Episode 20
Building trust and connection for radical community change
Building trust and connecting with communities on a human level can bring about powerful and positive change. By approaching communities with an open mind and genuinely listening to their needs, leaders and organisations can tap into the abundance and resources within.
This takes a shift in perspective and a willingness to challenge the status quo, rethinking traditional approaches to community development.
Gary Loftus is a community developer who works with organisations and communities to bring about positive change. He believes in building trust and connections within communities and challenging traditional approaches to community development. Gary currently works for Our Happiness Factor, a community interest company focused on working with so-called deprived or underserved neighbourhoods. Their work empowers local people, explores their potential for change, and creates spaces for collaboration and exploration of ideas.
Gary describes how, by empowering and investing in local ideas and projects without imposing bureaucratic barriers, communities can foster a sense of ownership and engagement from within, leading to meaningful and sustainable outcomes for the people involved.
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Transcript
These days, it's very hard to lead anything without a
Speaker:community of people behind you.
Speaker:My guest this week has been working with communities for the last 30 years
Speaker:and has discovered some surprising truths about how communities
Speaker:thrive and operate at their best.
Speaker:You'd think that these truths would be common knowledge by now, but when
Speaker:they go against receive wisdom and they look so simple, it's easy to
Speaker:see how they can get lost in all the doing everyone is trying to get done.
Speaker:I'm Julia Rebholz.
Speaker:Welcome to Generative Leaders.
Speaker:So I'm Gary.
Speaker:I now live in Stockport in Greater Manchester.
Speaker:Um, I began life, oh, 54 years ago in a place called Colliers, which is on the
Speaker:cusp of, um, Manchester City Center.
Speaker:It's, um, a really nice place, um, where I grew up, but I, it
Speaker:lived in like, um, the most.
Speaker:Deprived neighborhood apparently, as it's called.
Speaker:And, and then we moved in 19, um, 77 up to the neighboring, um, community
Speaker:as that community that we lived in, in Colliers was being demolished around
Speaker:us and rebuilt as, um, a new house and estate and a new place to live.
Speaker:Um, and that was a really sort of big change for me.
Speaker:Um, I was only eight years old.
Speaker:I'd been gone to a new community.
Speaker:I had to go to a new school, find new friends, leave old friends, and I
Speaker:think that's lasted with me for quite some time, uh, that, that change.
Speaker:So I lived in the new neighborhood till I was 24 with my parents.
Speaker:Um, left school at the age of 15.
Speaker:And didn't really know what I was gonna do, where I was gonna go.
Speaker:College wasn't really an option.
Speaker:Um, it was basically get a job and, um, contribute to the housekeeping
Speaker:and you do whatever you can to make that, to make that happen.
Speaker:So I went from various jobs, from packing in factories, working
Speaker:in bars, working in restaurants.
Speaker:I actually, I went and worked in Butland for a, for a season
Speaker:down in Pwllheli in Wales.
Speaker:So I was really sort of on this journey of not knowing what direction
Speaker:or where I was going, et cetera.
Speaker:And I knew that there was something more inside of me but
Speaker:I didn't know quite what it was.
Speaker:And then I decided actually I'm gonna go back to college.
Speaker:I'm gonna get some education.
Speaker:And about 1999, where I lived in East Manchester in open Shore at the time,
Speaker:just close to the city center, to the city center and Manchester City
Speaker:football club now, which wasn't there at all, I lived in a two, up, two down
Speaker:back-to-back terrace with my partner.
Speaker:It was considered one of the most deprived neighborhoods in the country.
Speaker:And the government had announced a new program called New Deal for
Speaker:Communities, which was 39 programs across England to regenerate, um,
Speaker:neighborhoods such as the places where I live bed at Clayton and Openshaw.
Speaker:And I've seen a lot of TV and, um, media coverage about this program,
Speaker:and I got curious about, well, what does it mean for residents?
Speaker:What does it mean actually mean?
Speaker:What does it, what does it go, what does it mean beyond,
Speaker:beyond what it says on the tin?
