Organising Together Across Difference: Relational Experiments in Community Organising

Using an extensive community-led research method the report documents five case studies that practiced “relational experiments” to create community connection, with the paper exploring how connections across “Sameness and Difference” can be the basis for connection and in response to division.

Citation:

Tattersall,  Amanda (2024) Organising Together Across Difference: Relational Experiments in Community Organising. London: Citizens UK and University of Sydney.

Synopsis

The Organising Together Across Difference Report reviews an 18-month research-action project undertaken by Citizens UK and Associate Professor Amanda Tattersall that developed and analysed strategies to strengthen community organising’s ability to respond to widening social polarisation and division. The goal was to use organising practices to create new ways of forging relationships between groups that foster our ability to find common ground with people that are different to us. The result was the development of the ‘relational experiment.’

Relational experiments, such as Weaving Trusts, are short local workshops that can be run by leaders and/or Organisers to create opportunities for people from different organisations to meet. They can be as small as a house meeting or as large as an assembly, and their focus is supporting individuals to have multiple one-to-one meetings with other people in their community. Through 37 interviews, participant observation, and case studies from across six Citizens UK Chapters and Alliances, this report distils a series of best practices for organising relational experiments.

This project found that relational experiments support leadership development and deepen broad-based organising. For individuals, relational experiments can be a powerful entrée to public action and community organising, where individuals with no prior organising experience can have powerful conversations with people they would not normally meet. The experiments decentralised Citizens UK’s broad-based network, allowing people to explore common ground beyond campaigns. Frequently, the consequence of these experiences was a heightened interest and greater confidence in working with people different from them, and a deeper appreciation of diversity in the place where they live.

When it came to organising, we found that relational experiments could be a powerful tactic as part of the ‘5 Steps to Social Change.’ Relational experiments can help the formation of new broad-based organisations by providing opportunities for relating while groups build power. They can also help advance research-action by providing a space to test policy ideas and gather further community input.

The success of a relational experiment was dependent on context, and relational experiments thrived when they were undertaken alongside other community organising strategies. The evidence was that relational experiments enhanced organising. However, experiments on their own, without a broader plan to build community power, would likely not have the same impact.

We also found that culturally, a new relational tactic such as this needs time and support for it to take hold. While this project developed a series of resources to make it easy for leaders to undertake their own relational experiments, embedding this practice will require ongoing training, mentoring of leaders and Organisers, and a commitment to more deeply locating these relationship-based goals in Citizens UK’s work. In addition, longitudinal analysis that tests the lasting impact of relational experiments on individual leaders, Citizens UK Chapters, and places would be useful future research as it would help define the specific contributions that an experiment like this can…