2021

Director blog August 2021: Getting things done

Most of us will know what it feels like to make a list of things we need to do, diligently work through it, maybe get side–tracked by stuff, come back to other stuff that is urgent and cannot be put off any longer. Get to the end of the day, or week and then do it all over again – another list.

Maybe most of us will also know what it feels like to have too much to do – and that some tasks won’t get done, fall through the gaps in our busy lives. Which generates stress, no matter how hard we work.

One of the ways I decompress is by reading – whatever takes my interest, novels, current affairs, books on ideas and theory – and I found myself reading about stress free productivity – hence the blog. The premise being that the more we are able to relax, the more things get done. Having a lot of things on your mind limits how much gets done – we feel overwhelmed. It is exhausting thinking about all the things that need to get done, and this is simply trying to recall what it is we need to do, not even the act of doing it.

A lot of this is obvious but we often miss what is obvious – like where we find ourselves placing our attention. I was a bit shocked to realise how much time I spend thinking about doing things and trying to remember all the things I should be doing rather than actually doing them. Quite a lot of my life caught up on that hamster wheel. Whereas what I enjoy is being absorbed by what I am doing, being in the moment, not distracted by trying to chase after lists.

The wider reflection for me, is about how we do community work. Again I spend a lot of my life going to meetings, having conversations with people which come down to – so what are we going to do? Dancing around who does what and will it get done and do we even get to the point of spelling out that there is an action and someone is going to do it. I break things down into issues, solutions and actions. In community work we spend a lot of time talking about issues but we often miss the solutions and fail to take actions. Sometimes that is fine because we need the space to simply speak it out, build relational power and trust – people before programme. Not rush to transact business and instrumentalise people. So chat about issues is fine.

But and there is a but, I think one of the major reasons why community work falls short is we don’t then go on to frame the solution and action in specific measurable terms. Sometimes I think this is a deliberate strategy – power holders get people to talk about issues but that is all it is. Stuff doesn’t get done if it hasn’t been clearly agreed what the action is and who is going to do it. I think that is what transparency and accountability means.

I was in a meeting the other week with a lot of public sector workers who lamented the absence of smaller community groups in the delivery of local services and thought was given about how these small groups might ‘get on board’. I seem to have heard the same conversation for years, a subtext of almost every meeting I go to. My thought is – if you want to get more community groups ‘on board’ you just do it. If you really want to do it, you will find a way. It really isn’t hard. This is about political and institutional will. The fact that it still gets talked about means the will is lacking. The solution for example is to identify what resource exists and ring fence and re-direct some of it. Trouble is, no one is framing the solution and the action – hence smaller community groups are disenfranchised. This is by design. I’m not saying there is a malign intent – I just think there are a lot of people copping out. Sometimes people blame the ‘system’ but we are the ones who create the system by who we are and what we do. So for me it is not about the ‘system’ or bureaucracy, it is just about the will and desire to do it differently and better.

Sometimes it occurs to me that maybe the same people in the ‘system’ have a lot on and feel overwhelmed. They can’t relax but bounce from meeting to meeting – too many things to do, important people to placate. No wonder stuff doesn’t get done. Or when it gets done it happens at the margins because no one felt the need to form a committee or bring external consultants in. Sometimes it feels like a conspiracy to agree things are being done when they are not. There’s a fear factor. Maybe that sounds a bit critical.

Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, wrote about how oppression operates through a culture of silence. Power holders encourage magical and naive thinking when addressing social problems – magical in the sense of things being an act of fate or chance, naïve in the sense that those in power always and only act on the best interests of those without power and in fact want to give power away rather than hold on to it. Freire suggests only critical thinking gets things done – that’s why maybe I’m coming across as critical. Critical as in asking questions, trying to move from issue to solution to action. Sometimes getting lost in a list of things to do.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Allen, D (2015) Getting Things Done. London: Piatkus

Friere, P (1995) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. London: Penguin

Director blog July 2021: Wellbeing – The personal is political

Wellbeing has rightly risen up the agenda of things people are talking about – not just because of the pandemic but also because people expect more from employers, the workplace and the day-to-day social spaces we inhabit. That’s a good thing.