Speaker:Yeah, so now I'm working for Our Happiness Factor, which is a community interest
Speaker:company, which means it's not for profit.
Speaker:And our work really still stems on, um, working in communities that, um,
Speaker:are often described or prescribed in ways that are not, um, well serving.
Speaker:So language such as, um, deprivation, poverty, high levels of crime, et cetera,
Speaker:et cetera, which really build up a picture in people's minds about people and places,
Speaker:um, and how they may live their lives.
Speaker:Um, and often the people that have built up those pictures have never
Speaker:actually experienced, um, connecting with somebody in a community.
Speaker:Um, or they may have some preconceived ideas based on the data that they,
Speaker:they they read or the stories that they read in the newspapers.
Speaker:So that really for me is like getting the surface structure of a community.
Speaker:Um, so literally now what we're doing is we work with local people.
Speaker:We connect with them in and bring them into trainings and help them
Speaker:explore or look together, explore what their potential is for change,
Speaker:what it is they want to change on a personal level, if they want to change
Speaker:anything on a, um, community level or an organizational level, or if they
Speaker:want to influence the system in any way, that's completely on the board.
Speaker:And what we've done is we've said we're not gonna restrict
Speaker:our work to neighborhoods that are, considered deprived.
Speaker:We're gonna open that up 'cause we wanted to become an
Speaker:organization without boundaries.
Speaker:So it, you know, a person who may live in an affluent and a neighborhood,
Speaker:and a person who lives in a knot.
Speaker:What's prescribed as a poor neighborhood, there's no reason why those pe, those
Speaker:two women or two men or group can not come together and share a common space
Speaker:and explore what it is they want to bring in into the world to, you know,
Speaker:for, for, for themselves or community.
Speaker:So that real sort of sense of who creates borders, where do these borders exist,
Speaker:and why do we have these borders that tend to often, separate people rather
Speaker:than bring, bring people together
Speaker:And Gary, what, how, what, how would you describe a community?
Speaker:What does a community look like to you?
Speaker:Mm, that's a good question.
Speaker:So I would say communities are grown in neighborhoods.
Speaker:And neighborhoods are the places where people live, where people work, where
Speaker:people play, and how connections are made between lot between human beings.
Speaker:So I would call a neighborhood, I would see a neighborhood, and then I'd see
Speaker:people in community, in the neighborhood.
Speaker:And that, for me, the best way I can describe that now is a living system.
Speaker:It's a living system of people.
Speaker:It's not an industry of cogs, it's a you.
Speaker:There's human connections that go on.
Speaker:And under the radar, under the perceived radar.
Speaker:There are more people connecting the meet the eye.
Speaker:There are more people doing amazing things in communities than are often,
Speaker:than they're often given credit for.
Speaker:And for me, a community in a neighborhood is something where people are together
Speaker:and using and bringing their resources that they have available to them, to
Speaker:the surface and making change where change might be necessary or not.
Speaker:And so, you know, if we think about kind of different types of communities that
Speaker:exist now, we've got physical communities, but we've also got online communities.
Speaker:We've got, so is your, is your sense of it, that place where people
Speaker:connect to do things together that they wouldn't do on their own?
Speaker:Yeah, of course.
Speaker:And that can be very formal or informal.
Speaker:That's, that's the beauty of it.
Speaker:It can be online space and, you know, physical space, um, and yeah, but
Speaker:people connect and socialize and they do things together and, you know,
Speaker:bring, bring new, new, new organizations into our community that weren't
Speaker:there before based on their interest.
Speaker:It may be some people are focused on tackling some issues that might
Speaker:be climate, it might be a family issues, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker:And that common purpose brings people together, that common sense of I need
Speaker:to do something about X or I want to do something, or I'm inspired to
Speaker:do something, um, to, to, to make shift and change in the community.
Speaker:And I guess fundamentally a community, online or offline, is made up of
Speaker:humans who are either living in the place or they're working in the place
Speaker:or they're socializing in the place.
Speaker:And for me, that's.
Speaker:What I like to see a community as, as humans, and not people with
Speaker:labels, because I think that, you know, the labels can get in the way.
