10-12-2020 // REFLECTION NOVEMBER – (BEGINNING OF) DECEMBER

This is our second extensive reflection on the process. We try to reflect on every blog, but in this reflection we each reflect for ourselves how we experience the process of our project. In this reflection, we will mostly reflect on the past month, but also on the feedback from our feedback buddies.

FEEDBACK BUDDY LYNN

Lynn is our feedback buddy since the start of our project. We tried to work on the feedback she has given us last time. This time she also gave us feedback: 

• Blog 24-11-2020: Quite an interesting blog, I am also very curious about the actual Kumu map, I understand from your blog that it can still change but perhaps it is a good idea to still add a screenshot or link of what it looks like now. creates a better overview than the excel sheet. 

• Blog 26-11-2020: A lot of information about the conversations you had. The conclusion makes it very clear which is very good and important in order to understand! 

• Blog 01-12-2020: Nice that you include the program of the presentation. within the elaboration, you say you wanted to point out the pain points and create a wake-up call for the municipality. Do you guys feel as if that actually happened? Perhaps you add this to your reflection but I feel as if a small reflection about this could benefit this part of the blog. UPDATE: Now I have read your conclusion, this feedback is no longer valid! Great work! 

• Overall, all the blogs are very clear and some are easy to read! Sometimes it is still a bit difficult to understand your point or story because of the English formulation, quite some parts sound very literally Dutch translated which is a shame because as I have mentioned before, it has the result of your perspective or story getting mistaken. It would be a shame if your point of view or opinion gets lost because of the formulation and (word)order of sentences.

We work very hard and put a lot of time into this project. So we are very happy that Lynn actually takes the time to read our blogs and gives us feedback. What we said already: we tried to work on the feedback Lynn gave us last time. In the first blogs, we have rarely written conclusions. Headings and images were missing as well, according to Lynn. So the blogs were sometimes difficult to read, because of the long texts. We have tried to structure the texts better and we have added images where possible. We are pleased to hear that the conclusions we are now writing provide clarity.

This time Lynn gave us a few points for improvement; almost all the feedback she has given is positive. We added the link to KUMU to the blog with the second challenge the challenge (08-12-2020). We write a lot each week, and we know that some sentences are therefore not grammatically correct. However, before we officially submit the blog, we will check everything again and try to remove the errors. 

FEEDBACK BUDDY ELKE

Elke is our feedback buddy as well since two weeks. She gave us feedback on last month's blogs:

• I see some grammar errors. Many sentences could be shorter or unnecessary in my opinion. This way you can also make the paragraph a bit shorter and avoid large chunks of text.

• It's a lot to read, and I think this is mainly due to the layout. Because it is a blog, it is very difficult to keep an overview of exactly where you are within your story. The content is otherwise good, but I have the impression that you could convey it more strongly by perhaps shaping it a bit differently.

• I notice that during the interviews you also discuss personal points. For example, how you experienced something. But I miss this a bit with the theoretical pieces. What is your feeling about this? and after describing this piece of theory, how do you now stand in your project? Because you use sentences like ‘we noticed that…,’ it is a bit easier to follow.

• It is very valuable that you reflected on Lynn's feedback. This is definitely a personal point I missed in your blogs so far. here I see a lot of growth and a deeper explanation behind your working method.

• Nice that you show the process behind the presentation.

• It is good that you are writing out the interviews and the most important findings, I assume mainly indeed for yourselves not to miss any important information. But as a reader, I find that a little less interesting. Maybe it is just something that only I experience. But what seems more valuable to me, for example, is to bring up the conclusion a bit earlier, and then, for example, add more information about the interviews later, so that suppose I as a reader want to know more about it, I can read it further there.

• The conclusions are strong and clear, with a good dose of self-reflection and practical information.

Again, we highly appreciated it that both girls take the time to read our blogs. We know it is a lot, especially if you have to read the blogs all at once. This was for Elke the case; she has been our feedback buddy since last month, so we ask to read our blogs from November and the beginning of December. Unfortunately, she missed the information, challenge the challenge and reflection of the first month. Of course, she could have read it, but since it was a lot, we understand she didn't.

