A key shift in moving towards more relational practice, referred to in threads running through many of these blog pieces, is building trust and a shared sense of psychological safety. One early way of...
By Martyn Lowesmith
Do you remember what your favourite book was as a child? Or perhaps your current favourite film or TV programme? My favourite book, as a child, was Alice in Wonderland. A well-read, well-worn book th...
By Martyn Lowesmith
Currently, a phrase very ‘of the moment’ – highly desirable to get engaged in…and a complex concept with varying degrees of success…yet, perhaps, a victim of its own popularity? As with many popular c...
By Martyn Lowesmith
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply” - Stephen Covey. As a world, we focus more on how to speak than how to listen. It happens all around us....
By Martyn Lowesmith
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 ...
By Karen Pilkington
63 people shared who they connect to the most in their work, representing a snapshot of connected life in Plymouth. https://wordart.com/5z5h5h8wx5m9/plymouth-network We shared considerable frustrat...
By Karen Pilkington
Turned out to be quite a controversial thing holding a People's Assembly just before Purdah. It was naïve of us to think that a person's political beliefs could be assimilated into community work. Tur...
By Karen Pilkington
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...
By Cathy McCabe
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
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...
By Cathy McCabe
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
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