We look for loneliness inside our heads when its source ......

 

4min 38sec @churchofengland clip - Justin Welby launches his Commission on #Housing, #Church and #Community

Text from youtube "The Archbishop’s Commission on Housing, Church and Community will explore a Christian perspective on housing policy, with a particular focus on providing good homes and promoting thriving communities. 

Find out more about the Commission’s work at www.churchofengland.org/ABChousing

#ruralpresence - Independent review calls for greater #community use to give #church buildings a sustainable future

(this post was 1st published on the Rural Presence Blog)

Commissioned in 2016 to report to the Chancellor and Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport - this review considers the funding and sustainability of listed church buildings.  Published on 20/12/17, the press release for the review says....

" The review panel highlighted the best practice of many churches and of volunteers around the country, with buildings adapted and used for cafes, playgroups, and in some cases NHS and post office services. The panel said it wants to see more innovation of this kind."

But the press release also commented that....

"Congregations are individually responsible for the care of their own buildings and despite the commitment and hard work of volunteers, the panel found a lack of consistency in the ability of many churches to carry out routine maintenance and repairs."

The press release goes on to summarise the reviews recommendations as shown below - and says that these should be tested through pilot schemes in both rural and urban areas.

• "creating a national network of Community Support Advisers to help churches identify and strengthen wide ranging relationships within their local area".  The review hopes that "through greater community engagement, churches will be used more frequently and can maximise new funding options reflecting this broad community involvement."
• "creating a group of ‘Fabric Support Officers’ who have practical heritage buildings expertise to ensure that all churches have access to high quality advice"
• churches should "develop annual minor repairs plans. This will mean that repairs can be addressed immediately and prevent the development of more costly major repair."
• churches should prepare " a rolling ten-year major repairs plan" and that these be "kept up to date so that larger works can be planned and given the best chance of being properly funded."

It's worth looking at the letters in response to the report in the Church Times this week.  These wondered about the role of the proposed Fabric Support Officers and Community Support Advisers and questioned how far community use ideas for church buildings were viable for remote rural churches.

And it's also interesting to compare the current report's proposals with recommendations in the Church of England's Church Buildings Review report, issued in 2015.

#ruralpresence - #Community owned businesses that use #rural #church #buildings help sustain the church @GerminateARC @heritagelottery @PlunkettFoundat @UniofNewcastle

 

(this post was 1st published on the Rural Presence Blog)


This research used 5 full case studies and 2 shorter ones to consider whether community owned businesses can help sustain rural places of worship.  Social enterprises, (more recently called community businesses/co-operatives), are trading organisations with social and community objectives.  Any surplus funds they generate is used to fulfill social purposes.   Examples are community owned shops or pubs or broadband and energy schemes.

The research was commissioned by the Heritage Lottery Funding in 2012 supported by a steering group comprising: Plunkett Foundation; Cathedral and Church Buildings Division of the Church of England; Germinate: The Arthur Rank Centre; Newcastle University.  A report was published March 2017.  

Headlines from the research are:

• Social enterprise had a positive impact on the long term sustainability of the place of worship. This was through increasing use, additional income generation and the involvement of more people.

• The needs of the wider community must be the starting point for considering the potential of a social enterprise. Solutions that are solutions for community needs and problems are more likely to be successful than those which are merely solutions for the problems of a place of worship.

• The benefits and wider impacts of a social enterprise extend beyond meeting the initial service need or resource provision.

• High quality advice, support and promotion are needed to ensure good practice is shared and built on.

• There are three challenges to address in the use of social enterprise in places of worship:
  
  (a) The social enterprise should meet the community’s needs and not be developed
  solely as a solution to problems of a place of worship;
  
  (b) Recognising and addressing the tensions that may arise in using a spiritual
  place for secular purposes;
  
  (c) The process for working through the planning system and listed building
  consent, including denominational systems.

Contributing as the National #Church to the #Common Good - a @CitizensUK & @c_of_e symposium

Welcome and Aims

On Monday 5^th March I attended a symposium by Citizens UK and the CofE on “Contributing as the National Church to the Common Good”.  The event was held in St. Nic’s Church in central Nottingham (UK), starting at 10.30am and ending at 3.30pm.

Citizens UK is the home of community organising in the UK.  Community Organising is about returning power to people - organising communities to act together for power, social justice and the common good.  Citizens UK has diverse civil society alliances in London, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Birmingham, Wales, Manchester, Tyne & Wear and Leeds.   

