S1 EP6: Metaphors That Are Emerging

This is in the middle of it. A podcast about participation culture in our town. Join us out in the field as we try to discover what it takes to grow participation culture in communities in our town. There's something in being in someone else's energy that makes you feel more likely to take a step forward or there's something about someone's encouragement that makes you want to say yes. This is energy being put into building relationships and listening, understanding context, and maybe testing out a few ideas. And now what might ripple from that in terms of new relationships forming, little offshoot ideas, ecosystems of different parts, the community starting to join up and cross-pollinate what might happen there. You don't know what effect going out to talking to one person might have. You can be pretty sure that if you don't go and talk to a person, nothing will happen. Laura, and welcome to In the middle of it. I'm Sissy Rock. I'm Duncan Matthews. And I'm Lucy Mary-Mohan. So last episode, we actually spent quite a lot of time talking about the binocular approach. And also we uncovered our own definition of praxis. We did. Which was great, I think. We're really wanting to look at some of the metaphors that are emerging. This is a reflective session, a sort of a stake in the ground. Here we are, what food of the way into this participation culture pilot. What are we know this thing and how we're explaining it to others? What's so attractive about using metaphors to describe some of the things that we're know this thing? Well, metaphors is like the ultimate type of storytelling, isn't it? So it's connecting to something that people already know to bring them into or share a new concept or reply it in a new way. Metaphors give you a sense of something, but you can interpret it in different expressions based on the context. It sort of gives that kind of overarching sense that you can then apply in different places. So I think I did a bit of a teaser and I'll ask you, besides saying that you would definitely talk about magnets. I do talk a lot about magnets in this project. So what is the magnet effect? Well, I think we've talked a lot about the process of unlearning and relearning in this work. For all of us, I think, are experiencing that to different degrees at different times. And how, you know, for example, like we are drawn to ideas first and then we try and build relationships around them or we are really drawn to being the leaders and the organisers rather than stepping back and trying to sort of that walk alongside supporting people from more and that kind of behind the scenes. We are also drawn to wanting to lock into a particular centre or an organisation or an entity rather than sort of staying in that kind of fluid weaver space sort of invisible connecting in the background. So I think that's, we've just noticed that a lot in the project is noticing ourselves getting drawn back into those kind of patterns of behaviour that we're trying to, not saying that they're bad, where it's just we're trying to do something different and challenge ourselves to kind of release that magnet effect and try and draw ourselves to some new way of working. But the magnet is the pulling power of pulling us back into our ways of being that feel familiar and with that familiarity comes a comfort. Yeah, a bit chill sort of. Yeah, and so it becomes a bit uncomfortable really to be doing something in a different way. We have to be very intentional. Yeah, you said that last episode, hey, I'm getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Well, it's just hesitant to job working with Sissy, but yeah, one thing I really noticed and this was suddenly some of my influence is, you know, the default when we were setting up these three locations over the last few months. And the first two were just like, of course, they need a little marker side or a website, they need a brand and, you know, just a folding to doing that. And it wasn't until we got to the third one, we were like, hold on, this is just, we're just recreating like everything which we're trying not to do potentially. And so when we really stopped a question, you know, that that mental shortcut that we take that ought to be our community, you have to have a name, you have to have a brand, you have to be recognizable was really interesting to stop and reflect when we did. Yeah, I guess the same could be said when I said, I'd like there to be a newsletter for people to find out about what we're doing with participation culture and you said, can't we think of another way to do that? You actually need someone to sort of stop you in your flow. And you know, I think it's great. The identities that all of our locations have come up with one of our areas when we were thinking about, you know, do we have a name or not, we did a bit of a plus minuses and interest things. And then themselves said, look, actually, everyone already knows us as come to get to know your neighbor, that might be enough, that might be enough. And so I think it is about that critical thinking that analysis, catching yourself and being of service to each other. Yeah, are you sure we want to do that? And maybe that's what's come out of this is, you know, we're not saying something's good or bad, but we've really got to take 360 views at everything. I like that saying, you know, tried and true, you know, that often we kind of, we get locked in the tried part of, we tried this before, we know this works, we just do it again. But there's something about the true part for me, which is that is this true for right now for what's needed here, that like you said, testing ourselves, checking for that resonance and being critical about our assumptions. You're being very philosophical today. Yeah, I'm really familiar with that. You're on a roll. I got very philosophical the other day with our well-sword team because we were talking and we came up with this metaphor of the soils and the seeds, which we were sort of talking about this idea of ideas being like seeds. And that if we just