Elke also notices the grammatical errors, an extra reason for us to go through all blogs again before we officially submit our blog. In addition, Elke indicates that our blogs are sometimes long and a lot to read. We talked extensively about this with Elke and asked how she would like to see it differently. Since it is a blog, there is little to change in the layout. We made this choice at the beginning because we thought it would be a valuable way to describe and show our process. However, we did choose, after talking to Elke, to give the reader a choice. At the beginning of all the long blogs, mainly the blogs with the interviews, we have added the following sentence: *No time to read the whole blog? scroll down to the conclusion for the most striking insights*. Elke indicates that our conclusions are clear and reflective. Because we reflect on the blog and the process in the conclusion, we give the readers the opportunity to scroll straight to the conclusion for a sort of summary of the blog. This way they do not have to read the whole blog. 

According to Elke, we could reflect more on the theoretical part of the process. It is a pity that Elke mainly read the blogs with the interviews; in these blogs, we reflect more on the interviews themselves. In the challenge the challenge and the reflections, we try to go deeper into the theory. This also applies to the presentation we gave to the municipality. However, it is good to know that we should pay more attention to this. In addition, we try to actually include all feedback we receive in our process. In this way, our project can only become more valuable. That is why we will also ask Elke and Lynn if they would like to give feedback on our reflection so that we can reflect on any ambiguities.

REFLECTION JESSE

After we had gained insights in the perspective of the municipality (state level), we were ready to engage with the inhabitants to find out how they experience the situation in the area. Throughout both phases we have kept the end goal in mind; Bringing these perspectives closer together and strive towards a long-term sustainable social solution. 

This phase of the project was all about INTERACTION with the main stakeholder group. Unluckily, in times of Corona, it was quite hard to get in contact with local residents in the public space. Therefore, we decided to start with some of the local entrepreneurs of which we suspected had already accomplished some sort of social relationship with locals. 

This proved to be a great strategy as we could follow along with the already existing energy in the area. Some of the entrepreneurs linked us to other companies active in the area and one even spread the word about our project amongst their customers in order for us to get in contact with more people. One person explained to us how one of the buildings is united via a Facebook group and even helped us to enter and engage with other residents. By arranging individual meetings with residents, our understanding of the situation has slowly grown. 

While entering these conversations, we did not have a specific outcome in mind, yet we found it along the way. This resulted in very open conversations without specific questions. Nevertheless, we did have an implicit item list which we randomly walked through fitting along with the conversation.

We have translated these conversations into frequently registered blog posts. This helped us to clearly distinguish different and shared opinions which were often categorized by the building the interviewee lives in, their age, and how long they plan to stay. Different motives showed radically different wants and needs. 

First of all, it was highly valuable for us to experience firsthand how people experience the situation in the area. In some of the meetings, we were very much leading the conversation, trying to see if people have the same visions and ideas as the municipality has. Other meetings taught us that some people just want to be heard as they have been carrying their frustrations or ideas for quite some time but just do not know what to do with them. 

Overall, we have noticed that the view of inhabitants is often very much depending on their age, descent, and even the building they live in. The last one was most surprising to me since all the buildings are so close to each other and they are all quite newly built. 

Secondly, we learned about how some parties are not interested in investing time and effort into improving the area. This can have different reasons. Some just do not see the value of investing in something that does not create direct value, even when we think it could still be valuable for them in the long run. This counts mostly for the companies that are not exclusively active in the specific area. Other entrepreneurs who have had earlier meetings with the municipality did not see any results then and were more hesitant to engage with us now. Luckily, I know some of the entrepreneurs and their staff personally from living and working in Eindhoven. My ‘network’ proved more valuable than I had imagined on the forehand, I did not even see it as a network before. 

During those conversations, I noticed that when we spoke about how the situation has come about and why we think that a Community Design approach could work, these entrepreneurs opened up to the idea of investing in social initiative. Nevertheless, they were still quite hesitant as they did not expect much from the municipality. Therefore, it is still quite hard to see to what extent they are willing to invest in social initiative. Did we make them understand the urgency or do they feel it themselves and do they believe that we could change things for the better?

