In more detail
Communities and community groups are made up of links between people who share common interests. Because people may have many interests, communities are also linked to form a kind of network. Which people sometimes call the local 'community network'.
Local Community Network
Community networks vary in terms of their visibility, strength and flexibility (how well they cope with newcomers and other changes) and how inclusive and diverse they are:
- highly visble community networks are easy to get hold of - whether as a member of the local community, or as a local business or manager of a public service
- strong community networks don't just focus on one person or one group to support them but are supported by many different people
- flexibly community networks cope well with change - new communities that come into the area and new managers of local services are quickly absorbed
- inclusive community networks link a high proportion of local households and businesses
- diverse community networks link people and communities that are different to each other (young and old; Muslim and Christian; business owners and residents etc).
Places with visible, strong, flexible community networks which are inclusive and diverse tend to improve faster than those without. They are also more able to deal with setbacks and challenges. This is because community networks help to create a sense of trust, belonging and connection to local decision-making. This adds social value; it can also add hard economic value to the area. In Birmingham, for example, researchers found that neighbourhoods in which more people said they felt involved in local decisions; trusted their neighbours; and felt that different communities co-existed well, were also the neighbourhoods where property prices increased most rapidly. People - it seems - want to live in neighbourhoods where there is a strong community network.
Mapping your Community Hubs
In any area (either a geographical area or an area of interest) there will be some key people, groups, places or institutions which play a significant part in linking communities and community groups together to make the local community network. These 'network-makers' are sometimes called ‘community hubs’. It’s usually applied to physical locations, buildings – particularly meeting places - but hubs can be people, or groups, websites, or habits and customs (for example, having a neighbourhood get-together once every couple of months).
Improving the local community network could start with taking stock of the community hubs which help to build it. Things to bear in mind
- hubs tend to be general rather than specific, for example – a building that people can go into for a wide range of purposes (and maybe, nothing in particular) rather than somewhere you can only go for one thing.
- where hubs have a specific formal purpose - such as training, for example, they work in such a way as to enable more general use. The most valuable part of a training course may be the networking that it enables participants to undertake.
- calling a thing a community hub, doesn’t make it a community hub. Effective hubs can take on a wide range of forms and belong to different groups in society – they aren’t all local council-run community centres.
- community hubs are places where communities meet, but they aren't necessarily community-run (and being community-run isn't enough on its own to ensure a place will be a community hub). Local pubs and shops can act as community hubs.
- food is a common factor in a lot of hubs – cafes and community lunches etc bring people of different communities together. Markets and festivals are, likewise, things which people from a wide range of backgrounds find easy to take part in.
- minority communities tend to have places and activities that relate to their identity as hubs – specialist shops, places of worship, cultural activities etc.
- regularity and predictability matter – if people are used to something happening on the first Thursday of the month, for example, it helps it to become established as a hub.
- people who act as hubs are not necessarily who you might think of as 'community leaders'. They are enablers of information sharing and joint action, rather than necessarily being the leaders of it.
Increasing 'Hubbiness'
As well as thinking about what the hubs are in your neighbourhood, it can make sense to consider ‘hubbiness’ - as an adjective. How ‘hubby’, for example, are your community group meetings? Perhaps you can’t always be ‘hubby’, but you might be able to include times when it is easier for newcomers and outsiders to take part; space on the agenda for information exchange; and you might have people in the group whose job it is to welcome people in?
| Key Facts:
The local community network is the sum of the links within and between communities that share an area. A visible, strong, flexible network that is inclusive and diverse supports the development of the neighbourhood in the right directions. Community networks are generated and supported by 'hubs' - which can be buildings, groups, people, websites or ways of doing things. Hubs are things which bring people together and enable them to link. If you want to improve your neighbourhood, start by thinking about your community network and the hubs that generate it. |
Page Links from here
Community Network Analysis is a series of videos from the Orton Family Foundation in Vermont USA - it is presented as part of a tool called Community Heart and Soul' but also makes general points relating to community networks.
In this toolkit:
OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.
BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT DEFINITION SHEET This sheet may be reproduced in paper or electromic or any other form but please mention it was made by Chamberlain Forum Limited for Birmingham City Council supported by Department for Communities and Local Government.
| created: 2016-05-14 15:40:05 | by: admin | status: f published |