sort of chuck them out there and hope they work, but we're not actually conscious of what soil there is there soil for them to land into and the soil sort of representing that kind of a ground swell as there's their want for this. People got energy around this idea and letting again, letting that that soil actually be the reason why a seed gets planted or and maybe a seed just needs to stay on the shelf for a while and it's not the right time. Yeah, and what needs to be in this well to assist the seed, yeah, because I know you cannot plant a tomato plant in the height of summer in a hard ground. Again, it goes back to context, right? Like everything happens in context. Now, I think I asked people to write metaphors at one stage and you've got a pretty good one, Duncan. Well, when we came up with some of the the weavers here was talking about community development as like the role of the dice when you roll the dice, you're not sure if it's going to land on a one or if it's going to land on a six, maybe you're not even sure if it's a fair dice if it's weighted somehow or how many sides it has, but what you do knows if you don't roll the dice, you'll get a zero. And so often our actions and community, you don't know what effect going out talking to one person might have, you don't know whether it'll be a one or a six, but you can be pretty sure that if you don't go and talk to a person, nothing will happen. It's the chance in taking lots of chances and more important than rolling a six every time. And I think we get quite caught up in particularly when we've got funders to report to. You know, what is a six, what is success, how do we get a five or a six every time versus, you know, understanding that actually a one is valuable because it represents a chance. Yeah, because that's what I liked about this idea of rolling the dice is that you can keep on rolling it and rolling it and rolling it and eventually all the different numbers will come up. That's right. If you do it enough, I think that that's something that probably all of us know about when you're trying anything you even if it's knocking on your neighbor's door the first time they might be a bit taken aback. The second time a bit more open to it. Maybe the third time that even. Oh yes, nice to see you again. Or when you're seeing up a book group or, you know, a sewing class and maybe only one person comes or maybe no one comes but someone sends you a message saying, I like the idea. Sorry, I'm too busy. But you've got to take that as some form of engagement. People need to know that you're there and you're consistent. That's where we came up with this idea of rhythm. I think it's huge. I know that Charles down in Hamilton was saying to me the other day that there's this one woman that they've had four interactions now and it was on the fourth conversation that he got this kind of hint that she wants to do something in the community. She wants to do this upcycling workshop thing and maybe wants to be part of a skillshare, but it took until that fourth conversation before that actually emerged. And I think, no, one of the other weavers was saying, oh, we had our idea that this other woman might be able to be a champion, but we didn't want to rush that. We knew we needed to build our relationship with her before, you know, that might emerge. So there is something about timing and pacing and showing up, I guess. Totally. And not just going down that, yeah, again, like a typical way of doing something, but challenging yourself to pay attention and listen, listen for those right moments. One of the things that I have noticed and sometimes we get these situations where different groups of weavers can come together and we had a great session with a few weavers where people were talking about the energy they got from each other. Oh, we had someone like that with us, I could go off and do anything. So there's something can be in someone else's energy that makes you feel more likely to take a step forward or there's something about someone's encouragement that makes you want to say yes. I mean, if you noticed that in the different locations where that's really been at play, that kind of energy, getting energy. Yeah, I think so. I guess where I hear it talked about more is the danger of being the only way to get the energy. one generating the energy and that if we're the one instigating something and we're trying to get everyone else rallied up, you know, when we step out is it just going to fall down? And that I think it sort of goes back to that sense of the circle and the collective is like how do we build collective energy for things and not just rely on that one kind of community champion who is always going to stir everyone else up? I've heard that sort of mentioned as the charisma trap and it's actually quite hard for people to fill those shoes too if someone's had a certain way of doing it and you feel like I could never be as good as, yeah. I was thinking about where I've seen that how the weavers have supported each other and through their relationships new things have emerged so that they're not like together, they can create more than either of them could have by themselves. That's very true. Yeah and we've definitely seen that. Yeah I'm thinking of two of our teams of kind of each sort of working to their different strengths and together they've kind of created something, you know, as a group they don't all have to act as individuals, they know they've kind of each sort of got each other's back and of bringing something slightly different to the mix. Because I'm doing the evaluation and one step removed and I have maybe less contact with the weavers on the ground, I can see the changes from time to time, you know, they're bigger for me when I perceive them. And so I've really seen like in Glenview how confident that people are in their approach and their way of doing things even though I think they know and we know that actually our idea of what participation culture has been quite shifted a bit by their, by their world, views that they're working through as you said