My two big take-a-ways from the day were:

1) the power of their 1 on 1 listening approach to really understand the issues people face.

2) the impact peoples stories delivered in person make on officials  who can allocate £'s.

What follows is a more detailed account of the day and the things that struck me from it.

Adrian Newman - Bishop of Stepney – welcomed us.  He pointed out the link between the CofE's quinquennial goals and the three symposium (one already held, this one on Common Good, and the next one planned on Reimagining Ministry).

In welcoming us to his patch Paul Williams - Bishop of Southwell &

Nottingham – commented that spiritually healthy churches grow - and a sign of such spiritual health is engagement with their communities.  

Completing the welcome Matthew Bolton of Citizens UK reminded us of their tag line “Building powerful communities that work together for the common good”.

Biblical Reflection

Vanessa Conant - a Rev from Walthamstow Parish - then shared some reflections on Jeremiah 29.  In doing so she   

described how a series of artists had projected images onto their church exterior.  One artist also hid speakers in the churchyard which played the sounds of monkeys. 

Vanessa reflected on how these playful sounds were at the same time challenging, unsettling and disruptive in a positive way - to create change – as should our prophetic voice be in our communities as we seek their prosperity.

Organising as a model for acting together for the common good

Tom Chigbo from Leeds Citizens started by describing how community organising was all about “seeking the peace and prosperity of the city” as the Jeremiah passage directed.  He had 4 main points about doing this.

1) Listen and understand stories via 1 to 1 face to face sessions - listen to their grief and their hope.

2) Strive for a broad based alliance with others – seeking out diversity – this strengthens the ability to change things.

3) Be pro-active and relentless on who has the power – who can say Yes or No.  

4) Have a bias towards action – so research, take action to encourage changes, learn from those actions.

In point 3) Tom also quoted Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself”

Congregations taking action at parish level

We heard stories from three different parishes. 

Sheila from Maun Valley told us about their campaign to improve crossing safety on a part of the A38 road near a school (a young mum from their church was killed on the road). 

Using a listening assembly they heard stories from pupils speaking of their fear of the crossing – and of numerous near misses. 

These stories - with one pupil delivering hers - were particularly powerful in convincing the authorities to take action before, (not after), more people were critically injured or killed.

Tricia from Leeds Citizens talked about debt and a deteriorating street scene with banks and other amenities moving out and bookies, cash convertors and gambling machine shops moving in.

Using a community walk they listened to other shopkeepers. 

Because of that later on they convinced the shopkeepers to display posters showing how to get to a nearby Credit Union.

Tim from Milton Keynes talked about the Redways (they are the paths that pedestrians and cyclists use to get round the town without going on the roads).

The Redways are used by young people to get to school but with bushes obscuring visibility and subways and rubbish they are an unpleasant environment, in which young people don't always feel safe.

So “Redways relaunched"was born.  They collected rubbish from the Redways to share with councillors and got a local politician to meet a load of pupils and commit to some action.  

Discussions on tables using 3 questions

1)     How are you using community organising locally and what are you learning?

2)     What are the barriers and how do you overcome them?

3)     What else could you imagine doing?

After the table discussions some of the conversations were shared.  The ideas I picked up were:

Bishops Breakfast - partnership via relationships - using a Bishops Breakfast to bring together influencers and CEOs in a city.  The conversations on issues faced were confidential - with organisation representatives identifying whether they might help one another and take the conversation on how to outside the breakfast.

The power of 1 to 1's - Jackie from West London citizens shared her insight on the power of 1 to 1 conversations  - and her resolution to purposefully organise 2 or 3 one on one conversations a week.

Start with the leaders – not the idea – find the leaders (obvious and not so in the community) and find out what they want to do – what they hope for.

Churches building alliances & taking action at city level

Andy – from the Waltham Forest/Chingford area talked about vicars from different traditions working together to launch an assembly and the power of stories to bring to life “dry” subjects. 

He also reflected on how 1 to 1 conversations could deepen relationships between different congregations in the same church.

Pete – from Nottingham citizens talked of holding power to account and their work on the Living Wage and BAME representation within the police. 

He also quoted Andrew White  - the Vicar of Baghdad

“Don’t take care – take more risks”

Graham from Hoxton talked about a father and son becoming more involved with church and then getting baptised together - but then vanishing off the scene.

