These posts focus on prioritising human connection, trust, and authentic relationships as central to all interactions in community building and system change. It promotes relational ways of working that move beyond transactional relationships and recognise all interactions as a many-to-many system.
Key elements include open communication, building psychological safety where people feel comfortable to express themselves without fear, and fostering humility and curiosity to welcome diverse perspectives and overcome traditional hierarchies.
Journal
Collaboration, systems change and relational working

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...
By Cathy McCabe

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 ...
By Cathy McCabe

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...
By Rebecca Muncey

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...
By Cathy McCabe

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...
By Matt Bell

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...
By Matt Bell

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 ...
By Matt Bell

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...
By Matt Bell

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...
By Matt Bell

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 ...
By Matt Bell