Lucy Mary, two of them are a fan aware in the area. Yeah Glenview are working to quite a different timescale and so that takes a lot of confidence in them and themselves and their approach to know that that's right even if we're kind of trying to subtly nudge them in a different direction. And that wasn't something that we imagined we'd be looking for. That's right, yeah. Yeah. And it's only when we've used our praxis that we've started to understand the value of what's happening there and working with it rather than fighting against it. Yeah, like I loved, I sort of was trying to organise like a training day or something with the team and trying to get them to come up on a certain day and they were just kind of like, no, we're not going to do this day because that's our walking group day and we want to be consistent, we want to be present and show off in the community on a regular rhythm. And it was like, oh, cool. Yeah. Annoying for like my scheduling and wrangling but it was again like you said it's that they had that sense of kind of energy and like, cleanness of the team around what was needed in their place. I mean, in a way that's a really exciting thing isn't it about taking an idea, putting it into practice and then actually saying what emerges. Yeah. That it might not be what you imagine. It's better than more exciting, it's expanded, what's possible and who will find value in that. What do you think you were going to know at the end of 10 months of pilot? I have a little elevated perch, you know, which I think is about relationship. I really thought that there would be a tight connection of relationships, network of relationships that would exist whether the pilot was here or not and that there would be enough relationship to change or to inform the culture or support the culture that's already there so that when new people come in, you know, there's enough relationship for them to be able to join in. So it's sort of like, you know, you have a board and an incorporated society and you have a board and if everyone leaves all at once and a new board comes in, there's not enough institutional knowledge, there's not enough understanding of why things were done this way and it can sometimes that's needed but a lot of the time it ends up, people reinventing the wheel or having to sort of start from scratch again. So in a community there are, of course, lots of communities with very strong cultures and so this participation culture would just deepen that and in some communities maybe there's just emerging culture in that community and participation culture would strengthen that. So even if people left when people come in, that's still there. That's what I was hoping for. I think I had a quite clear idea in my mind that we would have sort of a vibe in the community that there would be lots of things sprouting up for people to be able to participate in like I think my metaphor was like sourdough, like a starter, you know, so that actually that starter grows and then you give it to other people and then they use it and it has a life of its own and even if it started here as starter A, it's now all around the place and been given freely to everyone and sometimes my understanding is you've got to kind of kill off a bit of it because there's too much of it. So actually there is times when things will naturally be cold and new things come up, you are into regeneration, you know, like you have to have space for new things to come up. So I think that was, you know, what I was imagining in the beginning, but we're in the middle of it now and I might want to update my thinking. I know I talk about the Glandu team a lot but they are just thinking about they use the metaphor of our own water a lot of talking about this kind of main body of water which I think sort of represents that ongoing community spirit of participation and that culture and that these sort of ability for these little tributaries, these little streams to feed into that and I think yeah that's certainly the hope is that we're not, A, we're not claiming that we're going to invent the river, like there's something, there is something already there, you know, regardless of its strength and its vitality but through all these different various activities and relationships building with feeding into that. Yes, again it's a circular, there's like a life cycle and there's kind of life energy to it. Sometimes things might die away that things have a life cycle to them and that's fine and then that becomes compost for something new to emerge and the important thing is that living process rather than one beautifully designed plan that's been implemented once and then what? Well not even implementing it. Just planned. Just planned. Right, like you always say, like you've been a part of big sort of community ideas, planning processes and they just sit on a shelf, a folder of ideas that never get actioned. Yeah but the process of planning it was very rich and you can feel the ripples, you know, the relationships there in a way the plan is secondary because they've moved on already before the plans even printed they've moved on to the thing that they can co-produce together through the process of coming together to write a plan. I think that that's what first started to excite me has been, I started seeing these patterns of art actually, I've met with these people for, you know, once a week for the last, you know, 12 weeks and yeah they've got a plan but through that process they've pivoted towards something that feels more realistic for them or that they're all shared and wanting to do, you know. So how can we intentionally create the conditions that that happens? That's it, it's the conditions, it's the coming together, right? Coming in the same space together, getting to grapple together, getting to have small talk together before we get into, it's all those little being together, doing together that is actually the primary focus, right? And the plan's actually a secondary but so often they become the central focus and we sort of forget all that magical stuff that