Speaker:That's obviously like a core fundamental piece is not labeling the human beings.
Speaker:what are some of the other things that you've learned about community building,
Speaker:how, how a, how a community can flourish?
Speaker:Well, one thing I've learned about community building is if you really, if
Speaker:you really pull back the lens and you really, really take that focus back,
Speaker:you will see that our communities are more abundant than they are deficit,
Speaker:and that there's lots going on.
Speaker:In communities that doesn't meet the eye.
Speaker:Um, so I've learned that people are well connected, um, despite the narrative
Speaker:often about loneliness and isolation.
Speaker:There's people who are helping people out on a daily basis, whether that's putting
Speaker:a bin out for somebody who's at work and taking it back in, as simple as that.
Speaker:Whether it's knocking on a neighbor's door to make sure they're okay, whether
Speaker:that's, um, taking a meal for somebody, um, who might need a meal up the road,
Speaker:and doing that on, on that stuff.
Speaker:And, you know, great example where I used to live, there was
Speaker:a woman who was a friend of mine.
Speaker:She was in her seventies.
Speaker:She walked to work as a, into the hospital every day, um, and walked back.
Speaker:And if we met each other on the street, we would talk for a while,
Speaker:we'd have a hug and we'd have a laugh.
Speaker:And that's the sort of spirit that's already exists at that already exists.
Speaker:In, in places, but it's often sort of veiled over, um, for another story.
Speaker:So all of that, that connection, and I'm not saying everybody's
Speaker:connected, but there's a more connection than disconnection.
Speaker:And when you tap into that connection in a community, amazing things can
Speaker:happen because you start to work with the energy of the community rather
Speaker:than agenda of an organization.
Speaker:If you, for me, if I was, when I work with communities or I work
Speaker:with organizations, I will encourage them to always go to a if, if you're
Speaker:invited to a community to work with them, always go with a blank mind.
Speaker:No, no preconceptions.
Speaker:Um, go with questions, don't go with solutions because the solutions will be
Speaker:found and your solutions well may not work in the community because we've seen
Speaker:that decade after decade, time after time.
Speaker:And I guess when it's organizations working in communities, not, you know,
Speaker:public sector organizations, they're often driven by things like indices of multiple
Speaker:deprivation, joint needs, the joint needs, strategic assessments, which all were
Speaker:always, always, even since the 1970s when the indices of multiple de deprivation was
Speaker:introduced, always identify the problems and the deficits of the community.
Speaker:And if you look back over time, even to the present day, and you look at the
Speaker:stats and you look at the changes that have happened socially and systemically,
Speaker:very little has ever changed.
Speaker:Very little has ever changed because it's still the same neighborhoods in
Speaker:the same parts of the country that still are suffering or experiencing
Speaker:the same problems and same issues as they were maybe 50 years ago when
Speaker:I came into the planning Colliers.
Speaker:And I think for me, for change to happen, there has to be a new question and a
Speaker:new perspective taken to community.
Speaker:And actually doing a workshop tomorrow with some public service, uh, officers.
Speaker:And as was, um.
Speaker:thinking about what to talk about, one of the biggest issues that they
Speaker:deal with in the city is, and to a cost of a lot of money is people fly
Speaker:tipping rubbish in communities and dumping it in places where people live.
Speaker:And this has been an ongoing issue since I started working 20 years ago and if
Speaker:not before, and it still continues.
Speaker:So I started to think about that this morning and get getting curious about it.
Speaker:And the question that I was gonna gonna be asking, um, the team tomorrow is
Speaker:something along the lines of who lives closest to the problem, and where might
Speaker:you find a solution if you think about the people living closest to the problem.
Speaker:So I'm interested and keen to see what that sparks, because for me, the people
Speaker:living closest to the problem are the people who live in the neighborhood.
Speaker:And often the people in the neighborhood are the last people
Speaker:we go and seek a solution from.
Speaker:And we use expertise and, um, experts to try and figure it out and solve the issue.
Speaker:And that's just one example of fly tipping.
Speaker:You could take that across the board.