Thirdly, we learned about how we come across being students working on quite a delicate topic. For parties to start working on something that is not part of their daily operation can be quite exciting in different ways, especially when they work with students. Students often are committed to a project for a limited time. Therefore, it is hard to reach long-term goals and the hard efforts of other involved parties can go to waste when the students finish their work. We have tried to engage with prospect stakeholders that were not quite interested to work with us as they have had less fruitful experiences with students in the past by investing time and effort but not gaining much in return. 

In that sense, we are very lucky to be able to work on a project for as long as we think is valuable and even connect more competencies to one project. Especially in the field of Community Design or Placemaking where individual short-term actions get lost in time and are rarely able to contribute in the long run. It makes me proud and thankful to be part of Performatory as it brings us closer to the actual work field than I imagine other studies would.

Expectation management really is key in a Community Design project involving this many stakeholders and such delicate matters. We were warned beforehand however, it has proven to be harder than I had expected. I personally like to work on a visionary basis with big ideas and dreams which I use to convince others to work along. This does not always stroke with not raising expectations all too high. There is a limited number of things we can control throughout this project and the feasibility of our ideas is often depending on other parties and their resources/willingness to invest. I actively try to formulate my ideas in a way that catches people's interest but does not risk our accountability. Awareness of how I work definitely helps me with this.

We have noticed that we really have to prove our capability. At the beginning of the project, we were let loose, as if the municipality thought ‘let’s see what a bunch of students can come up with’. Now that we have shown to be active and that we are actually able to get in contact with many stakeholders, we notice that the municipality more and more wants a saying in what we communicate. It feels as if we have convinced the municipality of our capability and gained some trust but on the other hand, they want to have more control because they start to take our project more seriously. We are starting to experience more of the bureaucracy within the modus operandi from the municipality, which is very interesting. We are slowly learning to see when we should be patient and give everyone involved a saying in the process and when we are able to follow through as we think we should in order to stay on track timewise. 

Nevertheless, we are not the only ones who have to prove ourselves. The insights we have gained from conversations with inhabitants made us aware of certain patterns and divisions that led us to (in our eyes) quite logical consequences. It led us to believe that they pretty much have no idea of how the situation in the area came about, who is responsible for it, what is happening/going to happen and where they should find more information about it. In short, many people feel the area is neglected and they hold the municipality responsible for this. The inhabitants often do not believe that their own actions will make much difference for the livability in the area. Therefore, we wanted to convince the municipality to take responsibility and spark trust towards the inhabitants in order for them to start believing in taking social initiative. All of this with a focus on being visually active and informing the residents about the situation. 

We wanted to make them feel the urgency of doing this in the progress presentation we held for all municipality employees active in the area. Which worked out even better than I had expected. They wanted to take action right away, moreover, they finally think we should also engage with the project developers despite the tough relationship they have with them. It excites me that we have gained the trust of our commissioner which became deliberately clear when they allowed us to follow up the process focusing on long-term connections within the community rather than focusing only on the creation of specific social initiatives.

Personally, I am slowly forming my own vision on Community Design. In relation to the project I do for Seats2Meet regarding their flew-worker community, I have become highly interested in ownership. I think ownership is essential for every community in order to be successful. Ownership can only be sparked when people have the feeling that their efforts can actually make a difference. This askes any Community Designer, company manager, or whoever is leading a group of people, to slightly let loose their control over the situation. This often is very much in contrast with the usual managing reflex of trying to control and steer the situation. It intrigues me to learn about how we can enable every member of a community to contribute to improving it.

