Reconnecting organisations in Gleadless Valley

​Gleadless Valley was formerly a rural area, which was developed as a large housing project of over 4,000 dwellings, between 1955-62 by Sheffield Council. Gleadless Valley has many assets, including a strong local community, its proximity to the city centre and the local green spaces and woodlands. However, it is an area that experiences high levels of poverty and associated issues in terms of health and wellbeing, education and employment and crime and ASB. The area has a fragile infrastructure in terms of the voluntary, community and faith sector. This was exacerbated by the collapse of the local hub organisation, Reach South Sheffield in late 2020. Which left a further gap in the area, both in terms of delivering services for local people (including the local library) and providing support for other small community groups and organisations.
 
The Gleadless Valley Partnership includes a number of groups formed to oversee a capacity building project in the area for which Sheffield Council secured a modest amount of funding. The groups involved in the partnership are Gleadless Valley TARA, Gleadless Valley foodbank, the 2 local churches, Holy Cross Church and Gleadless Valley Methodist Church, Heeley City Farm and Heeley Trust.
 
However, in the past 12-24 months, to a great extent due to the pandemic, the partners have not all been able to meet regularly. The Cross-pollination project was seen as an opportunity to help the organisations who make up the partnership (and broader stakeholders including the council, police, local businesses) understand more about what their own strengths, assets, aims and priorities are, and how they come together to create a shared vision for the partnership going forward. The community capacity building project provides an opportunity for the partnership to take their relationship to another level in terms of working together to build a more sustainable future for the Gleadless Valley Community.
 
Three members of the partnership attended a cross-pollination session delivered by The Open University and The Glass-House Community Led Design which introduced the approach, and its main principles and mechanisms. The partnership was then provided with a set of materials and seed funding to run a cross-pollination workshop at a venue in Sheffield. An independent facilitator from Voluntary Action Sheffield was commissioned to help run the workshop.

The workshop was attended by 18 participants who started the conversation by sharing their hopes for the day, all by and large centered around collaborative working and unlocking people’s strengths and potential. Next, using the cross-pollination cards provided by the Cross-pollination project team, participants discussed the projects they were already working on or would like to do.

Finally, to help facilitate thinking about their collective skills, resources, connections and places, the group first agreed their top 3 priorities to focus on. These were: the Gleadless Valley Festival; Community Hubs; and Activities for Young People & Families.

Following the workshop the partnership started planning the community festival for next summer and planting the seeds for the connecting hubs project. The community capacity building project starting at the end of 2022 - beginning of 2023 is expected to provide some additional community development capacity to support the Partnership to continue to grow and develop a community plan where the values and ethos of cross-pollination will continue to be embedded.

The following bullet point offer some reflections on the outputs and outcomes of the cross-pollination approach:

• Feeling part of something bigger– as one participant said; “I’ve often felt like I’m trying to carry the weight of Gleadless Valley on my shoulders, which is exhausting,  but now I’ve really seen that I'm not on my own”. 
• Finding new ideas and further developing old ones – this included a lot of energy and commitment to deliver the community festival. 
• Confidence – having a positively framed conversation about people's skills and assets builds individual and collective community confidence.
• Helping to build a network, with shared skills – the approach helped to bring the group together; and to agree some shared priorities and better understand each others’ potential contributions. 
• Positivity and energy – the workshop fell well timing wise in terms of the partnership’s journey, it helped to build positivity and energy about the future. 
• Capacity building project – the workshop helped to provide lots of useful insight in terms of the things the partnership wanted the community capacity building project to deliver, it helped to shape the funding brief that was subsequently put together; and helped to develop the sense of community ownership. 
• Empowerment – the workshop seemed to help empower the Partnership, and feel more confident in using the approach and some of the direction they have agreed, to lead the way in subsequent discussions with other stakeholders. This should also help build community confidence to engage in the Gleadless Valley Masterplan. 

Thanks to Diane Owens, South LAC Manager for providing the information for this blog post.