Speaker:If you go to community, you connect with community, you are more likely
Speaker:to find solutions that you haven't thought about and that will come from
Speaker:the community and will get buy-in from the community because that's
Speaker:somebody that's raising it out, raising it as a, in, in their own interest.
Speaker:And over the years I've realized, and I've talked to organizations about this
Speaker:and I realized for myself that actually it's not the community that needs to
Speaker:change, it's organizations that need to change your working communities.
Speaker:They need to take a new approach, need to think about new ways
Speaker:of connecting with people.
Speaker:So the change has, for me, should start with the organization looking inwards
Speaker:before they start to look outwards
Speaker:And it's interesting, isn't it, Gary?
Speaker:'Cause if you think about an organization, it doesn't exist either.
Speaker:It's a group of human beings.
Speaker:So you've got one group of human beings trying to help another group of
Speaker:human beings with completely different perspectives about what works, what
Speaker:makes sense, who are not communicating or connecting with one another.
Speaker:Or, or, or when they are, there may be things that are fair to get in the way.
Speaker:So the system itself isn't geared up to respond to the
Speaker:requirements of the community.
Speaker:And again, part of tomorrow is about exploring systems and
Speaker:what our systems are created.
Speaker:And what I've learned and in, and, you know, in the few, in the last
Speaker:few years is, well, exactly what you've said about an organization.
Speaker:A lot of people in the organization or in the system think the system and
Speaker:organization is a thing, a living thing.
Speaker:And they associate and attribute human characteristics to it.
Speaker:Personalities, and, you know, my, the system is broken.
Speaker:Well, where's it broken?
Speaker:Can you bring me the broken bit?
Speaker:'Cause I, if you can, that'd be really cool.
Speaker:So there's this sort of idea that systems are things.
Speaker:And systems are not things.
Speaker:They're only humans thinking up systems trying to solve their own problems that
Speaker:they've thought up in the first place.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:I guess that's the challenge of the status quo is are you listening?
Speaker:That would be a really good thing to go ask the question to ask.
Speaker:Are you really, really, really, really listening, or are you paying lip service,
Speaker:or are you gonna do what he was gonna do anyway regardless of what the community
Speaker:says they did or they didn't want?
Speaker:Whether that's on a micro scale or a macro scale.
Speaker:Um, and not to, not to generalize too much to say that everybody in a system,
Speaker:working in a system isn't doing, hasn't got the great will to do good stuff.
Speaker:Sometimes they're just bound by the bureaucracy.
Speaker:And the bureaucracy doesn't lend itself to a living system in a community.
Speaker:It doesn't lend itself at all because people want to do stuff.
Speaker:They don't want to have to wait for permission to do
Speaker:stuff that they want to do now.
Speaker:Um, and part of the work that we did at the community foundation
Speaker:was to see how we could, um, be different, how we could change our
Speaker:status quo, challenge our status quo.
Speaker:And we wanted people to feel that they were coming to, to a friend who
Speaker:might have some resources to, um, help us get our ideas into the world.
Speaker:And we certainly didn't want them to feel like they were coming to a
Speaker:bank, um, that somehow we were giving them a handout rather than hand up.
Speaker:And then that sort of leveled our relationship with the community
Speaker:very quickly because we again, shifted our internal structures as
Speaker:humans that influenced the external structures as an organization.
Speaker:And one of the pioneering things that we, we created was, um, a small pot of money
Speaker:to invest into the ideas of local people.
Speaker:Now, the beauty of it was that we didn't want the bureaucracy, we didn't
Speaker:want people jumping through hoops.
Speaker:We made it between 50 pounds and 250 pounds, um, for your idea, your project
Speaker:that you could bring to into the world.
Speaker:Um, the only requirement that we had is that you could bring four other people
Speaker:around your project and it had to be a new idea from a new group of people.
Speaker:So traditionally, if you're accessing funding through the voluntary sector,
Speaker:you are required to have a committee, you are required to have a bank account,
Speaker:you're required to, um, hold meetings and have, um, due diligence and all of
Speaker:that, that goes with applying for money that is given to the public by the public
Speaker:person or raised through charities.
