Poverty Truth Commission: What is Good Community?

Here is the latestst in our series of Peterborough Proverty Truth Commission (PTC) blogs, written by PTC Community Facilitator, James Farson. In this article James asks the question, What is Good Community? and speaks about how the project has taken its next big step and had the first full commission meeting! 

On the 8th of February, twenty-six people who live and work together in Peterborough met to continue the process of building relationships between our community empowerers and civic and business leaders in the city. Our community empowerers were joined by leaders from the local council, public health, education, charities, and DWP, to start a conversation about what people are struggling with in Peterborough.  

There was a bit of trepidation as we all joined the circle, but that quickly melted away as we watched the highlights video from our launch and got into the check in. We asked the group, “Why did you say yes to this project? Or if you’ve been coming for a while, why do you keep coming back?” 

The answers were varied, but the group was pretty much unanimous in wanting to come together to recognise that there is a need for change and play a part in generating it. There was a also a strong sentiment that human connection is important, and that Poverty Truth is a way of developing and maintaining that.  

After another icebreaker activity, we worked in groups to imagine, “What makes a good community?” We’ve taken pictures of some of the results, but the feeling in the room was that a good community is made up of people who are friendly, who know and help each other, and who have adequate access to services and facilities within their own communities, as well as places where they can live safely.  

We asked the question because we want to see what we can do to get from where we are, to the good place that we had imagined together. Having done this exercise, we knew that the expertise and knowledge we needed to be able to make change was already in the room with us. 

The check out was to ask if the couple of hours we’d spent together had met their expectations, or if there was anything they didn’t expect. The feeling was very much that it’d been a positive afternoon and a good start. We were quickly talking together as equals, and the people who were new to our group and way of working expressed pleasant surprise at how different this meeting was to what they are used to, and that they were excited about coming back.  

Which is exactly what we wanted to hear. We’re super excited about the possibilities of Peterborough Poverty Truth, and we’ll let you know how the conversation develops.  

For more information on the Poverty Truth Commission in Peterborough, check out the dedicated website page on the PCVS website or contact communities@pcvs.co.uk