The Power of Community Relationships - a Participatory

Training Exercise

Paul Cutler

www.stronger-and-more-effective.co.uk

The Mapping Exercise

• A 2 hour workshop session (with breaks) for 25 local stakeholders from the community

• Participants have a mix of backgrounds including service users, family members, professionals, journalists, business and voluntary sector

• Representativeness - gender, ethnicity, age, disability and other issues

• Uses tools and techniques from mapping theories and action research

• Part of a wider participatory programme and a two day workshop

Purpose of the exercise

• To answer the question what stakeholder groups exist in the local community?

• To answer the question who might be represented on a local participatory forum?

• To explore the potential and possibilities of mapping skills and tools

• To demonstrate the power and diversity of local networks

• To demonstrate the proximity of powerful actors in the community - ‘2 degrees of separation’

• To identify excluded stakeholder groups and explore ways of reaching out

• To map the assets of local knowledge shared by stakeholders and consider the potential of deploying these assets in new ways

Strengths of the exercise

• Creative and holistic

• Practical - learning by doing

• Mingling - on hands and knees

• Breaking down barriers between multi-agency groups

• Visual and colourful

• Unlocks hidden or unconscious knowledge and local expertise

• Illustrates patterns, assumptions and dynamics that stakeholders are not always aware of

• Surprises people about themselves

• Contrasts with other sessions in the programme

• Fun

Position in the Participation and Policy programme

• Development of a local participatory forum

• Public action for community level learning and change

• Policy skills workshop

• Open forum

• Participatory forum

• Local action

Exercise principles

• The exercise (like the workshop) is a shared journey and this is clearly communicated

• Facilitators are participants too and do their own maps

• Participants own their maps

• Diversity issues - gender, ethnicity, age, disability, sexuality and literacy

Running the exercise - part one

• Introducing the purpose of the session

• Introduction to mapping skills

• Providing the tools - paper, pens, collage material

• Identifying mapping groups or individuals - stakeholder choice

• Supporting the participants as they map

• Managing the time

• Bringing the participants back to the main group

• Maps put on the walls and participants have 10 minutes to look at the different maps

Running the exercise - part two

• Group discussion / feedback about the experience of the exercise and the process of mapping

• Participants (usually three) are asked to volunteer to explain their map to the wider group

• Facilitators make observational comments and invite reflection from the other participants

• Map makers supported to annotate their maps where appropriate• Group exercise to look at links between stakeholders, access to sources of power

and influence• Diversity considered and barriers to stakeholder participation - who is missing, who

is marginalised?• Group summary of original aims of exercise - involvement in participatory forum• Facilitators conclude and link outcomes to previous and future sessions of the

workshop

Outputs from the exercise

• Maps

• Annotations and participant analysis

• Proto-list of forum members

• Proto-list of stakeholder diversity in the local community

• Records of discussions, flip charts and other material

Outcomes from the exercise

• Greater awareness of stakeholder relationships

• Strengthened networks that can be deployed by local people

• Energy and enthusiasm

• Trust

• Confidence - sharing something personal that is recognised as valuable

• Forum design and development moved forward

• Mapping skills that can be used in other areas and in the work of the forum

Adult learning• Learning by doing

• Unlocking local knowledge and experience in the group

• Learning as a group

• Creating a learning environment

• Using tools, techniques and principles

• Transferable skills to the real world

• Space to explore real world case studies and examples - concepts in action

• Taking responsibility and control of personal and organisational learning

• Identifying barriers and using community level opportunities to side step them

• Ground rules, comfort breaks and respect

• The learning process is the equal of the learning content - sustainable learning and development

Capturing the learning

• The actual maps - on the wall

• Photos of the maps

• Flipcharts and records

• Evaluation forms and feedback

• Participatory Action Research

• Life stories

• Reflective diaries

Examples of the mapping

Learning from the learning• The unexpected networks

• Hidden capacities and strengths

• Iterative feedback to improve the quality and effectiveness of professional systems and build new creative stakeholder relationships

• The service user as expert

• Taking risks

• From maps to models….