Grapevine brings people together to help them solve problems in their communities. The pandemic means new problems and new ways of bringing people together. As Clare explains, it also means new opportunities. Among a host of innovations, Grapevine has been experimenting with ‘collaboration stations’, a space for conversation that appears to be engaging new actors and generating new ideas.

https://www.grapevinecovandwarks.org

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The settlement movement established to connect advantaged and disadvantaged communities in the 19th Century helped to forge the welfare state in the U.K., and underpinned the nursing and social work professions in the U.S. Mike Wilson and colleagues at the Pembroke House have been building a Settlement for the 21st Century. That work has both gone on hold and been significantly advanced by the need to respond to the pandemic. In this episode Mike talks about food insecurity, and how in classic settlement style, it has brought together people across the Walworth community in South London.

https://www.pembrokehouse.org.uk

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Local councils are prepared for disaster, for terrorist attacks, for major fires, and for health emergencies. Chief Executive of Bury Council Geoff Little talks about managing the response to the pandemic from the kitchen table, and how the learning from this period can help the Council build back better. In Bury the Chief Executive is the health commissioner, which in Covid times means providing leadership on sheltering, testing and vaccination. The balance between central and local government. The role of local council as enabler, creating the conditions for community to flourish and business to recover.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bury,_Greater_Manchester

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In an earlier episode we talked to Mick Ashton a worker at Transforming Choice, a new approach for people addicted to alcohol. Mick explained the ‘show must go on’ attitude at Transforming Choice. A few months on, the programme has completed. Graduation is typically a moment when everyone celebrates the hard work with their loves ones. This time, as Jay Keenan explains, it was different.

https://transformingchoice.co.uk

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Darren was released from Dartmoor only to be imprisoned by the lockdown. He describes his ways of coping, the ways in which his participating with Prison Choir Project in Dartmoor has motivated him to remain involved with the arts, albeit online, and on the value of mental health support via Zoom.

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During the first lockdown there was a surge in volunteering and community activism, most obvious in the work of ‘mutual aid’ groups. As the Bennett Institute for Public Policy observed, mutual aid is a manifestation of social capital in the community, which means it is strong in some areas but not in others. There is strong social capital in Finsbury Park, North London. Terry Conway launched herself into a mutual aid group in the ward and found that the response deepened connection with community, even for long-standing residents.

https://www.bennettinstitute.cam.ac.uk/blog/social-capital-and-response-covid-19/

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Andy Fearon leads Vineyard Church in Carlisle, and with Miriam Lowe has created Give a Day, an opportunity for citizens to give something to their community once a year. Nobody could come to church during the first lockdown, so the church started to come to the people. Give a Day became give every day. The pandemic, for Andy, is testament to our ability to adapt.

http://giveadaytothecity.org

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Thread builds a family of volunteers around high school students struggling to stay the course. Nikhil Gupta speaks to us from Baltimore about how Thread and the young people are adapting to the crisis.

Read more about Thread in David Brooks’ The Second Mountain, and at: www.thread.org

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Self-reliant groups are collectives of women -there are some men but it is mostly women- coming together to save, make loans to each other and support enterprise. It is hard to keep count, but there are around 10 million of these groups worldwide. In this episode, Karen from Johnstone in Scotland and Indira from Rotterdam meet each other online for the first time, and discuss their respective groups and how they have adapted to life after lockdown.

http://www.wevolution.org.uk

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When Ratio looked for places around the world that exemplified best relational practice, the name Roca Inc. kept coming up.  They have worked with the highest risk young people in communities across Massachusetts since 1988. They are relentless. They never give up. But whereas the pandemic created opportunities for some organisations, for Roca and the several hundred young people they support it erected a series of obstacles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWIej2tOWpI

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