community

Blog: Is argumentation socially beneficial?

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I think the world would be a better place if we could learn how to argue with each other better. I’m not talking about shouty and aggressive interactions; which are ultimately a combination of clamorous monologues masked as conversation. I’m talking about the ability to converse with others, as a way of making sense of the world and our ideas, beliefs and biases.

Individual reasoning can only really be improved by seeing or hearing a different point of view. It’s the basis of restorative practice, of conflict and healing resolution and also, in my view, of community development. Imagine if you had never been challenged on your beliefs or perceptions? What might you have done that you would now regret? In my adult life I’ve changed my mind on so many issues relating to religion, politics, class, family and yes, even pensions. If I’d never been encouraged or challenged to consider different world views or had the privilege of listening to the personal histories and stories of others, my views would not have shifted and that means that I would have missed the opportunity to grow and develop and evolve.

Arguments that are one way or aggressive are harmful and counterproductive. I’m talking about argumentation, which is an art form; its reciprocal, it’s articulating a world view, it’s being open to hearing another perspective, it’s about having the ability to change your mind and the confidence to communicate it. Essentially, it requires a certain quality within a relationship. And it’s been on my mind a lot recently due to a lack of argumentation in the EU referendum which wasn’t a sophisticated debate but a ruthless cock fight, using high grade PR tricks in place of sticks and stones. And this is the key; for argumentation to happen there has to be connections and relationships to wider networks.  In other words, access to a range of views is productive.

Research highlights that relationships are pivotal to increasing community capital, defined as ‘the sum of assets including relationships in a community and the value that arises from these’. The 2015 RSA Report (insert link) highlights that knowing someone in a position to change things or to offer practical help is an indicator of community capital. And access is uneven, with 60% of people surveyed not knowing anyone who could influence or change things locally. The main outcome of the research was this; people fare better when they have good relationships around them. We need relationships and networks.

At The Rank Foundation, we continuously seek to understand the barriers to community capital. We work in collaboration to identify joint intentions and implement solutions. We want all people to know at least one person they can turn to for practical help or to influence change. Connected communities are stronger communities. And it is in this spirit that we look to invest in and develop our own network; so that we can engage in argumentation, so that we can articulate our world view as well as really listen to others, so that we remain open to change, so that we evolve.

RankNet is the bedrock to this commitment. We will create the conditions for all of our grant funded projects, people and places to seek support, share learning, access opportunities, ask for practical help and connect with someone who can influence change.

Please let us know if you disagree.

Kai Wooder, Assistant Director – Enterprise

The RankNet Planning Group is, as much as possible, representative of Rank Foundation funded projects and programmes UK wide.  The Planning Group meets quarterly to review ongoing network activity and contribute to the annual conference.  The RankNet digital platform will be launched later this year – more information to follow.

Charity of the Month – March

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Hull Youth Support Trust

Who are Hull Youth Support Trust?

The Hull Youth Support Trust HYST is a charity set up to support young aspiring business people in Hull and the surrounding areas. HYST is dedicated to supporting young people who aspire to set up their own ventures. They provide young entrepreneurs (aged 18-30) with heavily subsidised office space at their new site situated at 161 High Street, Hull. This will help their clients businesses grow and develop in the future.

Over the past year, The Rank Foundation have supported HYST under the Foundation’s Hull Community Development Project, and supported the charity with a number of Time to Shine interns. Kai Wooder, Director of Enterprise at The Rank Foundation, said  “Whilst we knew there was a definite history and energy for enterprise in Hull and a role for the successful HYST model, we couldn’t have predicated this level of success in such a short space of time. Mike and the team have transformed the building, not just the decor (although it looks fantastic) but mainly in terms of atmosphere and culture; it’s now a vibrant, positive and collaborative space – everything you’d want for young entrepreneurs in a progressive city.”

HYST’s Project

HYST are looking to work with young people who have been; unemployed, under-employed, disadvantaged in some way or totally new to the world of business. They enable every young person to take responsibility for their own future and are willing to consider anyone with the drive and determination to run their own business. They foresee a whole generation of young start-up businesses going on to further develop their ventures, creating more jobs and contributing to the local community. Once young business owners secure office space at OneSixOne HYST offer support and guidance which continues throughout their tenure. This gives them the opportunity to become commercially viable and allows the next generation of budding young entrepreneurs to start their journey with HYST.

Contact details

If you would like to find out more information about HYST, you can contact their Business Manager Mike Thompson at mike@hyst.org.uk.

