Easier INC

HLS, Community and Community Development

 

I have spent a professional lifetime engaged with community development and am excited by the complementary approach of Human Learning Systems. HLS’s espousal of systems theory, its focus on management as learning, and placing the welfare of connected individual human beings at its centre suggest there may be mutual illumination between HLS and a range of community-related concepts: Community Power, Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) and community education.

But first, ‘community’. David Clark, one of the original proponents of community as system, conceives of community as an archery target. On the outside circle lies ‘community as people’, the generalised language used by politicians and service providers when talking about ‘them out there’. Next circle in, Clark places ‘community of place’ – the bricks and mortar, the roads and shops of the neighbourhood. Further in still comes ‘community as activity’, where people are at least doing things together whether in communities of place, in communities of interest, or in communities of identity. Community Power’s definition fits here: ‘In tune with many innovative public sector workers and community activists themselves, we regard community in a far more instrumental fashion: collaboration which makes the achievement of a beneficial goal more likely and which has numerous benefits in terms of individual and collective well-being.’ (New Local in The Community Paradigm 2019).

One circle further in, Clark places ‘community as relationships’. He quotes Toennies who suggests that human-scale relationships are usually found in the village and seldom in the large organisation, institution or city – but that Clark’s own experience questions this: the village can be an oppressive place to be different in, sometimes riven with cliques, whereas the system of the large organisation can be stewarded to enable its members genuinely to connect with each other and feel part of something bigger.

So far, on his journey towards the Bullseye, Clark suggests there has been a degree of objectivity in the definitions. One can even map relationships. But next circle in, he talks of ‘community as morale’ where the intangible of ‘feelings’ comes into it: ’community spirit’, ‘a sense of community’. He quotes the American sociologist Robert McIver’s 3Ss of community: a place where the individual feels Significant, where they feel physically and psychologically Secure, and where they feel Solidarity. There is a snag here, however. High morale can also exist in oppressive communities and organisations.

And so Clark moves to what he sees as ‘the heart of the matter’: community as ideology. Here community as morale is transformed into a universal value system: where the value of significance, security and solidarity is pursued, not only for those in the community but those living in other communities, in other systems. And he highlights the value of true interdependence. He talks of ‘building community’, of developing a sense of the 3Ss within and between communities, of community development as ‘opening systems up to each other’ with the community development worker as one who works with each of two systems to help them listen to each other – the system of residents in a neighbourhood and a GP practice, for example - stay engaged when the easiest way may be to pull apart, to communicate, to understand each others’ needs, strengths and perspectives and to co-produce solutions – the community development worker as the connecting system.

So I think there may be implications for HLS practitioners at two levels: both understanding community but also building community. And in at least four systems:

• the system of the individual: helping the individual explore their own system, the forces which affect their flourishing for good or ill, and build their motivation and capability to build their community around them as in the powerful study of work in Gateshead with those in arrears for council tax payments.
• the system of the neighbourhood – which according to the Onward Trust, a centre right think tank, is ‘the most effective organising unit in society’. Health professionals collaborating with groups of local residents to explore ‘the healthy community’, for example, help build community and co-create local solutions.
• the system of the organisation adopting HLS, understanding its own internal dynamics, building itself as a learning community and …
• building or cultivating communities of practice collaboratively around it with others not only working in the same domain in a wider system of place but also ideologically committed to the same ways of working.

At the same time, HLS offers to those living and working in and with communities the prospect of institutions providing truly people-centred services, learning not only internally but also together with those communities to co-create ways forward and doing so systematically on a scale that has in the past been elusive and which can turbocharge such partnerships. 

I’m excited to see community development figuring strongly in HLS week and look forward to exploring this cross-fertilisation.

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Format: Blogs

Tags: Human Learning Systems , Collaboration , Community

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