The Community Wellbeing Collective – ways of working
The Community Wellbeing Collective
The CWC are a growing group of 30+ people from, and connected to, Wester Hailes – practising mutual care, responsibility, vulnerability, and solidarity. Together we run a Community Wellbeing Space in Westside Plaza shopping centre, which is by and for the people. The group is always growing and changing but as an entity we had been practising together for 19 months and running our space for one year when we began this research in mental health and data in partnership with The University of Edinburgh.
Community Researchers
The time we took to establish these ways of working together was important for how we are able to approach this research.
We value the knowledge and offerings of people, we build belief and collaboration bringing the confidence and ability to develop our own research questions and methodology.
From early conversations with Iona, the Knowledge Exchange and Impact Officer leading this collaboration from The University of Edinburgh side, we established that the CWC were not only people to be researched but experts who could develop our own questions and methodology.
Data Sharing
We created an intention that the sharing of any data collected would be determined by the CWC researchers, other participants and their wishes for the impact that it should have.
We would hope to work in collaboration with researchers so that this knowledge from lived experience can reach spaces it might not otherwise and change the landscape around mental health.
(See also our blog post on Data Sharing)
Timeline and Structure
After a series of phone calls, meetings and welcoming Iona to the Community Wellbeing Space to meet with more of the collective’s members, we drew up a timeline and structure for the research to take place.
We decided that the structure would include a series of workshops for members to develop their research. (See also Workshop 1: Beginnings, Workshop 2: Generating Questions)
These workshops are moments to initiate possibilities for the group to research data and mental health, in ways that are not predefined or predictable and arise from the interests, desires and urgencies of the people taking part. Other members are invited to lead activities within these workshops. The research questions, methodologies and data generation were to be discovered along the way.
An invitation to participate
In the monthly meetings and messages we shared with the collective, we invited everyone to be in touch if interested. We also reached out individually to some people, who we thought would be keen to participate, as sometimes we need to be invited to have the confidence to join something.
In this way, a group of 11 people came together. It is a working group that people can move in and out of and take part in different ways, and is consistent enough to allow us to carry forward learnings between workshops. It is worth mentioning that the group is diverse in multiple ways with a range of ages, beliefs, life experiences and home countries. There are many more differences and commonalities we share! And we all gravitated toward the group because we have lived experience of the topics we wanted to research.
Our Approach as a Collective
The methodology to approach this research is informed by the way we work and are a collective taking action towards community wellbeing possibilities. The space we hold as a collective is a brave and vulnerable one, which makes it raw and responsive to the lived and the felt. The research we do is, therefore, an embodied practice, shaped on individual and collective lived experiences of mental health and placed in conversation. We practise deep listening;, we share and relate through questions, anecdotes and emotions to connect across differences and through needs and desires. As a collective we create a space where we can meet and dialogue as equals, caring with each other to make everyone feel seen and heard, believed, respected and safe.
As a collective we think in relation to each other. Our actions are the result of common feelings and values that we have been holding and recognising throughout the journey we share as the Community Wellbeing Collective. The methods that we use are shaped by the way we take care for each other as a community, and by the creative celebration of the diverse talents and skills that each of us has to offer.
What we do is testing various creative methods as a group giving feedback to each other. We develop the research from what we learn as a group; allowing and expanding conversations on the questions and emotions that emerge along the way.
Related Blog Posts:
Foundations: Meeting our collective needs
Workshop 2: Generating Questions