REFLECTION AMBER

We've been working on this project for over two months, but sometimes it feels like we've been working on this project for years already. I have the feeling that this is largely due to the time and energy we put into this project. Various parties and stakeholders are involved in our project, which makes it interesting, but also challenging. We have already been able to talk to various stakeholders, but this is only a small part of the whole. We want to try to involve as many people as possible, but that takes time. If I'm honest, I've had quite a few moments of fear during this process; will there ever be an end to this project? Probably not, but I realize that we have to decide for ourselves when we finish this project for Community Design and what the end will be. This project is so big that you could even spend several years on it. That is why both Jesse and I have decided that we will continue with this project after we finish our project for Community Design. We made this choice, among other things, after the insights we gained by talking to different stakeholders. A number of stakeholders indicated that they had already given input more often to students and other parties who were working on a project in the Emmasingelkwadrant, but they ultimately received little feedback afterward. If we want to create something sustainable in the long term, we also have to be involved in this project till the moment we think we can step out. We don't want to be the students who say after we finish this project: ‘Bye, we are done here’, we want to be the students who actually make a difference in this neighborhood. So the end of our Community Design project will not be the end of this process. See the end of this Community Design project as a kind of milestone. Because as Winston Churchill once said: ‘Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning’ (1942).

Conversations

That milestone I'm talking about, we're not there yet. In the first month, we focussed on the ones involved from the municipality. Last month we focused on the stakeholders in the Emmasingelkwadrant. As can be read in our blogs, we have now spoken with quite a few stakeholders. These conversations allowed us to paint a clear picture of how stakeholders think about the situation in the Emmasingelkwadrant. The various findings and insights we have gained, help us (and the municipality) further in our process. What makes our challenge so complex is not only the many parties involved but also the different opinions, thoughts, and perspectives of these parties. 

I noticed almost immediately during the conversations that the stakeholders were passive towards social initiative in the run-up to the developments. Through the conversations, we have concluded that this passivity is mainly due to the poor provision of information about the developments, the little feedback the stakeholders receive when they provide input, and the misunderstanding (onbegrip) that prevails because the stakeholders have the idea that improving the livability of the Emmasingelkwadrant is not seen as something urgent (by the municipality). The moment we started talking about ‘our approach’, I noticed that the passive attitude changes to a more open and enthusiastic attitude. We got the impression that the conversation gave them the energy to look ahead and think about the possibilities. 

Our approach

In every conversation, we talked with the stakeholder about 'our approach'. If you read our blogs, it may not always be clear what we exactly mean by ‘our approach’ in this phase of our project. Therefore I want to explain it briefly. At the moment, we notice that the neighborhood functions not as a whole, but as 'loners' who often do not know where to go when they have complaints, ideas, or want to discuss how the livability of the neighborhood can be improved. Some of these ‘loners’ are willing to think along about the future of the neighborhood, and the intermediate time until the developments start. But the thing is: these are mostly individuals that don’t know who or where they should go to. They have the feeling that they are not being heard, especially by the municipality. 

The municipality mainly communicates with united parties. The moment the neighborhood is united, there are many more possibilities in terms of municipal support. In this way, it is easier for the neighborhood to reach out to the municipality, and it is easier for the municipality to reach out to the neighborhood. We try to find out where the energy lies, what stakeholders want to contribute themselves, and what the shared ambition is of the people in this neighborhood. By talking to as many people as possible, we can not only paint a clear picture of the situation, but we can also try to find ways to bring people together who are willing to improve the livability in the Emmasingelkwadrant and be a more representative and connected neighborhood. 

Energy

I started to read the book Energising networks: Tools for co-creation from Eelke Wielinga and Sjoerd Robijn (2020), the ‘Bible’ according to some of my Community Design Lab members. The main reason I started reading this book is because of the topic ‘energy’. As I just said, I noticed that the energy of the stakeholders increased as we talked more about our approach, and the possibilities in this area. What also struck me in the conversations is that not everyone is on the same page when we talk about improving the livability in the Emmasingelkwadrant. So I was asking myself: how can we bring these different opinions, thoughts, and perspectives together to get everyone on the same page? According to the authors of this book, when people find each other in what they want to achieve together, the willingness to invest effort and align with each other increases, making the collaboration more valuable and productive. That process strengthens itself and generates energy. Such collaboration often turns out to be able to open doors and affect its environment, creating unforeseen possibilities. But what is that energy and how does it arise between people?

