By Claudia Firth
We, myself and Emilia Melville, two researchers at the University of Bristol, applied for the Brigstow Ideas Exchange fund to work closely with the Bristol Commons Network (BCN), a newly emerging grassroots organisation which we have both been involved with as participant observers. Our community partner was Coexist, the organisation that initiated the first meetings of the Bristol Commons, with Danny Balla as the third research team member.
Our proposal for this piece of funding was to hold two workshops to facilitate conversations using tools developed by the Brigstow Institute to build trust, and review and refine research questions and outcomes to write a longer proposal for the Seedcorn fund.
We invited several people to join us to make up the research team. We looked for people who we had met through the Bristol Commons Network, who would bring valuable skills, knowledge and experience to the project, as well as people who might not otherwise be able to participate if it wasn’t for the funding. One focus was trying to make sure that we had a very diverse team, particularly including people from the global majority, as the initial team of three are all white. What we ended up with was a team that spans age, gender, sexuality, race and disability, with a wide range of skills, knowledge and experience.
At the first workshop in May 2024 at St Werbergh’s Community Centre, we used the ‘Engaged Beings’ tool developed by the Brigstow Institute to explore people’s motivations, ways of working, needs and ideas for outputs. The tool consists of a set of cards with different animal body parts on one side of each card with the categories on the other. Most of the cards are pre-filled but some are left blank, enabling people to add their own comments if they can’t already see them. The great thing about this tool is how visually playful it is. Everyone ends up with a zoological version of an exquisite corpse, a monstrous hybrid being of different animals that say something about who we are and what we bring to the table.
These cards were particularly good at highlighting different aspects of working together and enabling people to be able to communicate their different perspectives in ways they might not otherwise be able to do. The prompts enabled some real honesty and transparency about what we might each contribute to and gain from a research project. What was especially great was the ability to produce different creatures for different ‘hats’ we might have, for example as participants in the Bristol Commons and as university researchers. The exercise gave this a really good picture of who we all are, how we might be able to work together, what things we might need to take into consideration to make the process accessible to all of us, and also where we have similar motivations and needs and where they differ. It became apparent that there was quite a shared desire for the project to contribute to change, both for the Bristol Commons Network and to wider system change. What was also shared by many of us was a need for clear timelines, roles and responsibilities as well as transparency about power dynamics. A desire for teamwork and a sense of togetherness also appeared a number of times on our different cards. Some of us were able to express how difficult it can be to find ways to be their whole selves with others. This was an important reflection that we took to the next session.