Speaker:And we said, what if we didn't do that?
Speaker:What if we just said, there's no requirement whatsoever for you to have a
Speaker:formal structure, a formal organization, that your idea is what we're interested
Speaker:in, and as long as you can bring that the idea into the world, we'll invest
Speaker:up to 250 pounds into your idea.
Speaker:What if we could just strip back all of that?
Speaker:So we tested that, and we made the application really, really simple.
Speaker:It was one page application.
Speaker:We got some internal pushback from people who felt it was a really unsafe things to
Speaker:do, and how can you just give people 250 pounds and with no sort of due diligence
Speaker:and dah, dah, dah, dah, whatever, that that narrative was going on.
Speaker:And then we got to, I got to thinking about it, and in the end, after about
Speaker:the third or fourth conversation about it, it's like, where, where
Speaker:are people going with 250 quid?
Speaker:What?
Speaker:What are they gonna do?
Speaker:Go off to Australia?
Speaker:And actually what that says to me is we're building trust.
Speaker:We're building trust in the people who often, from the outside
Speaker:don't know, don't receive a lot of trust based on perceptions.
Speaker:So we tested it and it was a huge success.
Speaker:We got lots of little projects.
Speaker:By the time I'd left after launching it in two years, there'd
Speaker:been over 120 projects funded.
Speaker:Nobody ran off with the money, and the community started to say, the feedback
Speaker:that we got from people in the community was, you trust us, you are handing over
Speaker:money and there's no bureaucracy with it.
Speaker:So when we worked with Leicester NHS, we helped them set up
Speaker:their own funding program.
Speaker:in a similar way, I'd gone down and trained them, some of their frontline
Speaker:health staff on a two day training course, two lots of teams, and then they got their
Speaker:own small grants program up and running.
Speaker:And then about 20 months later, I received, a message on LinkedIn from
Speaker:one of the officers who was on the training, and she admitted herself.
Speaker:Gary, I was the most resistant person on that training.
Speaker:Everything you said flew in the, flew in the face of everything I believed was
Speaker:about community and community development.
Speaker:And at the time, she just took over as the manager of a local health hub..
Speaker:and she said to me in that, in that message on LinkedIn, I took over
Speaker:that health Hub 20 months ago and we were getting something like 800
Speaker:people coming through the door.
Speaker:So a year, 800 people, that was it.
Speaker:She said, in 20 months we've just hit 10,000 users.
Speaker:And of the small projects in two wards or three wards, this 56 new
Speaker:projects that have come out that have cost no more than 250 quid.
Speaker:So it started to spread along.
Speaker:And that whole idea of connecting with people on a human level, going with a
Speaker:blank piece of paper, a blank mind, and exploring what's in the community really
Speaker:is powerful and can change a place.
Speaker:So the example up in Olden where we worked for a year and then another year
Speaker:in the first 10 months of the community builder working with the community,
Speaker:the projects that the community brought through themselves from community
Speaker:orchard to community cafes, to Wii Fit nights or whatever that might
Speaker:be, within 10 months, the housing association who own the properties
Speaker:on the estate reported that overall environmental crime had reduced to zero.
Speaker:They'd have no reports of fly tipping, they'd have no reports of vandalism,
Speaker:they'd have no reports of any graffiti.
Speaker:Um, and that estate literally had 420 homes on it when we started.
Speaker:The interesting thing about that, the program that I was
Speaker:delivering was a 10 year program.
Speaker:It started in 2003 on that, what, that, what that state was one of the areas
Speaker:that had benefited from the money.
Speaker:There'd been over almost 350,000 pounds invested in that time in traditional
Speaker:routes to community development, and there wasn't really any evidence
Speaker:of anything that had changed.
Speaker:When we went to the community and we spent, started investing in
Speaker:small projects and bigger projects and connecting with people, that's
Speaker:when change really happened.
Speaker:And it is, when you say it as kind of, you know, plainly and simply as you put
Speaker:it, Gary, it's, it's so obvious, isn't it?
