Breaking the traditional power dynamics of funder and recipient
My whole process as being part of The Giving Lab has seen my mindset shift so may times! I suppose the first of these shifts was at my very first meeting. I had heard about the project on the grapevine within the wider community of Walworth and I spoke with Marion (a TSIP team member) on the phone, and she said “you have to come along to the next meeting!”, and I did, as the idea of democratisation of funding was one that intrigued me!
At the meeting I really loved even at this stage how the traditional power dynamics of funding and recipient were being broken. It was so refreshing to see so many diverse community voices being listened to! I have always thought the best people who can solve a community’s issues and difficulties are the communities themselves. This session saw me have my mindset shift, as I could see what I always thought coming to life.
My story with the project continued through the awful time which was covid and even at this time the humanity of the project and the community involved really shone. It shone as a safe and respectful space where people and the whole team wanted to watch out for each other, and again this was another mindset shift moment for me: Traditional funding models are not able to be as responsive and as caring as the model which had been created.
Another shift for me was when we were in Hotel Elephant brainstorming how we tweaked and allowed the project to be more responsive to our communities. I had the idea of ‘why don’t we target specific groups such as the Latin community or the local TRA’s?’ I thought this could make the funding more targeted to both a group and a specific community. It was like all the various bits of the journey fed into the free thinking as we sat around a flip chart and mapped out what it would look like. Again, this was another mindset shift moment for me as the traditional funding models are not able to do this and this stifles creativity and imagination. We need to think and play with funding and if this sometimes means you fail, well, that is also okay.
This project has allowed me to grow as an individual and has opened my eyes to how not only funding can and should work, but how my engagement with communities should be responsive and dynamic. I should always be brave enough to play and explore and that I suppose is what I’m trying to say here: The Giving Lab has given me the mindset shift and space to enable this in the future as a community engagement practitioner.