What I wonder is whether we have a strong enough shared understanding about what wellbeing is? Inevitably wellbeing means different things to different people but is there a robust enough overall vision? A big tent that people can unite behind and get with the programme. My sense is that we don’t have this – I don’t think wellbeing has broken through because if it had, we’d be living in a very different world.

Wellbeing is a warm comforting word, like ‘community’; it gets sprayed around as a non-specifically positive thing. Fuzzy and vague. But as we know goals and objectives that are not ‘smart’ (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed) or even ‘smarter’ (evaluated and reviewed) – well those loose goals have a habit of not getting done.

To be fair there are plenty of toolkits and how-to guides around:

https://neweconomics.org/2012/07/measuring-wellbeing

https://www.actionforhappiness.org/10-keys-to-happier-living

https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/self-help/guides-tools-and-activities/five-steps-to-mental-wellbeing/

So just like safe-guarding, equal opportunities, health and safety and similar must-have policies it is easy enough to get something written down, and more to the point, understood, used and reviewed. In other words, it can be managerial, technocratic and in its better moments a framework for accountability.

What I feel is lacking from the wellbeing conversation society is having with itself these days is a deeper location of wellbeing as political thing. Funny how that gets airbrushed out of the picture; how we don’t get around to talking about structures of power, control and oppression – move along, nothing to see here.

I’m all up for doing more exercise, going on long walks together, learning a new skill. My point is that the answer to social problems is through both individual self-care AND wider institutional and political actions. And all I get from the professionalised choreography about wellbeing is the former not the latter.

At its worst wellbeing is just a mix of naive and magical thinking – if you are on the sharp end of poverty that is as much about politics and economics as opposed to learning how to breathe properly. The solutions to the stresses that bear down on us can be framed in terms of things you can do as an individual and things that the state can do to or for you, for example via legislation. A tussle between the agency of the individual to sort their lives out versus the structure of the state (NHS / Council etc) to sort it via tax and as public servants.

If you are in power, with all that money and patronage what message would you want to put out there? I’d say it would be about putting all the responsibility on the shoulders of individuals and then try and make out like it was deeply meaningful and empowering. An example of how ideas need to be questioned or else they end up carelessly repeated as assumed ‘common sense’: an ideological con trick.

To be clear, I just think we need a mix of emphasis on what individuals can do, and what wider society needs to get done. A balance, not one thing or the other.

What I reckon we could do is use the opportunity that is presented by wellbeing to put a whole lot of things on the agenda. To think critically, to open up conversations and propose new solutions and actions. I think this is best of both worlds – the individual bit and the collective action joined as one.

The slogan that ‘the personal is political’ is associated with second wave feminism but I feel it is universal and multi-purpose. We can use what we experience to prompt reflective conversations that critically examine how we are living and how we might want to live differently. That in turn is a programme for political action. If we get the opportunity to jump on the wellbeing bandwagon and chat freely why not give it some welly? Be a shame not to.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Director blog: People before programme – June 2021

One of the many things that stuck in my mind on recent community organising training was this phrase ‘people before programme’. It hit me like a train when I got what it meant.

Essentially ‘people before programme’ means not just starting from where people are at, rather than where you want them to be, but also putting the person first, genuinely valuing the relationship rather than what you think you can get out of it.

I’m guilty of getting on the wrong side of that and I’m pretty sure most of us, one way or the other take the occasional short cut. Pretty much every meeting I go to I see people talking past each other, waiting to speak rather than actively listening. A lot of the time I don’t even notice because it is habitual, and I end up doing the same; it is transactional not relational.

