Good neighbours and neighbourhoods do not happen by chance, and building a sense of community spirit can be highly rewarding but sometimes frustrating work for those in the social housing sector.  

Helping to successfully build and sustain community impact requires endless enthusiasm, persuasiveness and other key skills that we reflect on below:

Inclusivity

Those working in neighbourhoods and communities need to be able to see their community/event/initiative from so many different angles, understand who they are reaching, who they are trying to reach, and how to bring those that are marginalised or excluded into the work that they do.  This requires a great deal of awareness and empathy, being unafraid to continue learning and challenge stereotypes.

Resilience

Successful community work will undoubtedly involve failure, events where people don’t turn up, ideas that you thought would fly that ultimately flop, rejected funding applications, resistance, perhaps even from colleagues. To work in this area requires equal parts passion and resilience; being able to reflect on failure, see it in perspective, take the learning from both success and failure and use it to inform future decisions, without becoming defeated is key to ongoing success.

Persistence

Linked to resilience in not allowing yourself to become defeated, those working in community regeneration must be able to dust themselves off and keep going.  One door may not open but if you are convinced of the necessity of your project, chap the next one and the next one.  There was a potent reminder of the need for this persistence at the recent GWSF Regen conference, where a group of community activists from Castlemilk had recently highlighted issues with lack of local amenities such as a supermarket to the UN. 

Adaptability

Communities are changing, we have an ageing population, an increasing reliance on digital technology, continuing economic uncertainty, but the need for connection and community persist, and being able to adapt to meet these changing needs is essential.  There were fantastic examples of community development teams thinking outside of the box during the pandemic to adapt their services so that they could still reach and include as many people as possible when strict physical barriers were in place.  Harnessing this innovation can ensure your work is ready to meet and accommodate any challenges. 

Ensuring teams working in communities are supported in these roles, in the development of their skills, but also in the more holistic sense of focusing on wellbeing both within our organisations and our communities will ensure that everyone is given the opportunity to participate and thrive.

For more information on Scottish Housing Day, please visit the website.