A Summer of CAP 3

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Before our Leadership Award Holders begin their first and second years of sixth form, this is our final Summer of CAP article!

We are featuring Helen, who returned to Greenbank Community Church for her second placement, Will, who headed to the Hollowford Centre with Lindley Educational Trust, and Olivia who had her first ever placement at Ykids.

Helen Ajayi, who did her final placement this summer, returned to Greenbank Community Church in Cornwall. Helen ends her time as a current Leadership Award Holder this summer, and will become a Rank Fellow.

“During the first week of my placement I had the privilege of following the youth of the church to Creation Fest as a youth leader. I was extremely excited to go for two reasons: 1) Last year I spent some time with the youth and made lots of new friends and 2) As a Christian, I felt it was a perfect opportunity to spend time with God, especially as I was nervous with Results Day coming up. I arrived at Creation Fest on 8th August and my A Level results were due to be released on 18th August. As every other A Level student, I was super nervous and I felt it was essential that I get out of London! Being at Creation Fest in the week leading up to this dreadful day, I used this chance to forget about University and all my worries and focus on God. It was so great to be able to spend time with people who had such a passion for the Gospel. In addition to this, my favourite Gospel group Hillsong performed on the last day which was the absolute pinnacle.

I couldn’t have asked for a more loving and beautiful family to have spent both my placements with. From the very first day I arrived, I have been welcomed in. I am very grateful that I was able to complete my Community Action Placements here at Greenbank Community Church. It has been a blessing and I have no doubt that I will miss them all!”

Will is in the middle of his Leadership Award, going into his second year of Sixth Form in September. Will traveled to the Hollowford Centre in the Peak District. 

“My experience here at Hollowford has been fantastic. I felt extremely optimistic but apprehensive prior to the placement as it is an area of the country I have never been to, however as I have found out over the time I have been here the people are just as lovely as the scenery. I say this because they have been extremely accepting and welcoming towards me, including the cleaners and cooks all the way up. 

The children I have worked with have been great fun and definitely made my time a lot easier and worthwhile. This is because the schools I have predominately worked with on my placement have not been from very affluent areas and some of the youngsters did not have a lot. This touched me, and in particular in my second week there was a pupil called Thomas who didn’t have a lot. Before we went canoeing his teacher came up to me and asked for a pair of shoes, so I gave him a pair and then he came back and said they were no good despite the correct size so I asked him why they didn’t fit and he said there was a knot in the lace meaning he couldn’t tighten it as he didn’t know how to tie his shoe lace. So on the way to canoeing I spent 15 minutes with him teaching him how to tie his shoe lace and as a gift on my last day the school gave me a box of chocolates to say thank you! 

Another way in which the children made it extremely worthwhile was because of the bond that I created with them which I never knew could be so strong after just 3 or 4 days with them. However, you do create a special bond which did was demonstrated every time I walked through the dining hall or the back corridor – it involved the kids shouting to me with my various nicknames that they has come up with for me making not only me feel special but I hope I did the same for them. 

Overall, I have had a fantastic experience and I have had an extremely enjoyable time here at Hollowford. I must say I am sad to be leaving so thank you for the opportunity to both the staff here and Rank for organizing a fantastic and worthwhile placement.”

One of our newer Leadership Award Holders, Olivia, did her first ever placement with Ykids, who have been hosting CAP placement for many years.

My experience at Ykids has definitely been exactly that – an experience. Coming myself from an area classed as deprived with very little opportunities for young people, it was an almost familiar situation for me being in Bootle and interacting with people who have had the same restrictions and expectations upon them in life as I have. It was comforting to be in an organisation that was not satisfied with just allowing these stereotypes and ceilings to stop young people from achieving and making something positive of themselves, and incredibly eye-opening and inspiring to work everyday with them, witnessing their relentless fight against these labels and seeing them form opportunities and encourage young people to believe that they do have the potential to be something great – that they can be the success stories and are not just restricted to a life measured by poverty statistics and deprivation.

I am quite proud to be from a similar area, but breaking those limits through hard work and determination and it was amazing to see the support those that work at Ykids give to young people in Bootle to do the same – the merits of knowing that someone believes in them and is on their side willing them on has been illustrated thoroughly throughout my placement. I have never really understood what a charity does, what makes a charity work and allows them to make a difference and it has been greatly rewarding to witness and understand that it isn’t what, but who and see firsthand the huge scale of the difference that an organisation like Ykids makes upon a community like Bootle and the great amount of work that is put into making that happen. 

