After a year of research into simple, ordinary, human relationships, Iona Lawrence shared her initial findings in Through Thick And Thin. In this report, she illuminated a set of shared concerns, identified through hundreds of conversations around the state of our relationships across a diverse range of people. Here, we outline two ideas for making progress, together, and invite you to join us.
Rooted in the words and wisdom of those who she interviewed, Iona identified a shared and uniting challenge across the emergent field of relationships: that while relationships might be one of the things that makes us human and therefore simple common sense, fostering good relationships in a professional context is all too often considered ‘going the extra mile’.
Our shared and uniting goal is to build a world that is designed for and around relationships: a world where relationships are the first mile, not the extra one.
Despite energy and consensus around this goal, Iona heard that a range of factors get in the way of greater collaboration and collective action across the field in pursuit of this shared goal:
- We tend to focus on the things we disagree on, rather than focus on what we have in common: a commitment to building a world designed for and around relationships
- We don’t know how to best measure relationships, or whether measurement is futile
- We use different, sometimes alienating or confusing language
- The field of relationships reflects inequalities and inequities in wider society
Anyone who is in the game of wrangling people and organisations into collective action knows that moving beyond these sorts of divergences between actors in a similar space or field isn’t easy, especially during the times of change and challenge that we are currently living through. Frankly people have their day jobs to get on with and finding time to connect with others can feel like a lower priority.
So in a bid to get to the heart of what might incentivise people to gravitate towards one another meaningfully within the field, Iona asked what people would like to gain from others. Across all the conversations Immy and Iona identified the following desires:
1. I would like to…find a supportive community of those who share my commitment to relationships
2. I would like to…find others with whom I can develop a shared understanding and language around what we mean by relationships and relationship-centred practices
3. I would like to…find people with whom I can grow by challenging my assumptions and perspectives and ultimately strengthen relationship-centred approaches for change.
4. I would like to…pool evidence, ideas, stories and resources with which I can convince others (eg. policy makers, other organisations and skeptics) of relationship-centred approaches to change
5. I would like to…work with others to bring about the shift to a world designed for and around relationships.
So to get the ball rolling we, The Relationships Project, in partnership with organisations and individuals across the field are hosting a set of experiments for deepening collaboration and building shared infrastructure. And we’d love you to get involved.
1. Join our speaker series on big ideas for a relationship centred world
We are hosting open, welcoming events in which we can come together to discuss big ideas and a vision for a world built around relationships and are looking for people to kickstart these conversations.
Do you have an idea you’re excited about around how we can make relationships the first mile? Or a vision for how your area of work could be transformed if we did? If so, we’d love to hear from you! Please get in touch with iona@ionaconsultancy.com
2. Gather with others around shared challenges
We’re also hosting spaces to dig into challenges that many of us share in trying to put relationships front and centre of what we do. These spaces are open to everyone and we’d love to see lots of you there. The sessions we have planned currently are:
Measurement
On 8th June we’ll be exploring the question of how we can ‘measure’ or demonstrate the added value of relationships. If you’re interested in joining, please RSVP here. And if you have thoughts or ideas you’d like to share ahead of time, please get in touch with immy@relationshipsproject.org
Power
How do we build relationships for social change which actively recognise the uneven distribution of power and practically rebalance? We’re looking to refine this question before building a programme for this one. If you have any thoughts to feed in, please get in touch with david@relationshipsproject.org
Business
On 29th April, Grapevine hosted a summit with business leaders from Coventry and Warwickshire to explore the role of the high street in rekindling lost connections. You can read a summary of the event here.
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Active Neighbours – Jen
“I’m a big believer in gratitude and what you give out is what you get back, and the law of attraction. So I’m that kind of person: what you give out is what you get back. So just being a nice person, and just trying to help and be generous with your time … if you can. Anything you can do to help somebody.”
Active Neighbours – James
“Not patriotism, but I think society is under stress at the moment. I don’t think the government, whatever your view on this particular government, is necessarily capable of meeting all needs. So it’s quite nice to have a purpose to do stuff when you can see an overwhelming need for it. So yes, a massive sense of fulfilment. And I think as I’d alluded to before that when I’d retired I felt I needed something to do. But it’s been great because I’ve met more people in the neighbourhood, working in the kitchen I’ve met some great people – learned much more about food! So generally I’ve enjoyed both experiences a lot.”
Active Neighbours – Isabel
“I think what was really cool at the beginning was it felt like you had this whole potential to really rethink how you interacted with your local area. There was a real sense of possibility that you were really kind of mini-world making or something […] I think politically a lot of people really frown down on traditional charity models – particularly the bifurcation of service users and service providers, and felt like what was needed was something that really lifted people up in the community, and made everyone feel like they were valued and had something to contribute […] which is still a noble goal – but I think it’s hard to do in practice.”
Active Neighbours – Brianne
“So it’s just the connections that have been made, the nice people and the people who have really needed the help that I’ve met. And just seeing everyone come together. I’ve always thought this area has a great sense of community, but this has shown it even more. And it’s shown the people that don’t normally have the time to give to this community – they’ve gone ‘here you go’.”
Active Neighbours – Anna
“In the past I’ve done very much paper-based volunteering, because I guess that’s where my skills lie – but maybe I’ve realised that I quite enjoy meeting people and having that interaction. In particular, I think I’ve enjoyed meeting people that are outside my social circle – because you know, we’re all guilty of having our own little group […], so seeing that people have very different lives – not better or worse, just different, you know – I think has been really interesting for me.”
Active Neighbours – Alan
“I think it’s an interesting one actually for people of my age – single men. At my age – there’s a question of ‘what are you allowed to join?’ that will be positively received? […] There’s a sort of suspicion. But the Covid thing – I think what I really liked about it was the sense that anyone could join and we couldn’t see what each other looked like – we didn’t know how old we were. We didn’t know what social background we were from, we weren’t even talking to one another – because it was all text-based. And so in that sense it was a great leveler, I thought.”
Active Neighbours – Elizabeth
“And getting out of your own comfort zone a bit … empathy more than sympathy was somebody else’s phrase … trying to help people out not just because they are like you or because they’ve been through what you’ve been through, but because they just need a bit of help. That to me is what citizenship and community are about.”
Active Neighbours – Dhanmeet
“As a charity on your own, you can’t cover everything. So what has been good with a lot of the response in terms of the pandemic has been the fact that charities and faith-based groups and other groups have got together rather than saying, ‘Oh we wanna do it all.’”
Frank – Spirit of Lockdown #4
Although he struggled with isolation and anxiety, he found ways to connect with others and get creative during this difficult time.
Relationship Makers Blog
In this blog post, Immy reflects on our first Relationship Makers programme delivered in partnership with Power to Change. Bringing together a cohort of community businesses over the course of 8 weeks, we connected, reflected and provided one an other with some balm for the chaos that was 2020.
