The workshops provide a key opportunity to influence the current debate on how people get involved in their communities – and what organisations and policy makers need to do to better support it, as the views and opinions of participants will feed into the final project report and recommendations.

There are still a few places left in each workshop, so if you are based in Leeds, Enfield and Suffolk and would like to attend please contact: 

• Tim Hughes for the Leeds workshop on 2 March
• Sarah Miller for the Suffolk workshop on 10 March
• Ellie Brodie for the Enfield workshop on 22 March.

I facilitated one of the workshop groups that followed the speech through the task of identifying some of the opportunities and challenges that the Big Society presents for Enfield’s residents and organisations. The group thought that the Big Society agenda could encourage groups to collaborate, form partnerships and work together. The potential competition between local organisations for fewer resources and contracts, and with public sector workers who may have lost their jobs, was mentioned as a challenge. The different opportunities for participation that different people and areas have was another potential challenge, including the difficultly of engaging more transient groups such as the temporarily housed population of Enfield. I will look forward with interest to reading the full report of the day.

EC: Richard, could you tell us a bit about your interest in the project?

RJ: Well I’m interested in the project because I’m interested in the idea of participation. I think one of the key issues today, facing both statutory and voluntary organisations, is how do we participate in a meaningful way, with the public, in order to inform and develop our services.

EC: Excellent. And how do you feel the research can help Leeds and feed into other inner city areas such as Leeds?

RJ: There’s lots of participation going on,  but participation opportunities are designed by the agency to meet the agency’s needs and they’re often not structured in a way that best meets the needs of the people that you’re aiming to serve. I think that my ambition for the project, whether it’s able to achieve it with the resources or not, is to come up with some clear idea that Leeds can use about how we can engage people better in participation activities. I think the project so far has challenged that in Leeds; the local stakeholder group meetings, the mapping sessions that we’ve had, the outcomes we’ve had, people have shown a great deal of interest in them. The interim report is out, I’ve had a look at that, again, there’s a great deal of interest in it because it is challenging the norm, it’s challenging people’s perceptions of how we should or shouldn’t participate with groups. Nobody comes to a stakeholder meeting and goes away and says ‘that was a waste of time, I haven’t learnt anything’ because they always feel as though they’ve come away with something new, and that their work is going to change as a result of that engagement, and I think that’s only going to grow as the project moves forward.

EC: The next phase of the project will be the in-depth interviews. What are you hoping they will bring to the project?

RJ: It’s the bit that everybody’s interested in. It’s the bit that matters really. It’s talking to people about how they participate. It’s actually trying to find people who participate, as well as those who don’t participate very often and finding out why they don’t participate. I am deeply interested, as are all the other members of the local stakeholder group, and people outside that, to find out why people do or don’t participate and what the connections and patterns are. If we find the answers to these questions we’re on to a winner! Maybe I’m expecting too much from the project, but anything that gives us a clear indication, because we are falling back on the same methods again and again and again, using the same old techniques, and providing people with an opportunity to participate, but not necessarily an opportunity that fits their needs and their wants. What we’ve got now, on behalf of Leeds, is somebody coming in from outside, having done a significant amount of preparation, with the literature review and everything else, and asking the question that Leeds needs to ask, but in a very objective way, without any local politic or local relationship affecting that and that’s really, really important. I think there’s no loss on that – I think if it even reinforces that what we are doing now is right, it will have helped us to move forward.

EC: Great stuff. Thank you very much Richard.

The sessions held in inner-city Leeds were fascinating. We had some real stimulating discussions about what participation means to different people and why it is important. People’s perceptions were really varied, for example ‘having a voice’, ‘making a difference’, ‘inclusion’, ‘learning new skills’ and ‘companionship’. It all made for some very thought provoking conversations. The mapping element entailed groups working together to build a map of their local area, which they then populated with sites and opportunities for participation. Not only did this make for some very colourful depictions of the local area, but provided the project team with useful information about the areas people participate. The participants seemed to really enjoy discussing their local area and relished being asked about things that are important to them.

The workshops have helped us to prepare for the next stage of the research. In drawing on local knowledge and identifying the assorted sites of participation in the local area, we have a better idea of where we can find a diverse sample of people for the interviews that we will soon be carrying out. In the near future we will be writing a report of the mapping sessions and the use of community mapping as a research method, so watch this space!

In each meeting, participants created visual maps of where participation happens in the case study area. These ‘activity maps’ identified both ‘sites’ of participation (e.g. Animal Rescue Centre) and different participatory activities or roles (e.g. Parent Governors). Apart from being a fun and engaging way for participants to get to know each other and the project better, the maps will provide invaluable data for the researchers – helping them to get to grips with the important ‘hot spots’ of local participation where they can carry out further research.

Here are a few photos to give you an idea of the mapping sessions….

Enfield - map in the making

Leeds - the finished product

Suffolk - getting started

With the help of our local partners – the Suffolk Association of Voluntary Organisations, and its member organisation, the Suffolk Volunteering Federation – I’ve been able to talk to a huge variety of people and organisations. Contacts range from local voluntary organisations to statutory organisations that work in the wider region of West Suffolk and beyond, as well as individuals who live and work in Suffolk. I’ve been visiting the local Community Partnership organisation, Young Suffolk and a Volunteer Centre. I’ve also the good fortune to attend the West Suffolk Local Strategic Partnership Annual Conference. This enabled me to experience ‘participation’ first hand, and to get a feel for how consultation about the community strategy is conducted and what the key concerns are of the delegates from across West Suffolk.

Basic things like popping into the local newsagents have also been hugely informative. Not only did I discover that that there are two rival local papers, but also that the local newsagents carry papers in Polish, Turkish and Italian, indicating some of the minority languages spoken in the area. The local papers carry a lot of relevant information relating to a wide variety of participatory activities – from donating to charity, the organisation of charity walks, to updates on recent developments in the local volunteer centre and the tensions between local councillors and residents over planning issues.

Whilst exploring the wider area of Leeds, I have learned of some interesting participation sites and events. This included a former primary school that had recently been occupied by local residents who were campaigning for the building to be saved for community use, as well as various exciting events being organised for next year’s Leeds Year of Volunteering. With the help of Voluntary Action Leeds and other partnering organisations, we are now close to deciding on the smaller, case-study area within the city.

Many of Enfield’s voluntary and community sector infrastructure organisations (e.g. Enfield Disability Action and the Volunteer Centre) are based in the same building called ‘Community House’ – a friendly place in the south east of the borough with a volunteer-ran café open to the public. A large number of north London’s business infrastructure organisations (e.g. Enfield Business and Retailers Association) are housed in the north east of the borough in the same building, called ‘Enfield Business Centre’. These infrastructure ‘hubs’ seem to really facilitate collaboration and communication – something that one of my interviewees commented on.  

A helpful conversation with a head of service at the Local Authority, walking about making observations and visiting an exhibition at London’s Museum of Transport, are helping me narrow down my fieldwork area to an approximate 2 mile square patch based around three Underground stations. The combination of excellent transport links to the city centre and an abundance of 1930s semis should make this fertile ‘suburban’ ground for the research to take place in.