The following journal entries were either written by Matt Bell or were generated by AI trained on all the team communication over the project's duration. Any AI generated posts are clearly marked with a disclaimer.
Behind the Scenes: Money, Transparency, and What I Learnt About Finance in Belong in Plymouth
Whoever controls the money, however it is held and distributed, inevitably has one of the most significant influences on how work progresses. Of all the moving parts in Belong in Plymouth, managing t...
Starting conditions - summary
We developed an operational model built on four key starting conditions: open communications, self-employed contracts, fixed pay rates, and open finance. These approaches created flexibility and trans...
Starting conditions - open communications
We established openness as the default communication principle rather than keeping information closed. This transparency was implemented through groups.io as the primary platform, though it wasn't wit...
Starting conditions - self employment/sub contractors
The self-employed contract model at Belong in Plymouth created a distinctive structure where most contributors worked approximately one day per week. This approach brought numerous benefits that ulti...
Starting conditions - fixed pay rates
We implemented a straightforward compensation system with standard rates: £40 per hour for delivering work and £20 per hour for attending meetings. While this dual-rate structure created clarity in pr...
Starting conditions - open finance
Financial transparency was a journey of continuous improvement at Belong in Plymouth. Initially, the system was in constant flux, making it difficult for team members to follow. This challenge was com...
Relational ways of working
Building Trust, Connection, and Authentic Relationships As time is given to the understanding of the context and in the building of relationships, this starts to push us into a way of working that is...
Expression of Interest - March 2020
Please tell us why you are applying. What does the partnership want to achieve and why, and over what period of time? Why do you think you can be successful? In Plymouth, our aspiration is to ‘shift ...
Stage 1 submission - September 2020
Please describe specifically which groups or communities your partnership seeks to benefit and how you will involve them in developing a plan over the first 6-9 months. How will your approach promote ...
The areas we can be certain about
There is a long legacy of work that the Healthy Communities Together programme builds on. This written and embodied knowledge and experience is held in all of us. We know it as individuals, as colleag...
Stage 2 submission - October 2021
In 4 years time, success looks like: An established, ongoing community conversation continually feeding into strategic decision-making. Quality support for immediate community action, which is furth...
Collaboration - A Summary
Collaboration: "a process through which parties who see different aspects of a problem can constructively explore their differences and search for solutions that go beyond their own limited vision of ...
Moving away from command and control
When working in collaboration, there is no command or control. The normal organisational structure is lacking. Each organisation and each individual is a sovereign body in their own right. Working on ...
Give patience and time
A long-term commitment is needed because that is the length of time that people and relationships work over. It takes time to physically reach people and to make contact. It takes time to gradually sh...
Managing roles in uncertainty
The work to be done is mind-bendingly interconnected. We are highly interconnected as a society. To get to work, we rely on the world’s people and resources to get there before we have even started th...
Systems and practices
The technical work has followed the interpersonal simply because the available technical tools and standard practices are designed for another context (as described above). As we have discovered, rela...
Humility and curiosity
This has a number of different aspects to it. First, at a very human level, if members of a collaboration make assumptions that, because of an area of expertise or worse, positional power, they need t...
Belong in Plymouth @ Matters of the HeART
On May 18th, Belong in Plymouth hosted an event at Ocean Studios to emphasize the importance of listening. The event aimed to make participants feel heard, regardless of their roles or labels, and to ...
Human + AI: Evolving Community Insights Toolkit
We’ve been thinking a lot lately about how technology fits into our community work. At Belong in Plymouth, we're exploring ways AI can support—but never replace—the human side of processing conversati...
Bringing Belong in Plymouth to Life
In June 2023, the Belong in Plymouth team welcomed a filmmaker to capture stories from across the city. But this wasn’t just about documentation—it was about connection. Karen Pilkington explained th...
Building Relational Work — Even When Messy
On 31 May 2023, Matt Bell dropped a message into our thread that captured the spirit of our journey: “Love this coming together. Just musing… and connecting.” We were juggling so many moving parts—st...
From Stories to Systems Understanding
What began as a project to understand Emergency Department (ED) use in Plymouth quickly expanded into something deeper. We weren’t just collecting stories—we were beginning to trace the systems behind...
New Ways to Support Freelancers
Jelly South West began as a simple idea: create free coworking spaces where freelancers and home-based workers could connect. But it’s grown into something deeper—a community of mutual support that t...
Coworking Builds Belonging
At first glance, Jelly South West might not look like part of Belong in Plymouth. It’s a coworking community for freelancers and small businesses. But dig a little deeper, and it’s clear: this is belo...
Belonging Happens Neighborhood by Neighborhood
One of our biggest experiments so far has been our neighbourhood pilot in Stoke. It started with a simple question: what if we focused deeply on one local area? Karen Pilkington led the way: “I’m bot...
Youth Voice: Rewriting the Invitation
In January 2023, the Belong in Plymouth team revisited a familiar challenge: how can young people have real influence in shaping their city? “Youth influence has waxed and waned,” Matt Bell noted, ec...
Shaping Change with Changing Futures
Back in December, we sat down with the Changing Futures team—a programme also working with people experiencing deep, multiple disadvantages. “It was a meeting of two like-minded programs that share a...
Finding Shared Purpose with Changing Futures
In December 2022, we sat down with colleagues from the Changing Futures programme. What struck us most? We were speaking the same language—despite different scopes, timelines, and remits. “It was a m...
Transparent Budgeting Through Trust
When Alex Hayes from The National Lottery Community Fund emailed in July 2022, the message was clear: let’s keep the budget conversation open. “If you are holding a cash balance, please let us know an...
Learning From Success
From the beginning, we’ve said Belong in Plymouth isn’t about creating something new—it’s about connecting what already exists. Matt Bell said it best in our very first Core Team email: “We’re not cr...