Loops

‘Loops’ is a youth and community development platform developed by an organisation called Participle.  It was designed to grow community capacity and a sense of possibility and purpose in a neighbourhood through shared and surprising experiences.  It was designed to focus on young people and communities wanting and getting more from each other, and better appreciating the existing strengths and personality of their own neighbourhood.

For six weeks Participle piloted the Loops approach with young people, aged 12-19, in Brighton and Croydon.  The pilot in Brighton, based in the East Brighton area, was co-funded by BHCC and The Aldridge Foundation.   The Aldridge Foundation wished to understand more about the dynamics of the East Brighton area, and to investigate potential new approaches to community engagement to support improvement at its new Academy in Falmer and to help stimulate greater aspiration in young people there.  BHCC wished to investigate new approaches to youth engagement to help shape future commissioning strategies in areas of the city with long term and entrenched low aspiration and poor outcomes for young people, and where existing or previous strategies had had limited apparent success to date.

What did we learn?

  • It is of course possible to mobilize community members in new ways by harnessing new experiences drawn from existing assets and networks.
  • For those experiences to have most impact and benefit, time must be spent at all stages and with all participants on developing reflective skills  – and this reflection needs support/mentoring or similar to be effective.  It isn’t enough to ‘go on a visit’ or be ‘placed’.
  • Young people, parents, and’ hosts’ of Loops experiences derived clear benefits from inter-generational, positive experiences.
  • Young people who were actively engaged in positive experiences found they were more confident in new settings, more independent, could ask better questions, had made at least one ‘link’ to the community, and were more willing to try new things.
  • Parents talked about their young person being more reflective, able to do more on their own, interact with adults more confidently, take more positive risks, and find future opportunity.
  • Hosts of experiences were surprised to find that young people could be truly useful. Many began to see young people as collaborators, and were inspired to engage with young people more regularly.

 We also learnt that:

  • That there are strong and useful connections between the existing community strategy of the Aldridge Foundation and its focus on the entrepreneurial mindset and the Loops approach,  which are reflected in the findings from other pilot projects funded by the Foundation in other settings.
  • New’ approaches to supporting community action with apparently controversial or unfamiliar approaches can create tension and difficulty when interacting with well-established networks of public, community and voluntary organisations.
  • Youth professionals who worked with Loops found the process challenging and queried some of its methodology, but also felt that new, asset-and experience-based approaches could be very usefully integrated into heir thinking and commissioning.

Our response to the findings:

  • The key benefits and outcomes from the project have been the range of learning opportunities that sit alongside the tools and techniques developed over the pilot, particularly the use of reflection techniques.
  • Participle has enabled us to consider work with young people in Brighton and Hove in a new way, through the application of strong aspirational approaches using methodology that has been co-designed and tested by young people.
  • There is some concern however, that the project model is not sustainable and does not embed and cascade the learning to change the existing approaches to working with young people in the city.
  • The Participle model has much of great value in it,  but in the current financial climate, and recognising the particular dynamics of East Brighton/BHCC as a whole, both BHCC and The Aldridge Foundation take the view that the benefits of Loops could be more organically and sustainably developed in future using a more flexible and collaborative approach.
  • There are already several organisations working with similar models and approaches to LOOPS. Given the number, scope and breadth of these in the local community, we are far more likely deliver on the shared desire for ‘community transformation’ and to improve resilience and aspirations in the neighbourhood by working in partnership.
  • Whilst endorsing the concept of 'loops' and the Participle approach to adopting new approaches to social issues, The Aldridge Foundation and Brighton and Hove City Council both have reservations about the actual working style of Participle. This pilot in Brighton left a residue of ill-feeling and hostility in the area that both AF and BHCC now have to deal with.
  • Any ‘next steps’ must therefore acknowledge and reflect the concern and anxiety raised by the pilot project by working with and alongside existing groups.

So what are we doing now?

  • We intend to adapt the LOOPS model, through an informal capacity building programme that embeds the learning and approaches of the pilot by working with local groups, organisations and projects that work with young people, including those employed by BHCC.
  • This will most likely take the form of a training, learning and development strategy/programme.  Participle have already  ‘packaged’ the tools they developed for the pilot and passed them over to BHCC and The Aldridge Foundation for on-going use and further adaptation in partnership with local organisations.   This new package is called ‘Opening Doors’.
  • To share the content of  ‘Opening Doors’, build on evidence of pilot work funded by the Foundation elsewhere, and to more widely support  work to stimulate positive, aspirational and entrepreneurial experiences in the area,  BHCC has funded a two-year Community Manager post based inEast Brighton.  This post is likely to commence work in September 2011.
  • BHCC has already integrated some of the thinking behind Loops into its commissioning strategy - the legacy of the Loops concept is the development of a more positive and innovative approach to commissioning services for young people in Brighton and Hove which is already being practically implemented.
  • The learning behind Loops is also having a major impact on a NESTA funded project in Blackburn with Darwen called Aldridge Pioneers, working to stimulate peer-led community action in the neighbourhoods around the academy there.