This is the first in a series of blogs sharing our practical insights about what it takes to create more equitable and meaningful relationships between public sector and VCSE partners to enable better outcomes in local places. It draws on our work in partnership with IPPR North helping Wigan Council review what was achieved through The Wigan Deal and opportunities to build upon it to develop a ‘new era’ of reform to improve outcomes for local people. Fostering more trusting and reciprocal relationships — between the Council and communities, and also the Council and the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector — is central to this.

As part of our engagement with local partners and communities, we formed a Community Connection Group of VCSE representatives who had conversations with residents the Council might not otherwise reach. We also came together to collectively interpret and make sense of the conversations and wider findings to help inform conclusions and recommendations for the new era work. Group members were invited to bring their personal and organisational knowledge of the communities they work with and live in to help collectively shape ideas on the Council’s future role.


This blog shares ten of our key reflections about approaches that helped establish a purposeful and cohesive group that, while created for a specific function and time period, also fostered new and strengthened relationships as a foundation for working towards a ‘new era’ together. These ten themes are particularly relevant for those working in and with local authorities but may also be useful for anyone working to bring together groups in a way that helps address status quo power imbalances
to enable more meaningful collaboration.

1. Choose your words with care.

Ensuring accessible and community-friendly language and avoiding ‘council-speak’ that might not feel relevant or welcoming to communities is important, right from the start of the work. Throughout the engagement we did in Wigan Borough, we heard about the ways that language can be exclusive or too jargony, which reinforced the need to think consciously about the words we use, including in the choice of name for the Community Connection Group itself.

2. Link to purpose, and be brave in welcoming less-heard voices.

The Community Connection Group was a new group with a specific purpose: to support community engagement as part of the development of the new era for Wigan Borough. We learnt about the importance of being clear about the criteria for involvement and the process of making decisions to ensure transparency, and encouraging bravery in welcoming people who may not already be as closely engaged and/or bring some challenge.

3. Involve collaborators early, be prepared for things to take longer, and be intentional about beginnings and endings.

Community Connection Group members were involved early in the process to shape the new era, and throughout the whole period of engagement. We heard from them that this made the experience more meaningful and built enough trust in the process that people felt comfortable contributing. We spent time on introductions and setting out principles during our first meeting with the group, and were willing to answer questions and change our assumptions based on feedback.

When work like this ends is a matter of flexibility. There is no science for estimating the number of sessions/conversations needed. Things often take longer than expected because this work moves at the speed of trust. It’s also important to be clear about how the work ends, and invest in ending well. Throughout, the Community Connection Group valued hearing how their insights and recommendations would be used, and getting feedback on what difference this made in practice.

4. Value people’s time and capacity and what they need in order to engage.

The desire to have informal and friendly working relationships is valid, however, it must not come at the expense of valuing people’s time. Remuneration can be a key enabler of getting commitment from group members. However, remuneration should be sensitive to people’s circumstances as it could impact their access to benefits. Alternatives to payments to individuals may include vouchers or payments to host organisations. Asking the group what time they have to engage and ensuring it is proportionate to the work, as well as checking what people need to engage, is important.

5. Take opportunities to rebalance power and build ownership.

We shaped the engagement work, collectively conducted analysis of what we heard through a process called ‘sensemaking’, and generated recommendations together with the Community Connection Group. One of the ways this was made possible was by inviting different configurations of people (council officers and members) to join Community Connection Group sessions at different times. The council officers who participated in sessions with the Community Connection Group engaged in whole sessions and showed up with humility and a willingness to listen.

Rebalancing power can also happen through the choices made about where, when, and how conversations happen. For example, visiting parts of the borough that are less often visited and going to people rather than expecting them to come to us.

6. Trust collaborators and encourage open conversations.

Group members were encouraged to have community conversations when and how they saw fit. We equipped people with what would make it as easy as possible while providing some guidance to help keep their conversations relatively consistent with others, but ultimately trusted them to have open conversations as appropriate. We also explicitly encouraged them to note both the facts of the conversation and their impressions and analysis without trying to validate any pre-existing hypotheses they may have held.

7. Enable and deepen relationships and connection to purpose.

Many of the Community Connection Group members already knew one another, though it did connect some new people and deepened relationships with council officers. We contributed to the development of the feeling of group identity by designing sessions to be interactive and giving space where needed for conversations to follow the interests of the group. We always had food and sometimes had music.

We tried to welcome disagreement and difference of perspectives, though not much disagreement within the group arose in this work as it mainly surfaced common perspectives, frustrations and preferences. We can learn a lot from areas of disagreement and tension, so it is important that group norms and learning environments invite this.

8. Understand how everyone can be a part of making change.

The new era sessions involving the Community Connection Group and council officers highlighted the value of working together to understand the system and identifying and naming structural barriers to meaningful collaboration. The process emphasised that we need to learn together and encouraged everyone to reflect on how they need to be part of making change from their position in the system.

9. Make sense of data and information with collaborators.

We adopted a collective sense-making approach for bringing together insights from community conversations, which involved everyone in an exercise of understanding and synthesising what we heard. Collective sense-making enhances understanding by involving multiple and diverse perspectives. It can also foster curiosity and shared exploration rather than promoting people’s own pre-held beliefs/ideas, give people the power to interpret their own experiences and context, and build shared understanding and collective ownership as a foundation for collective action.

Doing this sense-making together—as VCSE representatives and council officers—worked well as the conversations were honest. Everyone had an opportunity to see things from others’ perspectives. People in the room were asked to bring notes from their conversations and represent other people’s views along with their own individual views, which meant that more voices were included and in such a way that people were not speaking for others but rather adding their perspectives to the mix.

10. Ask: who is still not here?

There are many voices seldomly heard in these kinds of engagement processes. The Community Connection Group supported the new era engagement by reaching disabled young adults, those with mental health challenges, communities of faith, etc. but did not reach all lesser heard groups. It is critical to continually revisit the question of whose voice is yet unheard. There is also potential in the future to involve community members themselves in collective sensemaking, if adequately resourced and supported.

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The Community Connection group was made up of individuals with different backgrounds, networks, and perspectives. We convened it knowing that an effective and mutually-supportive and aligned relationship between VCSE partners and the council would be a key piece of the new era puzzle. It laid foundations for different working relationships, and was an invaluable way of connecting communities to the development of the new era, including disabled people, those accessing mental health support, and social housing tenants in the borough. 

If you are interested in talking more with us about the work described in this blog, please get in touch with Dawn: [email protected].