Wellgood Socials and Self Renovating Neighbourhoods

It’s the 5th Jan and the Well Good socials are about to start again, a space that feeds my heart and soul. We are about to invite in a couple of community members to share some of the Lankelly Chase financial resources and take more of a role in hosting and growing the space at the Wellfield and hosting community conversations over the next few months. 

Gill and I had a pretty big discussion around this, about bringing cash into the scenario when people are giving their time. How might that displace community activity? 

But when people are struggling to pay bills and feed their children, to not share the resource we have would be a greater ill. After all, it’s paid work for us. We want to learn from them too. Help them uncover what the estate does and has to keep itself strong. I think we have much to learn from the people who live here. It will be interesting to see what happens when the stress from feeding the gas meter is eased a little. 

I suppose when funders take a risk in you, and believe in you and trust you enough to let you get on with it, then that spreads. It helps with being open to failure too, seeing it as part of the essential learning processes, with ‘do no harm’ sitting on your shoulder like a parrot. It feeds into the basic living income pilot demonstration work that we are part of with Lankelly Chase.  We are big fans of UBI and also big fans of the work of Mauricio Lim Miller and shifting resource directly into the hands of local people.  

I’ve been reading Jess Steele’s thesis this week, around self renovating neighbourhoods and there’s just so much in there that I love, and am reflecting on and it is influencing and shaping the way I’m thinking already. I was really struck by the burnout of leaders as community organisers, and the hours and time that were committed to the work, and the loss and sacrifice that accompanied. It made me wonder about spreading the load, about connectorship rather than leadership. At my time of life, I’m looking to do less, not more or to do more whilst doing less. Let’s see how that goes!

One of the insights I believe that is growing from the local developmental evaluation is what might happen if a lot of people did a little more? If we shared the resource to enable people to step out of institutional life a day a week or so to do what they’ve always dreamed of. 

The more I listen to the people who are stepping into community life the more I’m seeing this as a possibility. We have a neighbour who is a nurse, who’d love to step closer to us.  Job security, pension, and parenting would make it too big a risk and folk often don’t have the financial security to take that risk. So what if we started to grow it slowly, a bit like how Gill and I did. A day here, a day there? The sum of all that might be really special?