When he eventually re-established contact with them he discovered they had moved away and had previously being sofa surfing. 

From that local story of inadequate housing came a Housing manifesto.  Something the London Mayor candidates were asked to respond to in a 6000 people indoor event.  The 6000 attending linked to some 250,000 in their organisations and networks.  Eventually this led to the idea of a Living Rent making it into London planning guidance. 

This action on housing gave them mission capital with their community. 

“our Bonding Capital is our Bridging Capital”

Q&A with a panel comprised of those mentioned previously

Q: Can this happen without clergy?

A: Yes – at least one of the examples given happened during an interregnum.

Q:  Has the central committee considered Brexit as an issue?

A: Yes but decided against making it a focus.

Q: What training is available?

A: A 2 dayer and a 6 dayer.

Q:  How do you choose the critical conversations to have?

A: Partly by who you know, partly by mapping the influencers in a community.

Q: Do you think Citizens UK is seen as left wing?

A: We try to be politically neutral and look for leaders/politicians who have a concern.  People’s perceptions of us are harder to alter.  From memory Andy shared some advice on dealing with those with views counter to your own - remember Translation & Respect - nobody has a monopoly on insight.

Citizens UK and the Anglican church taking action at a national level – stories of the Living Wage campaign

Matthew told the story of how the Living Wage campaign started. 

Not as a campaign with wage as its focus.  It started with a listening campaign in East London on family life and parents who felt they weren’t good parents/didn't spend enough time with their kids.

In listening they came across people who were working 2 to 3 jobs to support their families - and the real shame the parents felt because they spent so little time with their children. 

From this local feedback the idea of a Living Wage emerged – with engagement with local hospitals and banks and university to pay their cleaners and other lowest paid workers a living wage.

Many of the people they listened to were male cleaners working at Heathrow.  One was courageous enough to agree to come to a meeting with the Heathrow CEO.

Reflecting on the journey from a local listening campaign to HMG adoption of a National Living Wage, (not the same as the Living Wage), Matthew had a number of reflections ...

- at the time they didn't realise the scale of what they had achieved,

- timing is often critical,

- as is tension,

- and appealing to politicians self interest and declared values helps.

Update from Citizens UK Council

They have listened to the chapters and ID’d 5 possible themes for national action ...

1) Fair Deal (Wages)

2) Welcome not Hate

3) Mental Health

4) Refugees & Migrants

5) Housing & Homelessness

I think the next action was for the chapters to discuss these proposals.

Closing discussion and planning

Karen Rooms – Canon at Leicester Cathedral – shared some of the actions she had ID’d from the day for herself ...

-  intentional plans for 1 on 1s

- remembering the Jeremiah wisdom

- developing others by learning together

Attendees were then asked to try and answer these 2 questions

1) What does this mean for your ministry and leadership in your parish and area?

2) What can we imagine that the Anglican church, as the national church, could be doing for justice and the common good?  What can we do about it?

Feedback from the tables and individuals on answers to and discussions around these 2 questions included ...

- Learn more about the tools and techniques discussed today and similarities in listening to the community in ID’g opportunities for Fresh Expressions

- Value of 1 on 1s and telling the stories we hear

- Use some of the techniques in a prayer lunch

- Might there be a Synod debate on what sort of society we hope for?

- Should CofE be episcopally led and synodically  relationally governed?


My thanks to all who organised the event. I found it useful, interesting and inspiring.

#ruralpresence - Updated toolkit - to help develop your #church for wider #community use - by @HerefordDiocese

 

(this post was 1st published on the Rural Presence Blog)

In November last year Hereford Diocese made available online their newly revised and expanded Crossing the Threshold toolkit.  

It's packed with 268 pages of advice, hints and tips for any group taking a community development approach towards adapting a church building for wider community use, while balancing the needs of existing worshippers.


This practical document draws upon input and expertise from a range of national church organisations as well as lessons learned from recent projects.  It includes case studies, top tips and end-of-chapter checklists.