happens. Yeah, I often write in my proposals, the process is just as important as the product. So whatever the outcome is, the process we use is just as important and I think that that's really underlying this participation culture and it was really useful to have this work that had been done in the UK where they started to identify things that they thought did help create the conditions because it's given us a good starting point. Sometimes I think we've forgotten about the common denominator activities. People are in communities, they're outside meeting people, they're initiating stuff but have we done some intentional common denominator, things that everyone wants to participate in because we can end up strengthening bondage social capital. So just reinforcing the social groups that people already are in rather than mixing them up. That would be something I would be thinking about as we carry on in this pilot. It reminds me of the metaphories, the right of bubbles, of the bubbles being able to bounce up against each other and the mixing of bubbles and yes, there will always be those activities where certain bubbles are getting strengthened but are there also those spaces where those bubbles come together and merge? I think for me it's that sort of and and of like sometimes people need to feel a sense of belonging in a smaller group. Maybe a new migrant to a place meeting other migrants in that area makes you feel like you've got some you know you got some buds and people that relate to you but then if you don't also have those opportunities to come together with people that like you said those kind of common denominator experiences then you do this sort of becomes factions can kind of emerge and barriers. Well Duncan was saying in one of the earlier podcasts I'll look I've seen a lot of time building community in the rainbow community but not so much in place and I think that makes the other thing that can happen. We can be quite comfortable not speaking for Duncan but quite comfortable in our communities of identity or even the five neighbours that we know. And so we do have to have jolting activities that get us to mix and mingle. And often they are tragedies that bring people out, web of a web of events or a safety concern. And that's what gets people mixing with each other. And we're trying to preempt that so that when these jolting activities happen, events happen, people already have some social cohesion. And I think I've always found that in community development, it's like, we needed that disaster to be the catalyst or even in work that we've done around social housing. No one really wants to engage in the conversation of public housing and homelessness until a whole lot of public housing is being built right next door to them and then they will. So how do we get people interested in participating without it having to directly impact on them? And not just to be like reactive or just responding to crisis, but having reasons to come together that are perhaps more creative or have you guys ever had experiences in places where you've lived, where you feel like you've come together with neighbours or other community members around something other than a crisis? I can remember growing up that we had pretty good relationships with a number of our neighbours and Cambridge, which obviously there was established by my parents because I was a young young person. I could go over to those neighbours or this neighbours that I'd go around and ask them if I needed help and feel comfortable about it, just to share a slightly personal story. But about a week after we moved into our current apartment, I managed to lock myself out, I locked me in my partner out. The only way I had to contact anyone was via email to everyone in the building so everyone got a little email from me being like, I'm locked out. Who has the master key? Can you please come let me in? There was something about being comfortable to be embarrassed or vulnerable. People, which was a development in myself and maybe a knowing of what community could or does look like and that it's okay to ask people, whereas I can imagine in different situations myself or other people, you'd be too embarrassed to do that, to admit to 50 people that you've made a mistake. Did someone have the master key? They did. Right. 20 minutes later, the head person came down and I locked the door and I was very thankful. I think it's quite interesting that question you asked. A lot of us have memories of our childhood. We're at about like, we were different conditions. I was watching someone walking a seven year old walking home from school the other day and I thought gee, there's not really that many kids on the street where I feel like a whole group of us walk to school when I was five or six. We certainly were out on our bikes with out shoes or helmets and in those days, she had bikes. I was pushed backwards to get the brakes to stop. I have a lot of those memories and I don't know whether my kids have similar memories. I don't know whether it's some of the stuff we talked about, whatever other podcasts about individualism, neoliberalism, risk of vision, safety, concerns, whether it's time capacity, like actually no one's really even at home that much anymore. So we really don't know what's happening because people leave at six in one income home at seven at night. I mean the times I can think of have been when we were flooded and new learn and we had no electricity and a whole lot of us went down to the one cafe, got coffee at six in the morning and it felt like quite a good community spirit. Yeah, I remember that. And then another time is when I'd been away for the weekend and I came back and my kids had had noise control. Cooled and I felt really embarrassed a bit like what Duncan's talking about. But I wrote little notes and put them in all the neighbours, letterboxes with my phone number on, just saying, you know, I'm very sorry. And actually, you know, maybe I did six notes and four people came back and said, I don't worry about it. It was just kids who I didn't hear anything. And