Speaker:if a community wants to change, the ideas for the change exist within
Speaker:that community, it's very often the resources that are missing to make that
Speaker:change happen, either from a confidence perspective or a financial perspective.
Speaker:And then the people with the resources think that they have to impose
Speaker:their ideas of how those resources should be used on the community.
Speaker:And so really building that bridge between mutual understanding,
Speaker:connection, mining for ideas, and then looking at how resources can be
Speaker:used is, almost the sort of secret source to that, that change really
Speaker:happening and, and going, going deeper
Speaker:Yeah, That whole experience unfolded for me and my team because we were
Speaker:very new and it was like, it was, it just kept unfolding and unfolding and
Speaker:unfolding, the more learning that we did.
Speaker:Um, it started to gain its own traction and its own energy.
Speaker:And wearing the very early days, I was knocking on people's doors such
Speaker:as organizations, not all of them, but most of them shut the door in me face
Speaker:at the very idea that we could go and talk to people and not have a plan,
Speaker:and not have a, and, and, and have some priorities that we needed to meet.
Speaker:And actually, I remember one housing office there sat in her office after
Speaker:a conversation, she picked up a piece of white paper, a four white paper,
Speaker:and threw it across the room at me and said, don't be so ridiculous.
Speaker:You can't go into a community without a plan.
Speaker:I said, well, that's exactly what we're doing.
Speaker:The only plan we've got is to build, connect, to build relationships,
Speaker:connect with people, explore their ideas, and see what happens.
Speaker:That's all, that's all, that's, that's literally what we, we went with to
Speaker:experiment and do something different.
Speaker:And I guess when I look back, if we hadn't done that, if we hadn't took
Speaker:that approach, if we hadn't took that blank mind and we hadn't experimented,
Speaker:all of the, the abundance is there.
Speaker:It's not, it's not there.
Speaker:It's not, not there.
Speaker:It just might not have been generated, you know.
Speaker:And I think I was reading a quote from somebody, I can't quite quite
Speaker:remember who it was before, in a, in a book, and it says something along the
Speaker:lines of We don't create abundance.
Speaker:Abundance is already there.
Speaker:What we do as humans is we create limitations.
Speaker:And I thought that just sparked with me that actually if we keep defining
Speaker:people as problems and places as problems, we create the limitations.
Speaker:And then the interesting thing is, as an organization, as a system, we then had
Speaker:to solve our problems that we created.
Speaker:Well, I think Gary, that is a great, great place for us to, um, end our
Speaker:conversation on seeing that abundance is everywhere, and, it's only the
Speaker:human that creates the, the limitation.
Speaker:And what a, what a beautiful quote.
Speaker:Gary, how can people find out more about the work that you are doing, what you're
Speaker:up to and get in contact with you?
Speaker:Yeah, they can go to our website, which is ourhappinessfactor.co.uk, and you
Speaker:can see, what we're up to presently, where we're coming from and where
Speaker:we're going from, and all our, all our contact details are on that website too.
Speaker:Fantastic.
Speaker:Well, thank you so much Gary, for sharing your insights, your experience, on the
Speaker:very big topic of community building.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:Thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker:There were a number of things that I took away from the conversation with Gary, but
Speaker:my real takeaway was that these simple truths that Gary shared can apply in
Speaker:any community, whether it's physical, online, an organization, or a family.
Speaker:How can we listen more to those around us?
Speaker:How can we help them see their own imagination, their own dreams, and
Speaker:really what they'd like to achieve?
Speaker:So what question could you ask of the community that you are part
Speaker:of, or communities that you are part of to spark their imagination?
Speaker:And what resources could that community be missing that
Speaker:would be easy to give to them?
Speaker:It could be your time.
Speaker:It could be a smile.
Speaker:It could be something as simple as that.
Speaker:That's all that's needed to spark something different.
Speaker:If you enjoyed this episode and you feel that others might benefit
Speaker:too, please go ahead and share it.
Speaker:You can do that@generativeleaders.co or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker:I look forward to being with you on the next episode of Generative Leaders.
