This space focuses on what it means to feel part of a place or community. It includes reflections on participation, inclusion, and the practices that help people connect and belong in meaningful ways.
Young Voices Lead the Way
For too long, young people have been invited into community conversations only at the very end—after decisions are made. So we flipped the script. In 2023, a group of young people in Plymouth took th...
The Party June 2023
You could tell we were up for a party. Despite it being a baking hot evening, we crammed over 100 people together for food and relationship building. Young people and residents rubbed shoulders with p...
Redesigning Community Research Together
What makes someone a ‘community researcher’? According to Belong in Plymouth, it’s not about qualifications—it’s about curiosity, care, and the confidence to hold space for others. In June 2023, Step...
Adapting Community Researcher Training
In June 2023, Stephane and Martyn shared a new challenge: how do we keep our Community Researcher training relevant, ethical, and useful as the work evolves? “We feel our existing training sits somew...
Rethinking Onboarding
Joining a big, multi-layered project like Belong in Plymouth can feel overwhelming—especially if you’re new. That’s why we’ve been reworking how we bring people in. As Stuart Jones said: “We often fo...
Effective Community Workshops That Work
Hosting community workshops sounds simple—until you try to make them truly inclusive, practical, and human. At Belong in Plymouth, we’ve been learning by doing. In St Budeaux and beyond, we started w...
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...
Building a Community Research Network
Over the past year, our community researcher network has grown into something powerful—and deeply human. It's not just about collecting stories. It's about creating the conditions for care, curiosity,...
Building a Functional Care Economy Through Social Prescribing
We’ve been revisiting social prescribing—because the cracks in the system are becoming too wide to ignore. In one conversation, Karen Pilkington got to the heart of it: “If there’s no community group...
Local Pilot, Big Lessons
The idea was simple: what if we tested Belong in Plymouth’s methods in one neighbourhood, deeply and slowly? In early 2023, a pilot took shape in Stoke. Karen Pilkington began connecting with council...
Ripple Effect: Reconnecting Generations in Plymouth
We’ve been thinking a lot about who we spend time with—and who we don’t. So we launched Ripple Effect, an intergenerational project bringing people together across age groups in the heart of Plymouth...
Engaging and Retaining Young People
In January 2023, Belong in Plymouth turned its focus to a crucial question: how can young people have a real say in city-wide decisions? “Youth influence has waxed and waned,” Matt Bell acknowledged....