The freelance experience
Introduction Everyone who worked on Belong in Plymouth did so in a part-time capacity. For some, it was part of a salaried role, but more than half of the ‘core team’ were self-employed. Part-time ho...
Journal
What do we mean by 'the system'?
While working on the Belong in Plymouth programme, we often found ourselves talking about ‘the system’ when we were discussing how things currently work and how we might effect change in our city. But...
Defining the 'vision' for Belong in Plymouth
In February 2022, the core team of Belong in Plymouth came together to create a Theory of Change for our work. This proved to be challenging due to the emergent nature of the work and the trickiness o...
Psychological safety and trust
Background In the winter of 2023-24, in my role as Learning Partner for the project, I interviewed 11 of the 18 ‘core team’ members of Belong in Plymouth. A common theme was psychological safety and ...
Personal Development within an Emergent Programme
Friends and family frequently ask, "So, what actually is an 'emergent programme'?" and "What does that actually mean for you day to day?" This post aims to answer those questions by sharing my experie...
Navigating uncertainty and emergence
Uncertainty and emergence have characterized all aspects of the Belong in Plymouth journey. From the time we wrote our successful funding bid, things were kept pretty open. The core team wanted to all...
Making Sense of Belonging: From Insight to Action through Community Research
“There is massive value in the way that that has brought people into what it means to research and gather information and data…even if they've just touched on it…you can take some story of like, Marga...
Hope in The Heart Exhibition Spring 2022
Hope in the Heart brought together artists with lived experience of poor mental health to share their thoughts in a reflective way with professionals. It was one of our first attempts at bringing diff...
Real Big Conversations March 2023
After a host of small conversations carried out in churches and small groups, people in Plymouth came together for a Big Conversation hosted by Transforming Plymouth Together. Topics that were high on...
Neighbourocracy Autumn 2022
28 people, including 6 young people, attended a gathering in Autumn 2022 with Nate Whitestone from A Fairer Society and Joseph Rathinam from the Neighborocracy Movement. Joseph is a South Indian commu...
Processing conversations together
You might be wondering what happens to conversations once they are collected? Well, I am happy to say that back in November 2023 we reached a significant milestone. With the support of Health Determin...
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...