Cultivating social connectivity in communities – The Essential Mix

With the aim of enhancing social connectedness in communities across the UK, Neighbourly Lab is a prime example of an organisation embracing a unique and bold approach to help bring people together – one of our key priorities as the largest funder of community activity in the UK.

Thanks to National Lottery players, the group has secured a £300,000 Bringing People Together grant for its The Essential Mix project which harnesses social contact between essential workers, such as shop and bus workers and law enforcement officers, and residents by promoting positive ‘micro-interactions’.

The approach comes off the back of recently conducted research (Gunayadin et al., 2020) suggesting daily small interactions - a smile, a wave, and even basic greetings - with people we see casually, over time, will help to boost our general wellbeing, reduce loneliness, and enable us to feel a greater sense of belonging to our community.

The potential for this method to create a positive, lasting effect, while being easy to adopt, is quite substantial when you consider that during our day-to-day lives, most people will come into contact with essential workers on a regular basis.

Grainne O’Dwyer, Senior Programme Manager at Neighbourly Lab, shares the impact The Essential Mix has had on communities to date:

“In our early stages of ethnography and co-design with essential workers, the value and need for promoting more positive and more frequent micro-interactions with residents was evident for both residents and essential workers.”

“A bus driver said: ‘When you hear people saying ‘thanks driver’ or ‘cheers mate’, it makes your day’, and a resident shared: ‘I always love to chat with my local shopkeeper - we support the same football team so we laugh and cry about that every week’.”

“We are now embarking on a trial phase with law enforcement officers in London and Tesco stores in Glasgow, with initial feedback being highly positive.”

“Law enforcement officers who have undergone community engagement training feel more confident in approaching and engaging with residents to build trusting relationships. We are now moving to a phase of new community events to put these skills into action. One law enforcement officer said: ‘It opens your eyes and helps you to understand the impact we have on residents. My service delivery to the public will definitely improve.”

“In Tesco stores, we have been running pop-up events where public and third sector organisations take a more novel approach to outreach, going to people where they are. From three events, community groups have reached more than 210 people and shared information and access to services. Feedback from the organisations is overwhelmingly positive that this approach to engagement has helped to open up new areas of the community for them.”

“We are currently undergoing pre-trial data collection with bus drivers in Hammersmith, London. The trial will take place later this year and we look forward to hopefully sharing some positive impact. We will also be working with young people at a high school in Drumchapel, Glasgow in the next few months.”

The Bringing People Together programme aims to fund projects with grants between £200,000 and £500,000, as well as a small number of awards up to £1 million.

The programme supports projects that build stronger connections across communities. Projects must deliver across at least two UK countries (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), which can be through working in a network or a partnership. We’re looking for projects that are using and experimenting with new approaches, or a new combination of approaches to bring people together.

We’re also interested in supporting projects that respond to national and significant moments that are important to communities across the UK and relevant to the societal challenges we face.

Projects must meet at least one or more of the following priorities:

• Support and explore what is needed to connect communities
• Foster a positive sense of belonging by reducing ‘them and us’ attitudes
• Build collective action and strengthen communities.

Focus on creating the conditions for long term change.

Grainne offers her advice on the application process and how Neighbourly Lab approached their application:

“Take the time to immerse yourself in the local community to understand the context within which your project would operate and gather evidence of need for the work that you’re doing. We took an ethnographic and co-creative approach in understanding community needs and developing potential intervention ideas. This meant that we had community-led ideas to share.”

Some other top tips are:

• Ensure you have checked the programme eligibility and read the priorities
• Ensure you describe how inclusive your work is and the community’s voice comes through
• Think about how your project is experimental and/or testing new approaches to bringing people and communities together.

For further information, please visit our Bringing People Together website and if you have any questions, please phone our advice line on 0345 4 10 20 30 or email general.enquires@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk