Learning is centrally important to our work as Bridgebuilders. We don’t pretend to have the answers. We know from experience that nothing ever stands still.
We ensure that we are constantly learning from what we are hearing from local communities (and other places), and adapting our approach accordingly.
What we’re Learning
EMERGENT THEMES
There are a great many themes that have emerged from our work over the past three years. Below are some of the themes, ideas, and commonalities that we have observed:
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This is a theme that cuts across a lot of our work. In many parts of every Bridgebuilders’s work, they are building links between communities of different ethnic backgrounds, communities of interest, communities and services, communities and information, and helping isolated individuals to find their way into one or more communities. For example, a strand of Hakan’s work is around bonding people around celebration, bringing people across different communities, ethnicities and faiths together to celebrate Christmas or to share iftar. These open, welcoming spaces provide a space for people to meet and enjoy sharing customs, cultures and food. Eric, through his work in the African Platform, is an active and visible leader in his community. People in need of support are directed to him because he is well connected with the services, charities and communities who can help meet those needs.
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This is another theme that cuts across several peoples’ work. One of our Bridgebuilders, Afroz, runs a women’s group, bringing women together around common interests, a desire to learn new skills and make friends. Another Bridgebuilder, Eric, is running a strand of work about employment and empowerment of women in Gateshead’s African communities and two of our Bridgebuilders (Afroz and Fozia) have set up women-only swimming lessons to address the health and wellbeing disparities linked with gender and cultural diversity.
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One newly emerging piece of work that is being initially piloted by a few of our Bridgebuilders, with ambition to expand to every Bridgebuilders’ work is about building satellite groups to expand the ways in which people are brought into decision-making around the resources the GCB has. We will eventually create eight satellites to the GCB, which are groups of around 10 Gateshead residents, each with their own assigned budget and autonomy to make decisions over how it is spent. A ninth satellite will be made up of representatives of the ten keystone organisations who host people employed for GCB work.
UPCOMING EVENT: HOW TO BE A BRIDGEBUILDER
We're holding an event on November 12th at the Baltic...
Developing the first North East Deaf Festival
On 1st and 2nd November 2024 at Gosforth Civic Theatre we will be seeing the first ever North East Deaf Festival.
So what has led us here?
Relationship-centred practice
We were recently featured in The Relationships Project’s ‘Case Maker’, as a case study of relationship centred practice…
How we make decisions about money
When we describe the work of the GCB, we talk a lot about decision-making - but there are many kinds of decisions made in this group, as in any. We’ve done a lot of thinking and experimenting around how we make the different categories of decisions needed to enable the group to do its work – that is, which decisions are made by whom, and in what way, in order for the group’s work to flow smoothly.
Community Spirit, Community Power: Tackling the isolation of young Deaf people
My main focus has been mental health and deafness, including working closely with researchers from the North East Deaf network. Speaking to deaf communities it was clear that there was not a lot happening for young deaf people in Gateshead. This led us to the idea of holding a North East Deaf Festival…
Community Spirit, Community Power: Bridgebuilding Within Gateshead’s African Communities
We have several African communities living in Gateshead, along with Latina North American communities who have been relocated to the area. Between Gateshead and Newcastle, specific areas have specific communities. Bensham in Gateshead is one of the more diverse, it’s also an area in which many asylum seekers and refugees are housed. The same is true of Fenham and Byker in Newcastle…
Community Spirit, Community Power: The Power of Empathy
My name is Zahra and I am a Gateshead Community Bridgebuilder hosted by GemArts, and also a Peer Enabler based in St Chad’s Community Project, focusing on asylum seekers and refugees.
In 2020, in the peak of the pandemic, I joined a storytelling inquiry (the precursor to the peer enabler work) in which we collected about 120 stories of people who were living in Gateshead. The results of it have made me aware of the pain and difficulties going on beneath the surface of my community and neighbourhood…
Community Spirit, Community Power: The Power of Education
It's common knowledge that humanity has certain fundamental problems ignorance, poverty, separation. I want to focus on the most pressing of these issues - education. According to many sociologists and psychologists, the first pitfall of humanity is lack of education…
Community Spirit, Community Power: Diversity, Lived Experience & Representation
Early on in this work it soon became apparent that those round the table were not truly representative of our diverse communities in Gateshead. We initiated a recruitment process which was accessible, looking to identify people who were already embedded in different communities in Gateshead and who had a track record of being able to ‘make things happen’ - they were already active in their community and the Bridgebuilders role was a way of catalysing their activity rather than replacing it…
Community Spirit, Community Power: Constellations of ‘Relationships First’ Practice
I have to tell you, that Gateshead Community Bridgebuilders is something we have tried and tried really really hard at doing. It was not instantly, universally, wonderful. It is not perfect. We are a work in progress…
Community spirit, community power: the big picture
Gateshead Community Bridgebuilders are an idea: That all of our lives are richer when our communities are strong, when they are connected, and when they hold genuine power. We want local people to have the opportunities, skills, and confidence to engage in making decisions that are going to improve their lives now and in the future. What we mean by that is we want local people to have a meaningful role in their communities as decision-makers.
What do we mean by ‘bridge building’?
We describe our work in terms of ‘bridge building’ – but what does that actually mean?
The Bridgebuilder Diaries #2: Recruiting Bridgebuilders
If you’re trying to explore new and creative ways to discover what could make life better for people who experience poverty and disadvantage, if you’re trying to avoid the same old approaches that miss what matters to most people, how do you find the people who might be able to help you with this endeavour?
The Bridgebuilder Diaries #1: why do we need Bridgebuilders?
The Gateshead Community Bridgebuilder project has been running since early 2020. The work has been muddy and confusing, and we have been painstakingly wading our way through it, which has meant we have had very little time to tell other people about it. We’re starting now with this new series we’re calling ‘The Bridgebuilder Diaries’ – a retrospective of what we’ve done, what has happened, and what we’ve learnt.