Creating conditions for community connection

As a part of the Communities and Priority Groups team, one of my favourite parts of the job is getting out and about with our volunteers and community partners, learning from them and connecting. I’m continually awed by the dedication and expertise of both partners and volunteers alike. Taking learning from them, these community engagement principles help me to ground my work. 

One thing that I have learned from our many community partners in my four years as part of See Me, is that it takes great skill to create community spaces that enable meaningful connection. The creation of space is as important as any output that a group may produce – the process is how communities thrive, connect and collaborate.  

At See Me, we understand that as a national organisation, we need to work together with communities so that we can understand mental health stigma and discrimination from the perspective of people with  lived experience. We know mental health stigma is produced by systems of power and oppression, like homophobia, ableism, sexism, racism and transphobia.  

How can we create the conditions needed for communities to come together and better understand these varied experiences, while supporting people to challenge stigma in its many forms? 

We know that simply showing up to a group and expecting people to connect, bond and share isn’t quite enough – our community partners put great time, knowledge and energy into building meaningful, safe spaces.  

This is invaluable when thinking about what it takes to share lived experience of mental health stigma and discrimination. 

A key element to this approach is building on community strength, moving away from a deficit-based model which  suggests all challenges are within groups rather than linked to external factors such as structural oppression.  

We do this by working with people and groups that are already embedded in communities, with existing knowledge and understanding of these groups, their wants and needs.  

The wins made by community action and grassroots mobilisation demonstrate the power of community coming together around a shared goal. Our volunteers are also an integral part of this, as is every member of our social movement. 

Talking about mental health can be difficult – and it can be even more difficult for different communities who face multiple oppressions. In order to create safety within a group, there are some processes and approaches that can help.  

Working with the group to co-create a ‘safer spaces’ agreement will help participants stay safe during the session – and it’s all designed in a way that works for them.  

Having a facilitator responsible for safeguarding participants helps to build a secure foundation for carrying out trauma-informed community work.  

Staff being offered support and supervision, as well as the chance to debrief and reflect on their practice also helps with this. 

It’s key that people are not re-traumatised by the spaces that they join, that they’re actively informed of how their psychological safety will be looked after, and that healing can be supported.  

How we frame sharing lived experience is also important. Acknowledging the wealth of experiences in a group, honouring sharing but not making it an obligation can help us all have control, ownership and boundaries over our own stories. If people want to share, this should always be at their own pace. 

It’s not just these policies and practices that make people feel safe - cultural safety and belonging is equally as important. For some, this means facilitators are best placed when they are also members of the same communities, or they need to have cultural humility - understanding their own biases and actively seeking to understand experiences outwith their own. 

Community connectedness can also be fostered through the choice of the places where we connect. The majority of organisations are hampered by budget constraints, however, much can be done to ensure comfort, and accessibility.  

Considering the physical access of the location – can it be easily reached by community members? Is it wheelchair accessible? Are there suitable facilities for our group's needs?  

Is it a comfortable space – how is the lighting and temperature? Is it a formal or informal space and which would be preferred by the group? Are there things we can do to make it more comfortable if money is tight?  

We can also consider what the building itself represents to the folks we are asking to attend – for example, does the building have a colonial history, or is it a setting like a church that may have emotional connotations for group members? 

If safety is the bedrock, then belonging is the mountain.  

Our partners speak about the importance of finding ways of coming together that encourage connection. This could be sharing food, using creative approaches to explore and tackle stigma (LINK TO WEBSITE) or peer support, to name but a few. 

Without question, building relationships and using establishing the conditions we’ve outlined here takes time.  

The work of our community partners demonstrates the way in which relationships are grown, nurtured and conducted in collaboration with the communities they work alongside.  

One key factor that can help with this is sustained funding. The current funding landscape doesn’t necessarily allow for projects to build in the time required to build such relationships. The positive outcomes of finding community and feeling safe are myriad and are worth the time and effort. 

Through our partners and volunteers, we continue to learn how to build these elements into our community work, seeking to support and maintain spaces where communities feel safe to connect, share lived experience and come together to tackle mental health stigma and discrimination -- and we’re seeing every day how powerful community can be.