Community as micro sociality and the new localism agenda

The Big Society and localism agendas bring to the fore issues of how communities might operate within a time of austerity. This project addresses current concerns by using a theoretical approach to community which understands it as relational activity, the act of communing, which is the small everyday activity which makes up what counts as community. The importance of this lies in the way that it can understand communities not as broken or lacking, but as containing small everyday aspects of activity which can be developed and enhanced. This means that a bottom-up approach to community organisation would understand how relationality operates in time and space. We argue that this can form the basis of a way of approaching community organisation and governance which take localism seriously and which builds upon that activity which already exists, rather than attempting to make up for a perceived lack. Thus we wish to demonstrate that there is such a thing as communal meaning and communal affects, which are always present to some degree. It can be understood as the outcome of action. This approach builds upon a theory of relationality which understands relational connections as central to human subjectivity and argues that communing exists as a complex interrelated network of a number of relationalities, in which communal meanings are created in a way that is separable from relationships which make up the state. In the small acts of sociality which make up communing, cohesion exists to some extent all of the time. Instead of looking for what is absent or broken, this approach looks to what is there in embryo and may be enhanced and developed.
The project approaches this by working with two community organisations in one town, Abergavenny, to produce an account of how community residents live their community sociality across time (historically) and throough the space of the town's geography. We have chosen this location because it presents as a small town, not defined by deprivation or as scoring high on related indices. It thus provides a way to demonstrate how, nevertheless, the differentiation between state and community meanings, can, in the experience of the townspeople, hamper a local approach based ont heir own sense of their community and the actions through which it is created. Their own concerns and frustrations with the local state as currently expressed are the starting point for the project. Could a different approach to localism be built by understanding, mapping and enhancing communal meanings? This approach to localism works across humanities and social sciences disciplines. By working together across the boundaries and edges of these disciplines, we seek to provide a new way of thinking and working. The project engages with the arts to provide a way for local citizens to express their own feelings about their community and the meanings they create and that sustain them. The team will work with cpartner community organisations to support them in developing arts based projects of their own, which form the basis of discussion with the town and with government about the ways forward for a different kind of localism.

Beneficiaries:
1.the community organisations and the local residents will benefit directly from this research, which aims to address their concerns and needs directly.
2.Local and national government will benefit because the research addresses significant issues concerning localism, which relates to the Big Society agenda. Other local and national government agencies will beneift from the understanding derived from work with one community.
3.Community groups will benefit from an understanding how to put into practice the results and implications of academic research in which they are active partners, for developing a policy and campaigning approach. They will also learn how they might conduct their own research by working as research partners in this project.
4.Business will benefit form a greater understanding of how residents see and engage with them and so understand how businesses might be sensitive to and responsive to the wishes of local communities.
5.The wider public will benefit from an understanding of processes involved in making localism work and the complex ways in which citizens can have a key role to play.
6.The research can contribute to the nation's health by understanding complex affective and emotional aspects of the experience of the central experience of relationality and the place of community in a sense of belonging and containment.
7.The development of an effective local governance which is actively involves its citizens is significant for enhancing the quality of life of local populations.
8.The engagement of arts in the research helps develop the skills of community organisations to disseminate their work and reach the generla public in a popular way, which allows a wide range of citizens to feel included.
9.The local impacts should be relatively fast but it will take longer for them to reach a national and international audience. Discssions with government will take place at the end of the project. so we anticipate a timescale in terms of the 12 months following the project.
10.The project team will gain invaluable interdisciplinary understanding, benfitting researchers and populace alike.