The root of social connections in a community
An extract from an article by Qeios
Connected communities do not just happen. They are animated. Community building is what animates this, helping to precipitate what happens between people and done by people as they discover, connect and mobilise local assets and assume collective functions of their choosing.
Such community-building initiatives are enlivened by a care for the whole neighbourhood, not single issues. While people may work on a particular project, they do so in a way that adopts a Gods-eye view of the entire neighbourhood. Connected neighbourhoods are not composed of one connected circle of people thinking and acting in concert like an orchestra. Instead, they are made up of seemingly endless overlapping circles of associations connected in all sorts of synchronicity into an association of associations.
While projects tend to be based on conformity to funding criteria set by outside donors and benefactors, a connected community cannot be done to or for a community. In other words, it is not what happens to people from the outside but what is created from the inside out.
Community building is about the vitality of connections, not the tasks they perform or the possessions they accrue. Such vitality is most evident in the quality of relationships rather than the quality of projects. When these relationships are good, multiple, energetic, open, etc., more happens in a neighbourhood as an outgrowth.
The fruits of such community building range from people visiting each other, organising things together, discussing small and large matters, having fun, and starting initiatives to challenge those institutions not operating in community-centred ways. In short, building a community becomes a culture of constantly broadening circles of participation until every human being is included and revered.
It is also clear when citizens decide on what they care about enough to act upon together; they own and care for the process in a way they cannot if the agenda is imposed from outside in. In other words, if the neighbourhood is labelled as damaged and sick, the doctor will be the key actor. At the same time, if the community defines the priority as their well-being, they become the key actors, with the doctor and other professionals acting in a supplementary support role.
Here is the story of how a connected community was built in the Voorstad neighbourhood of Deventer, Netherlands.
One day, Patrick and Leendert were sitting on deck chairs on the brick-paved footpath outside their front doors, chatting with each other as they did most days. The conversation turned to the harsh street environment; they felt too many bricks and insufficient plants and trees to soften the view. So, they initially started digging up some of the bricks—just a few under their windows —to reveal the soil underneath. They then used the bricks they had dug up to create a boxlike border around the space and filled it with compost and some plants. And just like that, they had a mini street garden.
They had no permission to do this and had little concern about what, if any, trouble they might get into with city officials. As they assumed their usual positions on their deck chairs the next day, some of their neighbours gathered to admire the new street garden under their windows. Then, a neighbour asked them to create a mini street garden. Both men were unemployed and had the time to do so; they were pleased to be asked. It was not long before street gardens began popping up on both sides of their street. Neighbours on other streets heard about the street gardens, and requests started pouring in. Soon, both men mentored others on even more streets to create mini street gardens.
One day, while speaking with a lady knitting on a chair outside her house, Patrick told her he had seen others also knitting and suggested connecting her with them. She liked the idea, and so began the Voorstad knitting club. The members started by knitting scarves for the community-owned football club called the Go Ahead Eagles, which led to a Guinness World Records attempt to knit a scarf long enough to wrap around the entire neighbourhood as an outward demonstration of the warmth of their community.
Patrick and Leendert met many neighbours with beautiful ideas for improving their neighbourhood. They would say, “I’d love to do X if only there were three or four neighbours to help me.” On nearly every occasion, these two friends knew just the people to connect them with.
One day, while speaking with parents about the absence of a playground in the neighbourhood, Patrick and Leendert got them involved, along with other neighbours, in a mini treasure hunt to find an empty lot in the neighbourhood. The parents discovered a perfect location and created their own playground, ably decorated with mini gardens.
It was now clear that something special was stirring up, something more extensive than the sum of all these significant initiatives: this disconnected neighbourhood was becoming a Connected Community; the culture of this place was changing. In addition to individual initiatives, new associations were formed every other week.
The details of Voorstad are essential because they feature aspects of community life rarely valorised: the connections. This process of creating relationships operates in the sub-liminal spaces of our neighbourhoods, where the flower boxes become the cover story for what is being fertilised, the root system of human relationships in the undergrowth of the neighbourhood. As the root system became sturdier, more diverse and synchronous, the community became more vibrant and produced vitality from root to fruit.
Just as the root system of a forest produces trees, shrubs, flowers, and mushrooms, attracting bees, birds, and caterpillars, producing oxygen for the wider surroundings, that is much like how it works in a community of place. The power does not lie in working on projects and activities but in working on relationships. Then the projects follow, which in turn, if done in being, not having, mode, generates new initiatives, producing abundance, aliveness and collective power.
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An extract from an article by Qeios, 04/06/2024