I greatly underestimated the work and the impact that a charity like Ykids has, and even more so, underestimated the impact that witnessing their magic over two weeks would have on me.”

We are always looking to the charities we work with to help provide placements for CAP. With the demand for placements getting higher each year, we are looking to expand the group of charities that we work with on CAP, so if you think your organisation might be able to help, and you have an existing relationship with The Rank Foundation, please get in touch so we can give you more information.

A Summer of CAP

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We are now right in the middle of my favourite time of year – Community Action Placements time! When I started at The Rank Foundation in April 2015, I didn’t know very much about CAP and felt I had a lot to learn. Since then, I’ve realised this is probably how most of our newly selected Leadership Award Holders feel. This is the second summer of CAP that I have been involved in, and this year has been particularly rewarding.

To those of you who aren’t familiar with Community Action Placements (CAP), they are exactly what they say on the tin – placements within the community. Every April, a new cohort of around 25-30 students are selected to become Rank Foundation Leadership Award Holders. They are all just finishing their GCSEs and transfer into sixth form the following September, and their Head teacher puts them forward to The Rank Foundation because they show high standards of leadership potential. The Rank Foundation is with them throughout the entirety of their sixth form life, and we request that in return for our financial help with their education, they commit to two sets of two-week placements across the two years they are with us at a charity we have connections with.

We have been running these placements for many years, and the main purpose of CAP is to expose these young leaders to community projects and problems that exist in the UK, taking them out of their comfort zone to experience what ‘real need’ feels like, and get them involved with people who can show them how to make a difference in their community. To first year Leadership Award Holders this can be really daunting, but ultimately once they are on the placement, they are nearly always bowled over by what an impact the placement has had on their young life. By the second year of their award, the Leadership Award Holders are really keen to go back on placement, see something new and get really involved.

I think reading their reports post-placement is possibly one of the most rewarding parts of them job. Having been their age not so long ago, it is easy to see that they are only just beginning to realise what an impact these placements will have on their future.

One of our very new Leadership Award Holders, Olivia McCann, did her first placement this summer at Brook in Birkenhead, Liverpool.

“I have found my work placement in Liverpool to be an incredibly eye-opening and enlightening experience. The staff were all very supportive and it was a pleasure to be part of such a hard-working team. One of the highlights of my time at Brook was being involved in the ‘Diversity Role Models’ session in two local high schools. I found the experience to be very eye-opening as I was able to listen to first hand experiences of homophobia and gain an understanding of the many difficulties LGBTs still face in modern society. I particularly enjoyed helping with admin after these events as I was able to see how these sessions had influenced the attitudes of the pupils regarding sexuality and discrimination. I also gained a lot of insight during outreach activities such as ‘Bitesize’ and ‘Positive Futures’ as well as learning how to deal with sensitive issues whilst working as a team. My biggest challenge was having to travel such a long distance alone and living independently from my parents. In this way, I gained a lot of independence whilst in Liverpool as I had to organise my own time and travel effectively. I found my host family to be very welcoming and I particularly liked the fact that I was living with foreign exchange students and had the opportunity to meet new people and learn about other cultures. Overall, I have found my time with Brook to be very memorable and rewarding and I am very grateful for the opportunity to work alongside a leading charity and witness the impact of its work. I would be absolutely delighted to work with Brook in the future on a similar placement.”

Archie Brown, one of our second-year Leadership Award Holders, headed up to Bradford to The Edge Project this summer.

“At The Edge Centre I have had the opportunity to work with some very inspirational people, most of them having grown up on the estate. They are great company to work besides and you get the feeling they are really striving to make a difference in the community. They run daily drop in sessions for kids to come in and use the facilities the centre offers. These sessions have been a great opportunity for me to get to know the kids on the estate and set a good example. I have also been involved with a baby bank where parents, particularly teenage parents, can come and get support. The baby bank offers them everything from baby food to toddlers clothes. They also run various other sessions throughout the week including performing arts, girls club and breakfast club for child carers. All of which gave me the opportunity to build a relationship with the kids that came regularly and really tested my leadership qualities. I have also been working in the Church with Hilary, my host, on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday working with a program called Daybreak, helping out senior members of the community. Overall, it has been a very eye opening and even life changing experience, one I will definitely be looking to do again in the near future.”

We are always looking to the charities we work with to help provide placements for CAP. With the demand for placements getting higher each year, we are looking to expand the group of charities that we work with on CAP, so if you think your organisation might be able to help, and you have an existing relationship with The Rank Foundation, please get in touch so we can give you more information.

