Common cause

Who It's For

Leaders working with communities and partners on shared ambitions for a place

Overview

This programme brings together the two sides of working beyond organisational walls: with communities and with partners. It begins with what community means, social capital and community capacity, then tests participation against Arnstein's ladder and the IAP2 spectrum and builds on local strengths through asset-based community development, community wealth building and the Preston Model. It then turns to partnership: the continuum from spectator to transform, collaborative leadership, co-production and the practical machinery partnerships need. A capstone on Merthyr Tennis Club, Compassionate Frome and Poplar HARCA shows the frameworks working together in practice.

Aims

The aim is to develop leaders who make common cause with communities and partners, starting from what is already strong, being honest about where power sits, and building the relationships and arrangements through which shared ambitions for a place are actually delivered.

In summary, you will be able to:

1. 1Apply community lenses, social capital, Arnstein's ladder and the partnership continuum to assess the relationships your work depends on and whom it misses.
2. 2Plan engagement, community strategies and partnership arrangements that match influence honestly to what is on offer and build on local assets.
3. 3Lead co-production and partnership across organisational boundaries, using collaborative leadership behaviours and lessons from real cases in your own context.

What you'll develop

Across this Explore, you will develop the ability to:

1. 1Apply the four lenses of geographic, interest, identity and practice communities to a real place, naming the communities your work is likely to miss.
2. 2Apply McKnight and Kretzmann's five building blocks to map the assets already present in a place, and distinguish this from stakeholder mapping.
3. 3Distinguish a wish list from a delivered community strategy using the four requirements of shared vision, narrow priorities, a named delivery mechanism and a review cycle.
4. 4Explain why every partnership is contested space and use four practical moves to bring negotiated goals, unequal power, working assumptions and competing accountabilities into the open.
5. 5Explain Boyle and Harris's definition of co-production and what the words equal, reciprocal and relationship each require.
6. 6Identify which frameworks, such as asset-based development, the partnership continuum, co-production and Arnstein's ladder, explain the outcomes in each of the three cases.