I guess if you work in the private or the public sector you know what to expect – there are rules to the game. The private sector has profit as a bottom line and money defines the feedback loop; the public sector runs on systems of top-down accountability and political control. Once you get beyond the massive PR and hype that mystifies the public and private sector, the ‘programme’ is brutally clear, and people on the inside need to follow it. The nail that stands out gets hammered down. But in the community sector we get the opportunity to do differently. We get to define and create our own culture which is why the principle of ‘people before programme’ hit home – how come we don’t do more of that? Obama said: ‘we are the leaders we are waiting for’ and in the community sector we have more freedom than most to make that true.

It isn’t complicated. We all know how it feels to be fully listened to, and on the flip-side when someone tunes out. The power that flows between us was made to be shared – that is what relationships are about, but as we move outwards, we experience ‘the world as it is’, not ‘the world as it should be’, and it doesn’t pay to be naive. Building a more relational culture will not be enough, but it is a start.

If you put ‘people before programme’, you give them power. The power to set their own agenda, to be listened to and initiate their own programme for change. It requires losing control. But also offers the opportunity to work alongside. I’d like to think our citizen action groups follow that and we should be more widely held to account on that basis and on how we develop the resident-led Community Development Trust now in place. There is a vulnerability as well as a strength in that. It is just as easy to pull apart as to pull together – the reasons for pulling together are not as obvious as elsewhere (public and private sector) – but when it clicks, wow.

I’ve been going to the Learning Group convened by BD Collective and the Llankelly Chase Foundation that has been looking into issues of power and paternalism in the borough. I’m not sure the word ‘paternalism’ connects with people but think of it as a near neighbour to sexism, racism and other oppressions. It speaks to a world where things are done to you, like it or not. Where power is held over you by a few, or even a single individual, at the top of the tree. I guess that learning group is trying to put ‘people before programme’ too, but what would it take to dismantle the isms and schisms, the paternalism and all that? Nothing less that conscious and consistent dismantling of control whenever it gets in the way, which is often.

Losing control – that is the strapline I want to see on the next LBBD corporate plan 2022-2026 and VCSE (Voluntary, Community, Social Enterprise!) strategy. Losing control as the means to get a bigger win for all. For me that is the logic of coproduction, localism and generative governance – all the flash terms policy people get paid to talk about but struggle to deliver, so really it is an appeal to be consistent, to do what it says on the tin.

Meanwhile here’s to creating new and exciting spaces to learn and work together.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Making the connections – May 2021

Community coalition building can transform adult social care outcomes (and much more).

You may have noticed that there are a lot of collaboration type meetings going on right now. Twenty or thirty people on a teams call, an even mix of council officers and second tier charities, a consultant or two. I like that all over B&D people are chatting on shared online calls about collaboration and partnership working right now; it will all help us build back better after the pandemic. Paulo Freire, a Brazilian community worker, said we ‘change the world one conversation at a time’ and I believe that. Margaret Mead said it was a ‘small group of thoughtful committed individuals’ but what I think matters even more is how that conversation happens.

The thing I’m noticing about the ‘reimagining adult social care group’, one of those many larger online meetings about better partnership working and delivery, is that it is pretty open in a way that most of the spaces I’ve encountered in the borough are not. The council has talked about moving away from a paternalistic culture and that can only be a good thing. There is something about the culture of strongly political and hierarchical organisations that inhibit wider collaboration – the higher up you go the more brutal it can get; people learn not to bring their whole self to the job which is a shame because the fearful and transactional only gets you so far. With the reimagining adult social care group it is a big shift and it becomes contagious when people behave like they’ve got autonomy, stuff gets done better and quicker.

My assumption is that the adult social care meetings I have been to are highly provisional spaces – some ideas might fly, relationships build and hopefully some very specific piloting of work. This blog is about a proposal for the latter (specific piloting of work). At these meetings I’ve found myself talking about getting resource (money) and support (capacity building) into the hands of smaller community groups – the ones who don’t go to these meetings, who are not constituted or contract ready but who make up the overwhelming majority of resident collective action.