CAP 2016 – My Experience: Centre 63

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One of our Leadership Award Holders, Connie Lumsdon, is just finishing her second and final year with us by revisiting her original Community Action Placement at Centre 63 in Kirkby. We have asked Connie to give us a review of her two week placement, and we are delighted to hear what a fantastic time she had.

“Once again, I’ve had a wonderful time with the staff of Centre 63, a fantastic youth centre in Kirkby which serves the young people of the community incredibly well. I have, however, built on my experiences from last year, and feel as though I have seen a broader range of the many aspects and activities of the centre this year. Although I arrived with 2 weeks prior experience of the centre and its daily routines, I was taken aback by how much the centre has progressed and excelled in under a year, and almost had to start from scratch with my knowledge of the centre as there was so much more to learn.

Arriving on Wednesday evening, I put my suitcase in the office and dived straight into Youth Club with the junior group of 8-11 year olds. Throughout the Youth Club sessions, I had a great time with the children whilst creating emoji masks, colouring in flags of the world (and learning about many unknown countries in the process) and creating comics within the ComicsYouth project, all fuelled by healthy snacks provided free of charge by the centre. A particularly enjoyable Youth Club involved the creation of all sorts of weird and wonderful masks, followed by smoothie making and topped off with a long bike ride around the local area. Kirkby should be proud to have such wonderful, well-mannered, kind children at its schools, and I must say that I was astounded by how welcoming they were when they immediately greeted me and introduced themselves. I have been at every Youth Club since I arrived, and can confidently say that I will never forget some of those brilliant kids, especially for their range of talents; this Youth Club holds in its hands the actors, artists and philosophers of the future.

One of my designated tasks was to manage the social media accounts and website throughout my placement. Through the use of Hootsuite, a social media management application, I have been able to set up regular tweets and Facebook posts in order to further promote all the wonderful activities and clubs that are ongoing at Centre 63. Although social media is a valuable method of spreading news and advertising, the people of Kirkby already value this ever-welcoming place as an integral part of their community, and so the centre is constantly signing up more and more young people who were recommended to come here by friends or family. Many generations of families have been coming to Centre 63 for decades, and so the service provided here is not just a key building block in the local area but also in families themselves. This long-standing relationship with the community is essential to the work that the centre does, as a deep trust in the work of the centre is well established in the community.

I was, of course, warmly welcomed back to the YES Project as my desk base during the day, and have enjoyed achieving a deeper understanding of everything that the Tenancy Support Workers do for the young people of Kirkby and Knowsley. Young people between the ages of 16-25 are taken on to the project’s Tenancy Support Programme, and gain a high quality service of debt advice and financial help. Having said this, the YES Project does so much more than it says on paper. These amazing support workers are with their clients every step of the way, and help in any way they can; this includes applying for grant after grant and helping clients to fill out complicated benefit forms, as many young people who find themselves needing help struggle with illiteracy or learning disabilities. I hugely admire the work that Steph and Ann do for a living, and strongly believe that this youth work is not only having an impact on the people that they help but also affecting the community itself in a major way. During my time at the centre, I had the opportunity to go on some home visits with one of the Tenancy Support Workers. This experience was particularly poignant for me, as the majority of the girls who are on the programme are my age or younger, and are living on their own with their own children, often with little family support. I feel so much respect for these young girls, as I know that I would struggle dreadfully were I in their position.

Many young parents are unable to pursue hobbies or educational programmes, as there is a shortage of childcare providers – particularly affordable ones. Centre 63 makes every effort to ensure that young people can complete courses or partake in activities at the centre, such as free sewing classes or the Employability Programme: a 16 week course in which young people gain qualifications in English and Maths, heightening their attractiveness to potential employers. This is, once again, a clear example of how the centre is constantly looking out for the best interests of the young people of Kirkby.

The warm and friendly nature of Centre 63’s staff towards the young people makes it clear to me how this centre is such a success: everyone feels so welcome here from the very start, including me. I believe whole-heartedly in the work of Centre 63 and have absolutely no doubt that this amazing centre will only go from strength to strength in the future. I have so much gratitude for the constant support and open arms from all the staff here, but particularly from Jeane, the centre’s CEO. Not only has she made me feel as though her home is my home, but she also looks after and cares for everything and everyone in any way that she can. I have so much admiration for her, and indeed for the whole staff team at Centre 63. I wish the centre the best of luck in the future, but I can confidently say that they do not need it.”

The Rank Foundation would like to thank Centre 63, especially Jeane Lowe, for hosting such wonderful Community Action Plac