Archiving

Capturing the story of the Circle as it grows

In Equal Care’s work with Blackshaw Circle, members created a timeline to present to the wider community at an event. It documented the journey the circle had been on and which stage they were currently at. For example, one member of the Blackshaw circle had written a collection of stories outlining the process of engagement and development; these stories described the rise and fall of emotions and the challenges and rewards the community faced in setting up the circle.

As part of the Culture Building work with the new circle there will be opportunities within each session to reflect and contribute to an online story archive. This archive exists to capture all the ‘soul’ outcomes and developments that each circle, in each community experience. The online story archive will capture qualitative data from consenting participants around how the work feels and document the personal and collective growth the culture building work instils. These stories can be shared both online and drawn upon during the events, giving members an insight into the culture changing work the circle is engaged in as part of its founding.

The stories are located on a site which also hosts the wider stories of the development of Equal Care and associate circles. The site is ‘public-private’, not widely advertised or linked to but accessible through an unlisted link to enable sharing through connected individuals and communities of practice.

How we expect to feel and what we expect to know during this period:

• The experience of the sense of ownership moving: for this sense to thrive in circle members in the context of Equal Care and the work they are doing. For circle members to experience a sense of belonging and ownership over Equal Care, its direction and activities

• Excitement, fruition and feeling unstoppable

• Challenged by seeing that some of our initial assumptions are not being borne out

• Willingness to change, learn, grow and adapt

• Deepening our shared understanding of Middleton, its hopes, threats, desires, challenges and needs

• A shared narrative being built together

A caveat on ‘ownership’

We want to build social justice momentum within communities whilst raising an awareness of social injustice as it relates to social care and how that impacts on the other spheres of life. We want to pollinate the seeds of local ownership, not suppress them. The experience of ownership is a multi-faceted and sprawling terrain which requires more than just one tool and one approach. For us, a sense of ownership is something that is intrinsic to our culture building work; it is a product of and a desired outcome of our activities but not something we are able to promise. To promise this would be to overlook the complexities and nuances of poverty and power.