actually so for me, that was a great response because it allayed my anxiety of kind of having to walk this walk of shame to my car, feeding like my kids at upset the neighbourhood every day for the next how many of it years I lived there. Yeah. So I've been saying that I loved rural E for a very short time, huge sense of community. Yeah. Yeah, it's same for me. I grew up in a little tiny town called Cust which is about 45 minutes out of Autotahi Christchurch and that was where my mind went with that question of there used to be every year. Families would build a go cart and there was a particular farmer who would open up his land with this really steep kind of hill and everyone would take it was like a go cart competition of riding down the hill and every family got involved and made one and yeah, there was a real there was a real sense of community there and something to do with that rural lifestyle, I think there's some conditions there, hey, I'm not quite sure what it is. This is my theory. You know you kind of have to rely on each other so you have to stand relationship like you can't really pass anyone off because then there's no one left. That's really interesting that relying on each other thing I think because I think this is where I'm kind of sort of mentioned in a previous episode about I'm quite interested in this two-e corridor project that from the put hills down to Christchurch City and the only way that would work is if we all played our part. It was like we would have to rely on each other if we would have to create that corridor and it's like very easy to test because either the birds are going to fly through or they're going to get very tangible that kind of relying on each other. So I'm curious about what are those things that are not Christ's based that actually create that sense of we need to do this together. We need each other for this to happen. I mean you're pretty keen on indicators. Like you know more, we've been talking a little bit about evaluation. I guess it's a bit early yet. A third of the way through to be too worried but it's always I think in everyone's minds that you need to know the distance you're travelling. Yeah I think that's been saying, I guess I've been quite inspired by Johnny Freeland again around that. Just hearing him talk about the TR Māori concept of tohu or signs that are those little little latinist tests. It's kind of tell you that something's shifted in the system without having to measure every part of the system which as we know when we start to try and measure everything it feels like we kind of, I don't know, kind of concretise everything or sort of take the life out of it very square. I just always give this example of a project where all these different stakeholders came together residents and indigenous peoples and fisheries and healthy waters and councils and together they decided to regenerate this river system and their one indicator was if the salmon returned it was an American thing. If the salmon returned to this river then we know we've all achieved our, we've achieved this bigger purpose and all of us benefit the fisheries that now have got enough fish supply, the residents happy because their kids can swim in the river, indigenous people happy because the moody, the spirit of the river has been returned and it was just that one indicator the salmon returning and again very specific to place. The salmon had died out there 50 years ago and I'm curious about you know in these different places what are those signs that something's shifted here that's not generic but is unique to this context. Well maybe as we come to the end of season one what are some of the things you think we need to look out for as we go into the second phase, this is the beginning, the initiation, what are you imagining we're going to look for in season two of this podcast. In terms of thinking about what to look out for I think what are the ripples that are going to come? You know there's this energy being put into building relationships and listening, understanding context and maybe testing out a few ideas, little events and little activities and now what might ripple from that in terms of new relationships warming, little offshoot ideas, you know ecosystems kind of of different parts, the community starting to join up and cross pollinate what might happen there. What are you talking about? I'm just looking forward to how everyone involved in this project, our Weevers, this team including myself, how we grow and develop from this experience, like what do we learn, what do we end up doing differently. I'm particularly interested in the power dynamics and how you shift those, working in philanthropy, talked about this in episodes one and two, but is there a way when you have the power, so when you're in philanthropy or when you've got money for a project and then you're going into a community, is there a way that you can actually genuinely share that power with other people and how does that play out? Well I would probably riff off the power thing because I'm thinking we're going to have to, with the inner dilemma of, okay this is how long it's taking, these are the sorts of things that are happening, are they matching up with what was in our brain and how are we going to sustain ourselves as we get to the end of the pilot and what is, is what is. I think that's going to be something that will be interesting for us to monitor in our cell. In our cell. Yeah. Okay folks, thanks for listening to Season One. I've in the middle of it. Let's sign off, I'm Sissy Rock. I'm Duncan Matthews. I'm Lucy Mary Maholand. We'll see you for Season Two. Will we? We will. We definitely will. Yes, see you then. Kaguito. Bye. Thanks to 104.6 Planet FM Community Access Radio Auckland for their excellent recording studio and guidance and producing this podcast. The music is Pistoriosus by Shane Ivers of SoundManMusic.com. Mel Joanna's Center bringing you. together during episodes, mush-mask all for the audio engineering expertise, and our weavers, Libby, Jaylin, Charles, Tuay, Nay, Holly, Lisa, Ray and Carol.