Welcome to Belong in Plymouth
Welcome to Belong in Plymouth
Belong in Plymouth conversations
Belong in Plymouth conversations

Belong in Plymouth conversations

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Note: This site is still in development

The process of community conversations into action is both methodologically robust AND builds the foundation for future collective and collaborative action.

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There is a direct and accessible journey of understanding from the whole picture, which can be overwhelming, back into individual stories and experiences that make it real. And because each factor will have many experiences connected to it, the diversity of experiences is tangibly represented.

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Click to list and explore the fragments and factors mapped so far.

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Factors

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Fragments

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Resources

Resources are available - just get in contact.

Currently we have the following resources available and as we develop the process, we add more.

  • Community Researcher training - includes the full training package, handouts and everything needed to run this training.
  • Conversation processing workshop - includes how to run the workshop and preparation needed.
  • Sensemaking workshop template - includes how to run the workshop and community conversations.

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

  • Ownership, understanding and therefore power of the issue becomes the domain of us all, not just a select few.
  • The process itself builds relationships - the foundation for collaborative action.
  • Anyone can contribute, own their own story AND be part of a bigger picture.
  • The whole picture, it's mind boggling complexity, is held directly against the diversity of individual experience.
  • Leaping to easy conclusion, looking for simple answers and silver bullet solutions become obviously misguided.
  • Collective understanding unlocks and unleashes resources from all of us. We start to understand how we can organise around the issues, not existing, and often failing systems.

Have a look at the Map of Belonging in Plymouth, so far…

Map of factors

Explanation of fragments and factors

Content is split into the fragments of lived experience and the things (or factors) from these fragments that might make it easier or harder to feel like someone belongs in Plymouth.

Example fragment of lived experience

"If it's going into town or going to the library or going to community meetings are going to things where you can talk to other people and go out and meet people, a bus is a lifeline, you've got to have that lifeline. If you can't drive, if you don't have any family around, you need to have that ability to be able to go and it's not everyone can afford taxis. So yeah, buses are a lifeline. And a lot of people look down on buses. But for some people, that's their only way to do their food shop to go and speak to someone for a few hours to go to therapy to go to the doctor's and because of how bad the bus service is running. No wonder people are lonely. No wonder people don't have that ability anymore." 

The things from this fragment that might make it easier or harder to feel like this person belongs in Plymouth, could be:

  • Access to public transport - they talk about the bus being a lifeline. A vital way to connect to other people and access services. i.e. access to public transport makes it EASIER to get around and stay connected and therefore feel like you belong somewhere.
  • Disposable income & affordability - they talk about how buses are more affordable than the alternatives. Implicitly there is a sense that 'if they had more money they see taxi's as making it even EASIER to get around'.
  • Frequency of service
  • Quality of service - for both of these things they talk about how the bus service is poor in their eyes, which makes it HARDER to get around and stay connected.

There might be other things that you can see might make it HARDER or EASIER?

Is it 'representative'?

  • Currently the number of conversations feeding into this wikisite are still limited in number - about 30 so far. This makes 'weighting' the importance of the factors inaccurate, BUT we feel there is validity to the overall 'shape' that is emerging.
  • The diversity of people that have taken part is still a growing pool of people and the breadth of experiences still needs to deepen and widen. Having said that our Community Researchers have had conversations with people from across the generations, people who have lived in Plymouth all their life to those that have newly joined the city from people with more income to those with less.

    • We are a movement in Plymouth aiming to bring visibility to critical issues we know exist that stop improvement to people's lives. Part of this is about seeing the whole as well as appreciating individual aspects - Feeling the elephant. We want to avoid the trap we sometimes find ourselves in where one perspective is seen as the whole truth when we know multiple perspectives can exist at the same time.

Map of factors
Factors & Fragments

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