The concept of energy is often used as a kind of metaphor for something that is important in the interaction between people. At the same time, people see it as something that cannot be quantified or used to point the way, although everyone feels that energy plays a major role in joint efforts. The energy experienced through interpersonal contact and collaboration, such as that which can be developed and stored in what is commonly referred to as ‘social capital’, is therefore not merely metaphorical. Social capital is in my opinion exactly what is missing in the Emmasingelkwadrant, causing the energy is not being used sufficiently at the moment (Wielinga & Robijn, 2020).

Social capital

When we started this project, we were asked to see how social initiative could be stimulated in this neighborhood in the run-up to the developments. After talking to various stakeholders last month, we noticed that social initiative is something currently too ambitious. Stakeholders have lost faith in the municipality, are passive towards social initiative and other possibilities in the neighborhood and some of them have no clue what is actually going on. Although it is a great need for some stakeholders to connect with other people in the neighborhood, that connection is not there yet. I, therefore, believe that we, as Community Designers, must first invest in connecting the stakeholders in this neighborhood before social initiative will be possible. By investing in social capital, we could strive for a sustainable connection between those involved, unite them, and focus on the energy in this neighborhood. 

How important this energy may be: managers, project leaders and policymakers usually do not get along with it. The emphasis is often on concrete goals, effectiveness, efficiency, profit, and growth figures. That is something I also noticed at the beginning of our project: tough negotiations have been going on for years between the municipality and the project developers, causing less attention for the ‘social aspects’ of these developments. However, we have been asked by the municipality to focus on the social aspects of these developments. That is why we tried to make clear to the municipality by means of a presentation what is happening in the neighborhood on a social level and what they can pick up on. We tried to wake them up in a certain way, and we are sure we did. 

One of my personal learning goals was to broaden my knowledge about the municipality. I have to say: it stays a difficult organization to understand; everything has to be checked by everyone and they do not want to ‘pass’ others. At the start of our project, we still had to 'prove' ourselves; ‘two students who come here to tell us how things work’. As the process progressed, we noticed that the municipality started to rely more and more on our approach and also started to involve us more in their processes. The biggest reason we shared our findings is that we think it is not just the responsibility of one party to improve the livability in the neighborhood, but it is a shared responsibility in which the municipality, the project developers, and especially the stakeholders have to get and work together.  

Warm and cold processes

To clarify what I mean by shared responsibility, we go back to the book Energising networks: Tools for co-creation. They distinguish two possible processes: the warm processes and the cold processes. In the cold process, a structure is built to make the process efficient and manageable. The municipality, or even the project developers, could take this role on them. In the warm process, people find each other and generate the energy to get started. The warm process is what the stakeholders in the Emmasingelkwadrant will hopefully eventually participate in. The warm and cold process cannot exist without each other. Without people who really want something, no energy will enter the system, and without structure that energy will have no focus and results will not be achieved. The reality of these processes is precisely the reverse of what is often assumed: a shared mission is not the beginning of a good process, but the result of it. The model below shows why it is therefore so important to focus on the warm processes (first).

In the warm processes, people meet and discover that they share ambitions. When they pool their resources, they increase their chances of achieving things and this generates energy. They feel enthusiasm, something that I already noticed by just talking to stakeholders about the possibilities in the neighborhood. When they feel the freedom to explore and experiment with each other, this also fuels energy. The warm process feeds the energy in the network in the form of social capital (Wielinga & Robijn, 2020). 

Community Design

I believe that we as Community Designers should focus on those warm processes; how can we express the ambition, connection, and energy of the stakeholders in the Emmasingelkwadrant? Although this project requires a lot from me and Jesse, mainly time and commitment, I also notice that this is a project that every Community Designer should dream of. We are dealing with so many different parties, different interests, and different perspectives on the situation. I have the feeling that we can be the connecting factor, trying to bring all the different parties together. At the moment, that connection is not there yet, but we are the ones who are in contact with the various parties involved and can really bring about something. More and more I realize that this is a perfect project for Community Designers. Why I'm saying this now is because I'm also starting to understand more what Community Design means to me.

