Methodology not Ideology

Developing a workshop-based program to learn what kind of understanding and ideas evolve when we start from individual experiences. After the enthusiasm of finding that many people were interested in being more person-centered, valuing the voice of experience, and wanting to be more connected and relevant to the people they were serving, it was important to center our way of seeing the world in a framework that would be as objective as possible.

Choosing Belonging as a topic theme for our conversations meant that the human experience was firmly in the center, and our methodology practiced a human approach. A wide advert went out to train anyone as a Community Researcher during COVID, so we had good responses from a diverse group of people, including those who would normally be too busy at work. They were trained to have conversations, not conduct interviews or surveys.

We recognized the need to sense-make from the conversations collaboratively and introduced Sense Making and later on Conversation Processing Workshops. Conversation Processing converted fragments of conversations into factors of social isolation and loneliness that we mapped onto a Map of Belonging through discussion in small groups of 14 people. A factor is something that can go up and down and can be measured in some way.

Sense Making introduced these fragments and factors to a broader group of 40 people from all sectors and roles within Plymouth, again with a broad invite. In the five workshops we held, we encouraged people to begin with the actual words of one person talking about belonging in Plymouth. This then led to group analysis, something that we had avoided in the conversation processing as it was all too easy to make assumptions and make up what life was like for others.

Sense Making workshops introduced people who would not normally meet—people working in health, statutory, VCSE alongside local residents and young people. They created wider understanding and clarity as we learned to listen in small groups and be guided by great facilitation. The skills gained by young people and residents in the room were also relevant in helping them get their voices heard and get work done with support from the connections made in the room.

The balance of embodied personal story and analytical use of factors delivered reflective and empathetic understanding, which then became the basis of collaborative action. Collaborative Action was started through creating Design Briefs and using "Round Robin"—a co-design activity aimed to spark the imagination and develop ideas together, particularly from people less able than others to shout them out.

Getting to think up ideas in the room was fun and held a great hackathon energy, but we were going to have to go a LOT further if we wanted to see genuine action take place. In general, this is where co-design stops, leaving it to "experts" to create the products for us to test. Could we leave the production to the real experts in the room—those who lived in the neighborhood or the young people who wanted to be heard?