We need to dismantle the winner takes all system. Hence the value of coalitions – if commissioners placed greater social value on consortiums and coalitions it would be transformative – not just reaching and involving more people, leveraging a greater contribution but fundamentally changing the rules of the game.

In terms of how it might work, the approach we’ve taken at Thames Ward Community Project is to build resident-led coalitions. We listen to what people are angry about, what they care about. We distinguish issue, solution and action and start planning together; we ferret out what works through testing and reviewing. We find small pots of money, then deliver, then repeat at maybe greater scale – all done by resident-led groups. Those groups work together as a wider network or coalition – as we get more success we bid for pots of money as consortiums and coalitions because we are not and never have been in competition with each other. It would be great to get other local examples of shared funding and delivery. But what I’d say is not enough of us are working like this because if we were, there’d be more money pushed downwards whereas mostly the money flows upwards to a few.

Michael who chairs the meetings said there were an estimated 7,000 community groups in the borough. I checked on the Charities Commission website and there are very few charities, well under a hundred and of those only a few with significant turnover, so basically you can count the number of groups on a set of fingers who are going to win contracts and play an active, mature partnership role.

What I’ve learnt in Thames Ward is that residents want jobs and the social solidarity that comes from working together; they want their creativity and entrepreneurial flair to lead to more control in their lives – control over work, money, personal and professional development. The journey to that kind of social business sustainability is a rare thing but we should champion this intention, go beyond occasional contracts for the ‘trusted’ few and open up mainstream budgets to smaller groups controlled by local people, especially in a borough that has more developer investment than anywhere in Europe (so I’m told) and a council that exhorts inclusive growth.

When we have these exploratory conversations about collaboration it is easy to rein in ambitions, seek pragmatic and incremental change. I think we should go much further: shift far more money, decision-making and delivery to many more groups via coalitions, consortiums and networks and be explicit about that.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Reaching Outwards – April 2021

Big news: on Friday 26th March we heard we’d been successful in securing a further three years of funding from the Lottery. Our success is a tribute to an incredible amount of hard work and support from residents, partners and local groups over the last three and half years: very much a team effort and evidence of deep collaboration which got us over the line. It means we have a secure base of core funding on which to work from and this makes all the difference. We’ve found over the last couple of years that we’ve been able to secure smaller pots of funding for projects and initiate any number of activities, thus having massively raised expectations it’s great to have the resource to manage and activate this increased workload. Feels good.

Three and a half years ago we began our Reaching Communities programme with the aim of creating a resident-led Community Development Trust (CDT); that seems a long time ago but looking at some of the organisations we know and admire – the Bromley By Bow Centre, Selby Centre, Manor House Community Trust for example – their journey has spanned decades and ours is only just beginning. Hence the task is not only to facilitate empowerment, connection, organisation and community voice but also to ensure we become a mature social business and are sustainable over the long term.

Our work, along with everything around us, will be defined by how we build back better as we come out of the pandemic. The value of community-led action was never in doubt but is needed now more than ever in particular actions that support health and wellbeing, resilience and skills. Our work with health partners, the British Red Cross and with emerging social enterprises will become ever more important as part of the wider solution to the challenges we face.

For the future we need to reach out ever more widely to residents and partners and create a participative democratic practice to underpin the partnerships and projects we are involved with. This means finding ways to ensure what we do is genuinely resident-led and open to everyone who wants to make a contribution. Having become increasingly established and sustainable ourselves, it also means that our success should be defined by our record in helping others grow, become sustainable, attract and secure funding. If we get this right this will be a measure of real service to the wider community. There are lots of resident-led projects bubbling up, from ESOL, to arts, sports and health that show the way forward and with the right support will change what was hitherto thought was possible in terms of service delivery and resident-led social business.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Director Blog – March 2021

