Communities: the way we could be

Some people idealise past communities as what must have been the embodiment of a wonderful time – stable, calm, guided by reassuring traditions. Others dread the talk of ‘community’ because they find in so many communal/neighbourhood settings signs of prejudice, discrimination, and oppressive hierarchies. 

The truth is that communities have the potential for mutually supportive relationships and a positive sense of belonging which embraces diversity. However, that potential can only be realised if inclusive and cooperative relations are backed by the prevailing culture, rules and institutional practices. Otherwise, there is always a danger that marginalisation and exploitation could become the norm in a closed-off structure.

When politicians sing the praises of communities, we should go beyond the rhetoric to see if they are championing communities that are realising their social potential through collaborative working, or they are actually promoting the idea that communities riven by divisions should be left alone to deal with their own problems.

The latter type of politician, out of cynicism or naivety, will tell us that the more is left to communities to sort out for themselves, the better it would be for all concerned.  Public expenditure can be reduced, taxes cut, and people will learn to rely on themselves.  In practice, the more communities are deprived of wider political and economic support, the less likely they can ever escape from poverty, poor health, and their generally unenviable quality of life.  The mantra of pulling oneself by one’s bootstraps rings hollow to those who are having to walk barefoot down a stony path.

No one wishes to deny that communities can do a lot for themselves, but ultimately whether that is enough to lift them towards a better future is connected to the type of partnership arrangements they enter into with public bodies as well as among themselves.  This does not mean that there should be large-scale programmes set up in communities with centrally directed funding, targets, and intensive monitoring.  Instead, what the accumulating evidence of successful community-based transformation around the world tells us is that real partnership has to be built on the sharing of trust, information, and power.

With public investment and the proper statutory framework, community organisations have been able to develop community land trusts to provide genuinely affordable housing, set up anchor facilities to meet local needs, and run community enterprises that generate income to help pursue neighbourhoods’ priorities.  Mutual support schemes such as time banking thrive when they are financially backed rather than left to their own devices with no public funding.  Regeneration programmes deliver more cost-effective outcomes and higher satisfaction when public agencies ensure they are shaped by the informed input and continuous feedback from the communities concerned.

It is now widely known that suspicion and misunderstanding that so often undermine partnership working between government bodies and community groups can be significantly reduced through the use of inclusive dialogue techniques, responsive engagement processes, and shared objective-setting.  Community learning, backed by trained facilitators, can help people explore the real causes of the problems they face, and work together in formulating viable solutions. And trust can be built by replacing rigid target-setting and inflexible monitoring with adaptive planning processes and responsive evaluation.

Whatever the sceptics out there may think, the facts speak for themselves.  State-community co-production, guided by the aforementioned collaborative approaches, has led to a wide range of improvements such as: higher levels of both actual and perceived community safety; the development of multi-stakeholder cooperative models in the health and social care sector that result in better care and greater affordability; more effective outcomes and enhanced dignity in tackling food insecurity; and sustained progress in dealing with environmental challenges relating to energy, transport and air quality.

Communities should be encouraged to do what they can to improve their quality of life.  But how much they can actually do is inseparable from the political choices that are made.  Political leaders who want to work with communities as partners and are prepared to listen as well as propose when it comes to solving problems, will find that their joint endeavours have a much better chance of bringing about the kind of transformative changes informed citizens seek.  

--

Find out more from: 

Tomorrow’s Communities: lessons for community-based transformation in the age of global crises (Policy Press, 2021)