Application of AI in Pollok in Glasgow : A local councillor's perspective

August 30, 2008 11:29 PM | Related Categories: sticky story

Alex Glass was the local councillor in Pollok during the period when the Greater Pollok Development Company under its Chief Executive John Watson became aware of appreciative inquiry and started learning about it and applying it in various ways. Bliss Browne and I worked with GPDC in a number of different ways. Here is what I asked him earlier this year- some 4 years after the first applications of the appreciative approach: 'I recall a story about you being impressed with the process we used and how it impacted on the way the work in Pollok was written up and presented - a positive story and approach. it would be good to hear your recollections and your thoughts re the impact.' His response follows and I am very grateful to Alex for his response. In my experience it can be very hard to get people to respond and also be preapred for their response to be quoted. The fact that Alex took the time to do this says a lot in itself before you read the content. 'There has been a fantastic transformation within Greater Pollok over the last four years. We now have an area on the move after a long number of years of stagnation. Whilst much of what has taken place had been planned prior to Bliss' involvement the change in public perception has made a big difference and this is down to people being more willing to highlight the positive and not dwell on the negative.

John Watson's report on the building bricks of regeneration being in place was the first time that anyone had looked at the potential on offer within Greater Pollok and being willing to promote it as an area that was on the road to positive regeneration.

For too long everyone was willing to play up the negatives in order to attract project funding when in fact time could have been more productively spent trying to secure inward investment that would lead to more people in work and less need for social programmes that tend to keep people involved in the dependency culture.

We are now seeing the benefit of decisions that were taken less that 20 years ago. But more importantly we have residents who are now able to see the better opportunities that are available through work.

We still have a lot to do. There are some people who need to be convinced that Greater Pollok has changed for the better. We also need to redress the balance of those in greater need of support and ensure that the appropriate services are available.

Further job opportunities are on the way and it is vital that community leaders continue to talk the area up and not continue to reflect on past failures.

If it has been sometime since you last saw Greater Pollok I am sure you will witness an area that has made a dramatic change for the better. We still have small pockets where much work needs to be done but we are now in a better position to attract the necessary investment to complete the transformation.

Greater Pollok is now a place to Work, Stay and we are working on the Play.

It was nice to hear from you. All the best

Alex

What is the highlight of this story for you readers out there? Looking ahead what would you like to see happening in the future in communities like Pollok? The questions you ask determine what you find and positive conversations and images lead to positive action.

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Application of AI in a Community Development Company in Glasgow: The Chief Executives Perspective

August 30, 2008 11:07 PM | Related Categories: sticky story

Along with a colleague Bliss Browne and with interest and support from the Scottish Centre for Regeneration, appreciative inquiry and other innovative positive processes were used to engage with the community in Pollok in Glasgow where we worked as partners with both the SCR and the Greater Pollok Development Company ( GPDC). Here is what the Chief Executive at that time John Watson said about the experience in March of this year( the work that we did took place between 2003/4) The questions I asked John are listed along with his replies.

Why did we adopt the AI approach?

There were a number of reasons that came together,

·GPDC had been set up to be different from the other 7 Local Development Companies although that did not last, so using AI after we had been made to merge and become more like the others enabled us to remain distinctive.

· A very committed and interested board member (Lesley Wilson made the connection with Margaret Wright and Bliss and took another board member and myself to Edinburgh airport to meet Bliss so we had a board champion as well as the executive. This really was very important, although I expect we would have still had a go, I think we had far more licence.

· I liked the approach as did Sandra Inrig who was my key person at Pollok. Imagine Scotland was crucial here. We liked it for the usual AI reasons.

·We also adopted it because we wanted to try and create a space in a very crowded initiative rich environment in order to try and work out what we were going to do, and also, because despite all the initiatives, there was no real vision for Pollok, adopting this approach allowed us space to develop and include people from the community in a very different way, so we were not seen as duplicating effort, although we were – from necessity.

· No one else had done it, (in Glasgow) so we could make it up as we went along – a great attraction!

· Margaret Wright, Bliss Browne, Lesley Wilson etc were great people to work with, and gave it momentum but also credibility, we were able to get Community Scotland funding for Pollok.

What Difference did it make??

Compared to a more conventional approach it gave us

· Fun

· A very distinctive approach

· It included staff from the merged organization in a way that helped develop the new organisation as being distinctive from the two merged ones

· It enabled us to have conversations which have remained as powerful board member memories, Lesley ran a number of exercises with board members, she says that one of the most memorable conversations she has ever had was when she had an appreciative conversation with the then chair. This helped the board come together more quickly (I suspect)

· A 5-10 year view of Pollok and its future which was much more optimistic than a shorter 3 year timeframe more conventional SWAT exercise would have given. I would love to use SOAR.

· Local councillors who were able to speak about Pollok in new ways, One of them stood up at a public meeting and waxed lyrically about the area and said that this had been prompted by the GPDC work.

Notes: Imagine Scotland was a large scale gathering held in Edinburgh in April 2003 where Bliss and Margaret partnered with the Scottish Civic Forum to create a participative event where people from all walks of life shared their views of the Scotland they wanted to see and to live in in the future.

SWOT- a technique that looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of an organisation.

SOAR the appreciative way of looking at strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results for an organisation.

A lot of the people and organisations, e.g. GPDC, SIP, Community Forum have changed over time since we did this work but the community are still there and we did lots of work with them in a series of events which all used the appreciative mind set so many seeds have been sown.

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