Building an Inclusive Southampton: Reflections on Collaboration, Progress, and the Path Ahead
– Amanda Parker FRSA
When Southampton Forward invited me to help them and their partner organisations to build on the work of 2021 and help them to collectively take their next steps to building an inclusive city – I was motivated. I was particularly encouraged by the breadth of partners who had come together in 2021 and pledged to make inclusive systemic change.
From multi-site commercial partners whose business concerns straddle retail and hospitality, to the city’s academic, leisure and cultural and civic leaders, the breadth of partnership suggested to me an exciting opportunity. If these interests were in the one room together the opportunities for making lasting inclusive change would be far-reaching, and powerful.
And it was this that inspired hope and excited me and others to get involved. In 2021 the world paused for long enough for us to see the hard baked inequity that was holding back the world’s civic and economic development. What an opportunity, then, to help turn those pledges, those acorns of intent into a mighty oak of social and economic positive change.
I’ve learned a lot from this series of workshops. I hope those participating have done so too.
There’s a lot of learning available online about what it’s like to live without. To be regarded as an afterthought. To have one’s life curtailed by systemic behaviours and practices, without a thought for the individuals affected. So in our sessions we used this knowledge as a background to creating a blueprint for change. We focused on pragmatic, real-world solutions for shrinking the inequity gap that affects how we live, what we experience in our lives, and even how we die.
We focused on solutions built within the realities of Southampton city life.
The action points that we will be discussing this afternoon reflect that focus, by interrogating the challenges facing Southampton’s ambitions for inclusive progress.
The biggest challenge faced by the project has been one of engagement. It has been fantastic to have representation in the group from the council, from Southampton Football Club, and a collection of incredible, expertise drawn from a range of cultural and social enterprises. It has also been notable that so many of those who engaged in 2021 to make those pledges didn’t join us on this next step in the journey. This doesn’t mean work hasn’t taken place in those organisations – it does mean that the visibility of those organisations’ commitment to inclusion, those organisations that create jobs for Southampton people – is not as visible as it might be. And that – visibility – touches on our first enquiry for this afternoon.
Another challenge – and one that also speaks to one of the action points we’re going to engage with this afternoon – is about capacity and uneven resource. Some people have been able to attend because, as part of a larger organisation, they’ve been able to backfill their other work duties with the help of colleagues and assistants.
Others, with equally valuable knowledge to share – have found it tricky to attend every session we’ve had – because of resourcing challenges. Working in smaller organisations and micro enterprises where stretched capacity is the norm – this makes it even more impressive that those people turned out as regularly as they could to share knowledge and build solutions with others.
It’s no coincidence then that one of the themes to be explored this afternoon is an interrogation of resource: how to ensure those voices are included in decision making, and at the same time addressing the challenges of resourcing collective strategic decision making. Interrogating how to reward contributions to consultations, round tables, and the often free labour of consultancy that many small enterprises experience routinely and that further support inequitable disparity.
But our intention has always been one that is pragmatic. Rooted in real world solution-finding. The financial challenges facing local authorities and national public spending has been uppermost in our thinking throughout. Pragmatism has been our watchword.
It’s why we explored what and how to reward and incentivise through mutual exchange and pooling resource, how to not only reward those in the room for contributing, but also incentivise those who are not in the room, demonstrating how a collective approach can help us move them from the pledges of 2021 to action in 2024 and beyond.
From the outset our approach to this project has been one of co-authorship, collaboration and collective action. Ensuring a collective approach to building and implementation is, I think, one of the most effective ways to make lasting systemic change – especially when resource is limited. Thank you to all participants for your wisdom, your openness to challenge, for questioning, testing and exploring with curiousity, without judgement, with good intent.
I want to thank the independent actors within the group that took ideas and ran with them, to the solutions seekers who piled ideas into the group’s shared drive. To everyone who said along the way, ‘that made me think – and do something differently’.
And thank you to Southampton Forward as we pivoted and adapted as we learned together.
At the end of this programme, what are we left with? A community of change-makers. Here you have some of Southampton’s most active of communities who are committed to making inclusive change happen. The challenge – from the group, to everyone here – is to bring in and reengage with those bigger agents of change. The organisations who pledged in 2021, who can work with this group to build on what we’ve started here, to make pragmatic, real-world, lasting change that’s visible, that’s fairly rewarded, that narrows the gap between who’s in the room in Southampton, and who’s on the outside looking in.
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