Our priorities over the last year have been to provide support and find ways to tackle the pandemic collectively. We led the organisation of the BD CAN work over much of 2020 (shout out to Amina), pioneered a strong partnership with the British Red Cross, including training local people as volunteers and advocates, distributed hand sanitizer to 5,500 households in the ward, delivered literally hundreds of online resident-led events online and as socially distanced activities, supported the growing work around a ‘new model of care’ with health partners, started our Barking Food Forest project aka Riverside Community Garden, and set ourselves up as a new charitable incorporated organisation (Thames Life). There’s a much longer list of activities and achievements but I’ll pause there.

The thing that stands out for me is the resident-led bit. The numbers don’t lie. Everyone of our trustees is a local resident and collectively they reflect the diversity and breadth of expertise across the ward. Our job as staff is back office support; to convene the space and provide the platform – resident leaders will do the rest hence just about every one of our projects is led by residents and the extra funding we have won goes back into these initiatives. You may have noticed that there are a lot of experiments and pilots going on in Barking and Dagenham one way or another but I believe the way we have merged a social business and community organising approach is genuinely unique. Much of the support we have leveraged has come from out of the borough – from Locality, East London Business Association, Citizens UK, London Sport, Planning Aid London, Community Housing London, Laureus Foundation, London Youth, Just Space – because what we are trying to do has an ambition that led us in all sots of directions. When we seek out capacity building support it comes in all shapes and sizes and we all need as much support as we can get.

Right now we are at a crossroads. We have set up our resident-led Community Development Trust but this is the beginning of a whole set of new challenges – establishing the smooth running of an organisation and systems required to run it, having previously gone under the umbrella of Riverside School. This is the challenge of governance – if you are a large organisation you have the capacity to absorb this, but a small group which wants to remain small but able to maintain minimum size to deliver basic support has to get this right. To avoid becoming a bureaucracy and boring people or burning them out with procedures whilst ensuring the fiduciary matters are performed well. This is where the need to get the right support at the right time becomes vital and if the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that we will need to build back better and make sure no one is left behind, to use the political jargon of our times.

Hopefully my next blog will speak of success in securing a further 3-years of Lottery funding – which will cover most of our core costs and really allow us to kick on. Either way we’ve got a lot done, not least in the last year. Especially pleasing has been our work with Barking Sports 4 Good where we managed to deliver a substantial part of this programme online and via socially distanced activity in the final months of 2020, which included the participation of 257 residents in a new women’s cycling and walking project, yoga classes, basketball and leadership training, boxing and women’s fitness classes, dance competitions, a men’s cycling project and enabled us to support the Hikmah Social Project and their football activities. Likewise our involvement with BRL has been pretty spectacular – including working on a resident-led editorial board, community gardening, place-shaping and social enterprise workshops, and ongoing health partnership working. I’ve mentioned the work with health partners previously but again Thames Ward is at the heart of new ways of working with local people and the Locality Board chaired by Cllr Wharby and the Thames View Activation Group supported by LBBD and the local NHS has moved the health agenda on a very long way in the space of a few months.

So no one wants an overly long blog – my message behind all of this is together over the last 3-4 years I feel very grateful for all the investment of time both residents and partners have made. Our Community Development Trust and range of projects seemed a distant prospect in 2017 but local people made it happen. We should demand and expect even greater positive change can and will happen in the coming years. A key measure of our future impact will be to ensure that resources and success is spread widely and evenly across a large number of groups and individuals. That would be my definition of inclusive growth – everybody can grow, everybody wins and no one is left behind.

Matthew Scott

TWCP Director

Tag: 2021

Director blog August 2021: Getting things done

Director blog July 2021: Wellbeing – The personal is political

Director blog: People before programme – June 2021

Making the connections – May 2021

Community coalition building can transform adult social care outcomes (and much more).

Reaching Outwards – April 2021

Director Blog – March 2021

Want a cookie?