keep for good?’
Feedback from the breakout sessions included the following points that people wanted to keep for the future:
Solidarity and a shared sense of purpose, including a shared story, though that said many people were experiencing a much deeper sense of isolation than others.
Flexibility, creativity, and speed of civil society response, with the community ‘exercising a natural power and authority’ and gaining recognition for it, and often being willing to change at pace, and funders showing flexibility too.
New connections and collaborations, including new ways of doing things online and the forging of new relationships and alliances, with more organisations willing to put aside self-interest.
Humanity, compassion, and kindness, including a generosity between individuals and also organisations that was new, and valuing the whole person.
The breakout sessions also offered some reflections on how things could be done even better:
There was a need for more coordination and knowledge sharing to ensure groups did not duplicate, and could learn from each other.
This included connecting top down/bottom up efforts better and a danger that the risk-averse public sector may at some point stifle local initiative and energy.
There was a danger that outside ‘rescuers’ might disempower those they sought to help, rather than to build and deploy community capacity.
Many people are isolated, without even access to the internet. We should use the crisis to empower people, and should beware state/big tech gaining more power permanently.
Whilst the sense of solidarity was welcome, there was a danger that people fail to understand and respond to the different needs of at risk groups, and inequalities could deepen, and so organisations of all types need to do more to ‘let diversity in’.
Collaborative leadership had grown in the crisis, but we still need to work at it.
Some participants also felt that two distinctive futures were possible, one characterised by community and connection, the other by authoritarian and centralising behaviours. We cannot assume that the former will win out over the latter, and we will need to work hard and effectively to build a convincing and persuasive Better Way story.
Caroline Slocock concluded by inviting people to send us blogs about what they were doing and the potential to achieve change for good in the crisis; and said we would be in touch about further meetings to delve more deeply into these topics.