At the beginning of this process, I was still searching; I followed all theme days, but I did not yet know how to put the gained theory into practice. I thought I understood what Community Design is about, but I actually didn't. One of my personal goals is to be able to work with all kinds of people from different age groups, with different perspectives, from different origins and different expertise. When I wrote down this learning goal, I didn't realize how challenging that would actually be. Now I do realize that when you come into contact with many different people, you also have many different opinions, thoughts, and perspectives. But that is exactly what Community Design is all about: creating value by bringing stakeholders with different and same perspectives together and facilitating the process of co-creation to solve complex problems in an innovative way. Now I realize how essential it is to recognize these perspectives, views, power, and interests of the different stakeholders and existing networks to eventually create value together.

What role can communities play in this specific context? I am convinced that the situation in the Emmasingelkwadrant can be seen as a complex problem at the moment; no one can answer the question of how the livability in the area can be improved. And if someone does have an answer, the action, involvement, and next steps of this answer are missing. As a social innovator, I try to recognize the emergence of communities and the importance of communities for social challenges like this. Me and Jesse try to find ways to search together with others for answers by focussing on the process instead of immediately focussing on the solution. We try to create movements towards an innovative solution to the problem central. 

I was reading the document ‘About Community Design’ on Teams and saw a quote from Marget Wheatley that clearly shows the connection between our project and Community Design: “Whatever the problem, community is the answer. As people from all walks of life and representatives across sectors come together, new possibilities begin to emerge and anyone who is interested in contributing can find a way to use their gifts, skills, abilities and passions for the common good.” 

The ‘spark’

Especially in this project, where the biggest part of the stakeholders functions as ‘loners’, they need a kind of ‘spark’. I believe that we, community designers, can be that ‘spark’. By trying to discover which stakeholders want to contribute to the improvement of the livability in this neighborhood, try to connect them, see where the energy lies, and hopefully possibilities begin to emerge and anyone who is interested in contributing can find a way to use their energy, ambition, and assets for the common good. I believe that Community Design could be the solution for this project.

We are not there yet. What I already said: this process takes time. I want to be realistic as well; others couldn’t solve this problem in the last few years, so we can also not solve this problem in just a half year. However, we can and do make a start by talking to all the people who are willing to talk. In this way, we find out who is willing to work together with other stakeholders to improve the livability in the neighborhood and to become a more representative and connected neighborhood. 

We strive to have reached the whole neighborhood in our project. Once we have spoken to everyone in the area who is open to it, this could be our first milestone and we will finalize the project. This depends partly on the number of reactions to the flyer and the situation regarding Corona. In any case, we will organize a stakeholder meeting with all those involved who have indicated that they want to participate. However, the question is whether this meeting will take place in this project or in the next part of our process. We will see how the process goes. 

The process

Now that I have written this reflection, I am more satisfied with this reflection than the reflection from October. This may be partly because I am starting to understand Community Design better and I am more involved in the process. However, we will not adjust the content of the blogs; it remains a process, a process from which we can learn. We also want to be able to look back at how we experienced this process and what we can learn from it. we try to stay critical about the situation and our project, but also about our own process.

I have to be honest: at the beginning, I had my doubts about working with Jesse. I was concerned if Jesse could keep up with my pace. Still, I'm happily surprised; he needs a little stimulus from time to time, but Jesse is very hardworking and I am very grateful for that. Our collaboration is therefore also going well; we try to use our strengths. All in all, the process is going well and we really benefit from each other.

The flyers we have created will be distributed in the Emmasingelkwadrant. Based on these flyers, we want to focus more on what stakeholders in the neighborhood can and want to contribute to improving the livability in the neighborhood.

• Where does the energy lie?

• What are the assets of the neighborhood?

• What is the shared ambition? Is there even a shared ambition? 

• How can we connect stakeholders eventually?

These are questions that we will keep in mind during our next process phase. 

References

Wielinga, E. & Robijn, S. (2020). Energising networks: Tools for co-creation. Wageningen, The Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers.