Gap in My Diary

I’ve been irked the last day or two by an email from a well intentioned professional who may be interested in visiting a social space we host, and might like to come this week, because something has been cancelled and they have a gap in the diary. I think it’s this idea about gap filling that’s bothering me, given that much of our local work is about creating space.

I often forget these days what it’s like to work inside a traditional system and the way they can operate. Like back to back online meetings. Busy, busy busy. Produce, produce, produce. Follow the leader. 

I’ve been thinking about what happens when people who are forced to work in this way decide to show up in community space. Do they take those fixed boundaries, coated in stress with them? Do they know what they want before they arrive? A bit like a prospector? Or are they curious about what they might discover? 

Here in community land, we’ve been slowly growing agenda free social spaces for the last year. And suddenly they are sprouting, which has piqued the interest of folk in traditional systems.

In many ways that’s a good thing, and at the same time we also need to protect the space. And, those from traditional systems (which includes the transformed ones) need to respect the space too. 

When people from traditional services are thinking about showing up in citizen space I urge them to give it the same level of thought, care and attention that they might give to attending a senior leaders meeting, or some board. And to think about motivation. What are they hoping to achieve? What agenda are they taking there? Are they showing up like a developer, seeing where they can plant their team, as they’ve had to sell all their buildings, with little thought and attention to what they might displace? What might they learn about the strengths that already exist within the community? 

I was at an event last week and was listening to some real passionate people talk about how they might work closer to or in communities. It was obvious that the idea had been hatched with other professionals, probably in an office somewhere, or an online meeting. They said something like, ‘I had the idea and then we just ran with it.’ I couldn’t help thinking, ‘what might happen if you walked, or even took a pause.’ 

It’s not like I need to guard the doors of the social spaces though. People here know when they have been visited by someone who isn’t familiar with community life and the way that natural communities organise. The other week we had a visit from a really lovely professional who community members thought must be a journalist because they had a notebook and pen out. People felt uncomfortable, feeling like their words were being noted down. Uncomfortable enough to ask the person what they had noted in the book. Knowing that that’s not how we do things in community, unless that is, those ‘capacity builders’ have been in to train us on writing agendas and minuting meetings 😉

A gap in the diary is for picking up some milk, giving a family member a call, reading a book, catching up on the news.  You need more than a gap if you’re really serious about understanding how your service might supplement community life.