The conversations we invited (through whatever method) were not seeking to consult on what the council can do differently. Rather, we sought to convene a conversation that places people at the centre of possible change. We were looking to capture not only challenges but also what already existed in terms of potential resident contribution.
We recognise that there are a number of drawbacks to conventional community engagement and consultation tools.
If we survey people from NCC it risks placing expectations that we will solve the issues reported, it is also more likely a one way communication – our return rate (engagement) may be low and are likely to reach those who are engaged enough to return a survey.
Likewise focus groups / community meetings can involve the same voices being heard, and have to date been used by NCC to varying degrees of success (neighbourhood panels, SNAP meetings etc) to focus on resolving resident issues.
We therefore worked to test alternative ways to gain insights whereby we collaborated to learn from those who are trusted and worked in the local community.
In this way we can play an active role in collating and sharing insights with anyone for improving life in that neighbourhood is of interest to.
Between November 2021 - March 2025, Community Connectors, hosted by The Shoebox Enterprises CIC, had conversations in their neighbourhoods with residents to discover what matters to them, what they are passionate about and what they would like to do with others to help them flourish in community life.
Community Connectors were recruited from their local neighbourhoods and were managed and supported by The Shoebox Enterprises but worked for the benefit of their local community.
Norwich City Council worked in partnership with The Shoebox Enterprises to support the continued development of the Community Connector team and the wider Community Conversations project.
The role of Community Connectors was to get to know people in their local community – spot other 'connectors' in the community, attend events and organise their own to meet people and find out what they’d like to do more of with others. Where appropriate they signposted and connected people and place.
Conversations were responsive to people’s interests and not scripted. Connectors also got to hear about what’s working and not working for people in their neighbourhood. Connectors shared reflections from their conversations with Norwich City Council's Community Enabling team who were able to:
- help spot opportunities where they can support residents to do more
- identify insights leading to further focused conversations (to encourage collaboration at all levels in a community on an issue) or projects
Within the Community Enabling team there were 3 Conversations Officers who worked hand in hand with the Community Connectors, and other professionals working in neighbourhoods to understand the potential and challenges.
Their role was to develop focused conversations in the community based on what was coming from insights, and support community level collaboration, and collaboration between external organisations (where there was a role for them).
We have built this site as a way of sharing insights into the conversations data that was captured and to ultimately do the following:
provide insights into the community in specific RITAs and spot opportunities
help review processes involved in collecting and analysing data to continually improve
track progress towards impact from this way of working
We analysed the conversation data in a way which was led by what came up. Themes and subcategories were identified from the data and if this changed over time, new ones were added. Some areas mention nothing within some of these themes and in this case, you will not see those themes within the thematic analysis sections.
We embedded an asset-based approach into our analysis so rather than highlight what is good and what is bad, we identified where people talk in asset-based terms (for example, things or interests which are there) and deficit-based terms (where things are lacking). This provided a greater flexibility for us to be true to the method of capturing the data and allowed us to highlight where people used a combination of language. Importantly it provided a strong basis that we could use when identifying opportunities so that we could use what's strong to fix what's wrong.
We recognised that there were limitations in the data and consequently each theme contains a section on data limitations and recommendations to support the future development of the project.
The value of this data is that it came from insights from people who are trusted in the community who were not surveying people. Unlike survey data which skews towards what the surveyor deems important, this approach sought to understand what is coming out on top for people living in these neighbourhoods. The limitation in the data is its breadth and can mean one particular topic is not explored in depth. However the data provides evidence of the potential value of exploring topics that are arising to ask further questions of people.