2.1(b) Community: whose community?
Aim
To look at the range of different communities group members belong to.
You need
Large sheets of paper (A3) or activity sheet 10, pens and about an hour.
What to do
Building on your ideas about what you mean by community, this activity explores the groups and networks you are part of that form part of your community. Each member of the group takes a large sheet of paper and puts ‘me’ in the middle or you can use activity sheet 10. You might like to stick on a photo or do a drawing of yourself. Then make a map of the groups you are part of. The closer you place them to the centre of the circle (you), the more important the link. This is not a competition! The diagram below makes a start and gives some ideas.
Me and my community
What do you think?
Everyone now puts the sheets on the floor and compares them. Are there any groups as well as this one that you are all part of? How many of you go to the same school or college? Do you all live in the same area? How many live on the same street? Do some of you play for or support the same team? Can you group together what you’ve put down into different headings? These are all different types of communities and some may be similar to those you discussed in 2.1(a) Community: What's In A Word?.
What next?
To explore this theme a bit more, draw a similar map to the one above on a large piece of paper and put the name of your group in the middle. Draw loads of circles all over the rest of the page and place in these the other networks you are part of. Don’t forget on-line and social networking groups. Then draw lines that show what sort of link you have with them and perhaps how many of your group are a part of them. You could use different colours to show if the link is strong, weak, good or bad. This will help develop your own community map and be useful later in working out who might be your allies in campaigning for change. But are there other communities and groups not represented on your diagram? You will explore this further under the next aim, but for the time being add them in the outer circles without a connecting line to you. Perhaps there are newly arrived young asylum seekers or travellers, a group of young mothers, or an after school club for young disabled people? Or there might be groups much further afield but with similar concerns and views to you that you could link with via the web. Should you have links with them and be inviting them to attend your group? As you plan to take action to get something changed locally, knowing who else is around and how you might work together could be extremely important.