Seeing social capital in practice

We have had the pleasure of joining a couple of seminars recently at which the value of social capital has been front and centre of research and practice.

Dyffryn Dyfodol

Two weeks ago we joined the online Dyffryn Dyfodol workshop hosted by Iwan and Kate from Ffiwsar based in north Wales. The workshop looked at how community and environmental organisations work together with creative people to explore working in different ways with the communities of the Conwy Valley.

Iwan had attended our online Aberystwyth Tummler School last year, held in partnership with Welsh Water and Ceredigion Association of Voluntary Organisations, and it was clear that a social capital approach is at the heart of the work they were doing.

A recording of the session is below in which Natural Resources Wales demonstrated how it ‘let go’ of process and in the course of doing so ‘levelled’ out the traditional hierarchies that tend to remain in place when large organisations engage with/in communities.

Tackling Polarisation

Then, last week we had the pleasure of attending a seminar at Cardiff University’s Sparc facility at which a Wiserd team, led by Professor Mike Woods, provided an overview of their research into populism, conflict and political polarisation.

Raymond Williams famously described the word community as “warmly persuasive” and unlike other terms of social organization such as ‘state’ or ‘society’, community “seems never to be used unfavourably”. However, Mike Woods pointed out that community and civil society groups can – without intending to – fuel or reproduce polarisation and a case study from Lydney in Gloucestershire was used to demonstrate this. Nevertheless, the research shows that such groups can also play an important role in challenging polarisation through bringing people together at events and festivals, as well as encouraging discourse.

The keynote speaker was Ali Goldsworthy who now resides in the US and has written extensively on polarisation. It was particularly good to hear from Ali because Andy Green had interviewed her as part of the Dublin Conversations. Check out Alison’s interview here.

Ali made the helpful distinction between Issue polarisation and Affective polarisation:

Ali’s work is also featured in the Divisive Tribalism Canvas, a new tool co-created by Grow Social Capital co-founder Andy Green as part of his work for the Dublin Conversations. The tool provides processes, strategies and tactics for tackling division and conflict. It calls for a new understanding of what we call ‘inclusive tribalism’. Check out the tool here.

Another finding of the research has been in relation to so-called ‘echo chambers’. The research has found that they do not exist as widely as people tend to think, but they can be found among those who are already politically active.

Delegates were invited to consider how to tackle polarisation and a range of ideas were heard from the importance of community and local media (our friend and fellow disruptor Rob Watson warns against conflating these), festivals ands community events and storytelling.

Storytelling resonates with us because it is a key element of our work and a potentially powerful tool for helping you relate your experiences to other people. Working with Monmouthshire County Council we are running a ‘Transform your Brand & Brand Story’ programme for local community groups. We work to identify your story of ‘Why? – why  do you do what you do?’ and by quickly identifying your group’s values and purposes you are harnessed with a far more powerful sense of coherence and purpose to enable all what you do to be more compelling and engaging. Further details here.

The Brexit example above of affective polarisation above shows how it is possible to create an identity out of a political issue. Evidence suggests that a helpful way of reducing the polarisation – note, not about persuading someone to change their mind – is to use storytelling as a way of understanding, and respecting, people’s reasons for affecting the identity that they do. By telling your story and encouraging others to do so is one tool for reducing polarisation.

Of course, the best thing to do is to stop polarisation from happening in the first place. This is why we promote a social capital approach upstream rather than having to intervene once polarised identities have been adopted downstream.