Priors Park Workshop Diary: Month 1

On Tuesday 7th October I attended the first of six Priors Park place sessions at Shannon Way. The aim for these sessions is to by the end come out with our first ever ‘place plan’. 

 

Place plans aim to be co-created documents made within a place to help guide and direct priorities for it’s team and wider community. Priors Park is the first to fully explore this and this exercise will hopefully provide insight into what our other 77 places will have to do in the creation of their own. In many ways place plans are an even bigger reflection of how each place is different to one another, their unique wants, needs, customers, geography and networks all playing a huge role. Whilst having a place standard is crucial, individual place plans are even more essential as they truly bring the bottom-up approach alive. 

 

The session was hosted by Rich Holmes from Go Together, a training and consultancy organisation specialising in community-led change. The workshop lasted the full day and had been thoughtfully designed to reflect the values of asset-based community development (or ABCD) with collaboration, shared ownership, and existing strengths all big topics of discussion.  It also gave myself and other colleagues the chance to connect and work with others I wouldn’t normally see in my day to day, both internally and externally. 

 

The core parts of these sessions are focused on being interactive, prioritising group discussion as much as possible. Notable differences from typical workshops, like the lack of PowerPoint presentation, sitting in a circle of chairs rather than rows and movement-based activities as part of #ActiveSoles helped to create a fun and energising atmosphere to explore what would otherwise be very complex topics. 

Priorsstartmontage

Other notable takeaways included: 

 

“Flow” not a schedule: Throughout the session we worked within a flexible “flow,” not a fixed schedule. This allowed the group to adapt and evolve based on shared needs and emerging conversations instead of having to cut anything short.

 

Paper policy: As previously mentioned there was no PowerPoint in sight and the same could be said for laptops, phones and other kinds of technology, even landyards. Responses were shared exclusively via post its, conversation cards and flip chart paper. It helped us to engage more actively in the session and also helped Rich to connect better with us

 

The breath pattern approach: Throughout the day, we moved through cycles of divergence (opening ideas), convergence (drawing connections) and emergence (surfacing new insights). This is otherwise known as the breath pattern approach. It meant fully embracing discomfort at times – or the “groan zone” as Rich called it - because that’s where transformation often begins. 

The Venn Diagram: The most thought-provoking part of the day came in the form of exploring the 3 main points of contact within the place-based approach of community, organisations and systems; more specifically how those areas need to adapt to bring about growth. What needs to happen locally? What shifts are needed in practice and mindset? What broader policies or structures must evolve? Each group added actions or ideas to a physical Venn diagram on the floor in each of these areas and we all co-berated at the end to see how they all interacted and identified where cross overs were.

 Chances to express: In these types of sessions expression and getting to know each other is crucial for any kind of progression to be made. The day was just as much about making us feel more comfortable around each other and bonding as a group as it was about getting to the answers. Techniques like sitting in the circle, using objects as a way of marking when it’s someone's turn to speak and more creative/visual thought tasks like drawing were not just memorable but served to fully open us all up to the art of the possible. 

Closing circle: The closing circle meant we ended where we began. It was at this point we built our baseline tree, capturing our hopes, strengths, and intentions moving forward as a group as well as reflected individually on what we need to do to achieve the goals we set out. 

 

One of the most profound things I came out of the session with was a message around the word change. We use the word change a lot within the organisation when talking about future projects and proposals but through discussion in this session I came to realise that it doesn’t quite hit the nail on the head. Change is always a sticking point, no matter whether you feel like the change being made is a positive one or not. The phrase “We want to do things with you not to you.” was bought up a lot throughout this session and I feel like the word change in light of this does feel very black and white, that a scenario can only be “this or that”, that if things “aren’t changing” in some capacity then it must be wrong.  

 

This was made more evident when the conversation of customer engagement came up and some people pointed out that despite our own views; some customers are happy as they are. That's where I came up with the idea of replacing the word change with growth instead. It puts emphasis back onto something being a shared experience and goes from our focus being deficit based and trying to change those things to acknowledging the strengths a community already has and building upon it. This isn't to say anything negative should be ignored as another memorable part of the session showed us glass half empty and glass half full thinking around different scenarios. It was noticed quite quickly you can't have one without the other and a grey area needs to be found. Grey areas are always going to feel uncomfortable as there no “absolutes” there, a little like the “groan zone”, but ultimately if you allow things to be uncomfortable and exist in that space we come to better conclusions.

 

Think of it like a tree or plant, it will grow independently in whatever way the sun shines brightest and it's up to us to give it the space and care to do so. Sometimes it will grow fast, sometimes slow, sometimes offshoots will spring up where you least expect them to but that’s the essence of the bottom-up approach. We don't determine where the sun shines, the customers do. They know what makes them happy and that's where we need to adapt.

 

By the end of the session there were 3 main emerging areas of focus:

  1. Working with the community in Priors Park to grow local capacity and leadership.

  2. Strengthening cross-organisational and community relationships that enable a community-led approach.

  3. Deepening understanding of place-based practice among Bromford Flagship colleagues, so teams can work better together and serve local residents.

 

We will meet again next month for our second workshop, this time moving out of Shannon Way and into the community church. I will be blogging following every session, sharing the journey so watch this space.

 

Resources:

For those who’d like to explore Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) further, here are some recommended resources:

🎥 TED Talks:

📘 Case Studies: