Weaving Tapestries: The New Handbook for Developing Community

By Tim Muirhead

If you're interested in developing or enriching community as part of your living or part of your work, this handbook will be an invaluable guide.

It will help you answer questions like…
- What is 'community', and why does it matter?
- What can we do to strengthen community in different settings?
- What is the connection between personal wellbeing and community wellbeing, and how do we maximise both?
- How do we develop healthier relationships between people?
- How can our governance (from organisational to national) work in partnership with community?
- How do we maximise our own capacity to be a leader in community settings?

The previous edition of 'Weaving Tapestries' has been used by a generation of community development students and practitioners. This edition adds more comprehensive guidance in relation to these questions, and ensures that the guidance remains relevant in our changed and changing world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781925952735

Book preview

references

Introduction

Community in our world

Once—for most of human existence actually—we had tribes. ‘Us’, or community, was pretty much all we knew. Strangers were potentially hostile and we had to work out ways of avoiding conflict, or protecting ourselves in the case of conflict. We got pretty good at it. And we certainly wouldn’t have needed a handbook to help us develop community!

Then someone planted seeds and tied up an animal, and some of our tribes became villages, and some of our villages became towns and cities, and lands were invaded by others and, in the blink of an eye, we were living amongst thousands and then millions of strangers.²

Community (‘Tribe’) has been changed over the millennia by…

✓  The wheel

✓  Agriculture

✓  Chieftain systems

✓  Cash crops

✓  Creation of towns and cities

✓  Systems of empire

✓  Nation States

✓  Printing Press

✓  Roads

✓  Mail services

✓  Bicycles

✓  Industrial revolution

✓  Separation of work and home

✓  Telephone

✓  Cars

✓  Radio

✓  Television

✓  Radical changes in family size and structure

✓  Home video

✓  Increased car-ownership

✓  Higher female workforce participation

✓  State involvement in human rights

✓  Privatisation and centralisation of shopping precincts,

✓  Longer working hours,

✓  Mass media reporting on crime and fear.

✓  A more transient workforce

✓  Higher rates of moving house and suburb

✓  higher levels of job insecurity

✓  Mobile technology (taking ‘work’ home)

✓  On-line technology (‘whole world is in my pocket’)

Box 1

Somewhere along the way, especially in the west, the individual—‘me’—became at least as important as the ‘us’. This rise of the individual—in all our wondrous diversity—is one of the great achievements of our modern western culture. We strive to ensure that all people have the right to become, fully, who they are and in the last couple of centuries these rights have spread to ever wider groups of people as we have removed discrimination based on race, or religion, or ability, or gender, or sexual orientation, or even age. It is, genuinely, worth celebrating. But ‘me’ without ‘us’ comes with costs. Sometimes we turn on each other and hurt each other. Sometimes, as we look out for number one, we become isolated and lonely and depressed. Sometimes, in our parental exhaustion we yearn for the world in which the village, rather than one or two stressed parents, raised the child. Sometimes, as we sing the praises of competition as an economic driver, we yearn for cooperation as a social glue.

And in those moments we remember that, as humans, we evolved to live in and with community. And so we wonder: what can I do to develop stronger community between us and around us? It’s a good question!

Unfortunately, it’s not answered by simply looking back and trying to mimic what our grandparents or ancestors did. Too much has changed. Just look at the list (Box 1) of things that have changed in ‘community’ since tribal times. Every one of these changes has had a profound impact on how we live together, and how we form community together. And all of the changes in the second column have been in the space of one lifetime! So what was once natural no longer is. We need to consistently re-adjust how we live and work together.

How do we, in amongst all this disruption and change, develop stronger community between us and around us? It’s a good question. Read on.

Foundations

Consciously or unconsciously, any community development book is underpinned by a range of assumptions. These are usually based on the observations and experiences of the practitioner(s) but hopefully, also, supported by evidence. If we are not conscious, articulate and open about these we can, in striving to work with others, feed conflict or confusion. Here, then, are some key philosophical foundations that underpin my work, and underpin this handbook.

1.  That strong community (people in relationship) is an essential foundation for the personal, social, economic and environmental outcomes that we strive to achieve.

2.  That individual outcomes (such as physical and mental health, longevity, personal relationships, substance use, safety) are enhanced when people feel embraced by community.³

3.  That the strength or capacity of communities relies on:

•  spirited people, contributing in ways that are important to them

•  strong and healthy relationships between community members, and between different and diverse communities

•  a community culture that has both resilience and hope

•  a commitment to justice that strives towards equilibrium between the needs and aspirations of all people

4.  That the work and interaction of almost everyone—governments, agencies, neighbours and friends—can be done in a way that develops capacity or, on the other hand, in a way that diminishes capacity. Therefore, paying attention to capacity in all that we do makes a profound difference.

5.  That developing the capacity of communities is helped by the skilled involvement of governments (all three spheres) when they respond to community initiatives, rather than trying to direct them.

6.  That governments are not the primary player in developing community—people are.

7.  That the interests of community should never override human rights.

8.  That the way we develop community cannot be dictated by others. We will do this work in a wide range of different ways, depending on our own personal and collective culture and preferences.

9.  That diversity and multiculturalism are a fact of life in twenty-first century Australia and have enriched our nation. In this diverse and multicultural setting, a commitment to the wellbeing of all people embraces all genders, religious leanings, sexual orientation, ages, racial and ethnic identities, abilities, personalities, political leanings, and so on. Every human being matters as we strive to develop community.

10.  That genuine diversity holds potential challenges as well as rewards, and is enriched by open, courageous conversation. The foundations of cohesion in our diversity are weakened by oppressive conformity, but also by timid or thoughtless silence. Those foundations are strengthened when, instead, we genuinely question each other, challenge each other and listen to each other.⁴

11.  That the invasion of Australia, which has been to the advantage of many, has also caused real damage to many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities. This is simple historical fact. We need not carry personal guilt for this, but we should share responsibility for repairing that damage, and for creating a nation in which our many, varied and rich cultures can join in genuine partnership with the original custodians of our land. We cannot repair the damage if we do not understand and acknowledge its causes.

SECTION 1

Developing Community

What it means, and why it matters

– 1.1 –

Community—the world of me and us

The word ‘community’ is understood in many different ways. Which is awkward! How can we work together to develop something, if we don’t agree on what that ‘something’ is?

In some places, the shape of ‘community’ is fairly obvious, because it’s defined by location. People living in the town of Brookton, or the community of Balgo, clearly have something in common with each other: they live in the same place. But what about someone who is living in the sprawling suburbs of Perth, or other major cities? Many of them spend more time with work colleagues, friends from other suburbs and online than they spend with neighbours or other locals. So what is ‘community’ to them? How do they make sense of ‘community’ in their lives?

An aim: that all of us have the capacity to get our needs and aspirations met.

Needs and aspirations like…

•  Financial or material security

•  Clean water

•  Love

•  Physical safety and security

•  Beauty and harmony

•  Information

•  Mobility

•  Shelter

•  Advice on my choices

•  Fun

•  Recreation and creativity

•  Emotional support

•  Food

…and many more

Box 1.1a

Community will have profoundly different shapes for different people. We cannot and should not impose, from the outside, an idea of community. We cannot tell someone who their community is. That can be alienating and disempowering. I might, for example, live in Baldivis, but my sense of community comes mainly from the netball club, based in Cannington, that I’ve been a member of for years. If you try to engage me in Baldivis-based community activities, you might just cause me stress, and steal the energy that I’ve been putting into the Cannington Netball Club.

So, we need a workable concept of community that fits in urban and even online settings, just as much as it fits in village settings. And because Western culture is largely individualistic (where the interests of individuals are often given precedence over those of the group) this concept will work best if it begins with the individual and individual wellbeing, but does not end there. Community is not necessarily a good thing in itself. People can suffer terribly at the hands of other community members. Rather, it is valuable to the extent that it enhances the lives of people.

How ‘community’ fits in our world.

We all have needs and aspirations in our lives (see Box 1.1a). Some of us can get these needs and aspirations met easily. Some cannot. Most of us, for example, find it easy to find food. We go to the shop and buy it. Yet many in the world are starving for a lack of it. The same, for myriad reasons, can be said of other needs like love, or mobility, or financial security. So as a guiding aspiration, in all that we do, we should be aiming to ensure that all people have the capacity to get their needs and aspirations met.

Fig1.1a

In aiming for that aspiration, we can consider four broad realms of support, as shown in Fig 1.1a.

Self

Of course, there are all sorts of things I can do for myself. So if you’re hoping to work with me or support me, I hope you’ll do it in a way that draws out the