You can download the whole toolkit here: Whole Toolkit Link

Alternatively, you can download the chapters individually:

• Chapter 1 - Developing Your Vision
• Chapter 2 - Undertaking a Community Audit and Consulting with the Community
• Chapter 3 – Developing a Team and Assessing Your Skills and Abilities
• Chapter 4 – Governance – Choosing the Right Organisational Structure
• Chapter 5 – Developing Your Ideas – Options Appraisals, Feasibility Study, Architect’s Brief and the Design Stages
• Chapter 6 – Balancing the Need for Change with heritage and Liturgical Considerations – Legalities and the Church Planning Process
• Chapter 7 – Planning Your Project
• Chapter 8 – Writing a Business Plan
• Chapter 9 – Ensuring Your Project is Sustainable
• Chapter 10 – Raising the Funds
• Chapter 11 – Identifying the Right External Funders
• Chapter 12 – Completing Applications – Selling Your Project to Funders
• Chapter 13 – Managing Project Cash Flow
• Chapter 14 – Managing the Building Works on Site
• Chapter 15 – The Final Stages – Claiming Money, Celebrating, Impact and Evaluation
• Chapter 16 – Further Information

5 minute #40acts2017 clip of Margaret's story

 

Do take some time to view this 5 minute #40acts2017 clip of Margaret's story

- its sad and very moving 

- but it also gives hope in how people's small acts of kindness can help those who are grieving in their community

2min 5 sec clip on What is Who Cares? ( #community engagement idea for #churches but with wider applications)

found via Timothy Yau

10 tips on how to use #twitter to build a learning #community

The 10 tips are derived from this paper "Understanding micro-processes of community building and mutual learning on Twitter: a ‘small data’ approach" by Hilde C. Stephansen & Nick Couldry. (There is a full citation at the foot of this post and below the citation are links to other posts you maybe interested in).  

The paper presents a case study of how teachers and students at a sixth-form college in the north of England used twitter to help construct a ‘community of practice’ for a department in the college.  

They managed to create a space in which – despite anxieties about privacy and context collapse – it felt ‘safe’ for students not only to contribute information but also to debate, joke and even disagree with their teachers.


I found this paper via a retweet by @MediaLSE of the tweet below

Routledge_MandC 

We've updated our Media, Cultural and Communication Studies Open Access page with more fantastic content-FREE! owl.li/LWKAz

In the tips below I use the original papers's terminology of "department", "teacher" and  "student". But I think this terminology could in a business setting be replaced with "directorate", "manager" and "team members".




1) Run the Department twitter account collectively - using a core of 4 teachers.



2) The core 4 should use the Dept. account to interact with and encourage students - rather their own individual twitter accounts (even when such interactions were ostensibly only relevant to a particular class or subject group) 

"We've not gone on individual Twitter accounts, we're combined, we're a joint effort and because of that it means that there is always something that you can talk about, and there's always something going on somewhere within the team".



3) Share seemingly mundane information and humorous quips via Twitter - this helps create a sense of informality and proximity, from which a community of practice can more broadly be built.

"One of the reasons why I think we get a lot of followers is because we do share things which as a teacher, there has to be a professional divide between personal and work, and that's a divide that has to be kept, but it's also quite a grey area, but because all of us are signed into the Twitter feeds, and because there's that accountability, you do feel that you're able to share a holiday pic, or, ‘Look what happened to me today!’ [ … ]. They [students] love that and that's what they like because it's something personal that you're sharing, but it's the ability to be able to share it that's safe. It's completely public, it's completely accountable, and it's quite nice that isn't it [ … ] they no longer see you as the teacher that's going to tell you what to do"



4) Craft tweets to focus on specific subsets of students - so students following the Dept. twitter account will be regularly exposed to information and interactions not directly related to their subject area.  Rather than being perceived as irrelevant ‘noise’ these tweets will contribute positively to a momentum that supports a sense of department-wide community. 



5) Encourage teachers and students to use the Dept. account to document & announce student group activities.  (E.g  a field trip out for geographers).  Documenting students' experiences through a collaboratively produced Twitter ‘photo essay’ strengthens bonds among the students involved as the collective narration affirms the group identity. 



6) Regularly tweet links to relevant articles and web resources - this enables students to take an active role as co-producers rather than just recipients of knowledge. 



7) Retweet all tweets directed at the Dept. twitter account - this is crucial to encourage students to share information (see 6) above).  Retweeting gathers students' tweets into one place, making them visible to the Dept's other twitter followers and so the students peers.  Also immediately follow up such retweets with a further tweet praising a students contribution.  Such public acknowledgement validates the student's status as a knowledge source and also acknowledges that those other than teachers have capabilities of value to the community.



8) Use twitter frequently as part of classroom activities - typically for revision. Teachers can adapt previous analogue activities (summarizing information into bite-sized chunks) by asking students to tweet revision notes.

".... especially if I hashtag up something like that, they can scroll through what other students and how other students have summarised or have expressed information."



9)  Use the Dept. account to post a tweeted debate amongst teachers - with the teachers starting their tweets with their initials to indicate who is debating.  Such a debate can have a mixture of arguments, factual references and gentle ‘digs’.  Crucially, students feel able to join in.



10) An important precondition for using twitter in such a way is pre-existing relations of trust among staff.  Indeed the collective way of running a department account means staff benefit from a safety net provided by the collective responsibility and mutual accountability of a joint account. In this way (paradoxically) the public and shared character of Twitter enabled staff to feel comfortable engaging in more personal and informal modes of communication.  Note sometimes students will developing strategies to separate different realms and so avoid losing ‘kudos’ among their peers: 

 "I had a few that said that they were going to tweet, ‘I'm only doing this for college purposes.’ [ … ]. 







Citation

Understanding micro-processes of community building and mutual learning on Twitter: a ‘small data’ approach

DOI:10.1080/1369118X.2014.902984
Hilde C. Stephansena* & Nick Couldryb
pages 1212-1227

© 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis.

The article was an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted.

Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. Please check the License conditions for the work which you wish to reuse. Full and appropriate attribution must be given. This permission does not cover any third party copyrighted material which may appear in the work requested.

The research behind the paper was conducted as part of Storycircle, a core project within the Framework for Innovation and Research in MediaCityUK (FIRM) consortium, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council under the joint UK Research Councils Digital Economy programme [grant number EP/H003738/1]. 

The authors thank the other members of the Storycircle team, Dr Wilma Clark, Dr Richard MacDonald, Dr Aristea Fotopoulou and Dr Luke Dickens, for valuable input during the drafting of the paper.

other posts on RSA, TED, other lectures, conferences, others blog posts

2015

The 10 problems which mean the process to allocate scientific funding is broken  - ht @LSEImpactblog 
where does creativity come from? - a @RSAEvents lecture by mathematician @Cedric_Villani @alexbellos 
how to innovate & survive - by @markf212  (Mark Payne)

18 top tips and thoughts about using #social media to enable #community source = an article by  Anatoliy Gruzd PhD & Caroline Haythornthwaite PhD 

thinking straight in the age of information overload - by @danlevitin 

how to become a soulful organisation - by @fred_laloux 

2014

thoughts & headlines from a conference on social media and images 

Data Protection & Privacy - 8 issues from an International Conference

escape your social horizon limit & understand more - source = a blog post summarising the work of  Jeffrey A. Smith, Miller McPherson & Lynn Smith-Lovin

OECD - challenges for the next 50 years - in an OECD report 

Want to help somebody - shut up and listen - by ermesto sirolli 

social media & death - 10 things you may not have thought about - #DORS conference

persuasion and power in the modern world and the rise of soft power - UK House of Lords 

2013

UK Government Policy Blunders & their common causes - by Anthony King & Ivor Crewe

the development of the U2 spyplane - source = CIA historians Gregory Pedlow & Donald Welzenbach

Guide to Comments (esp. #YouTube) for creators - by @vihartvihart

considering culture and business process improvement  - source = an article by Schmiedel, Theresa, vom Brocke, Jan, & Recker 

ideas for your organisation from the 2013 99U conference 

ideas that may help you attract older volunteers - source = a paper by Brayley, Nadine, Obst, Patricia L., White, Katherine M., Lewis, Ioni M.,Warburton, Jeni, & Spencer, Nancy

physical factors which help people get better quicker - source = a paper by Salonen, Heidi & Morawska, Lidia 

a new approach to school and education - by Geetha Narayanan 

principles for software to encourage participation - by Gerhard Fischer

guiding principles on designing construction kits - by Mitchel Resnick & Brian Silverman

how to identify the #culture of an organisation

signs of overparenting - source = an article by Locke, Judith, Campbell, Marilyn A., & Kavanagh, David J

making ideas happen - source = a 99U conference

2012

how to spot a liar - by pamela myer 

the related world of cyber crime, warfare and industrial espionage - by @mishaglenny 

ambiguity, irreverence, commentary & judgement - by lauren zalaznick

measuring happiness - source = talk by jim clifton, jim harter, ben leedle