New flavours of connection

Co-op Foundation’s Federation Programme, supported by Luminate, is a collaborative programme that supports social enterprises, activist organisations, charities and communities to grow the impact of their work. In particular, it works in the field of digital and data rights.

Building capacity and community

Capacity building and community building have featured strongly during the past two years of the Federation Programme. Capacity building in this context has been about developing and strengthening the skills, processes or resources that help sustain the organisations involved. Community building has been about creating and sustaining mutually supportive peer networks, helping to create resilience and building trust that encourages collaboration.

The partners involved in the Federation Programme were keen to combine these two aspects of the programme, for example gathering for training workshops, whilst leaving plenty of room for reflection and sharing of experiences. They value highly the connections that lead to impromptu conversations, opening up new opportunities from previously unexplored possibilities.

Sensing and adapting to needs

Several Federation collaborations have been born from these ‘water cooler’ moments. However, the changing patterns of work following the pandemic, and closure of the Federation co-working space in 2021, have made these moments more rare.

At the start of the year there appeared to be an energy dip across the Programme, with engagement waning and a sense of collective overwhelm growing. As much of our approach to delivery of the Federation Programme has centred on observation, reflection and adaptation to best meet the needs of the community, we sought out some more socially connecting opportunities to help build resilience. That meant avoiding the the usual tech industry stereotypes of meet-ups, beers and pizza.

We looked for opportunities that would:

• Remove our partners from their usual office environments — reducing distractions and getting away from screens
• Help them to connect with ‘place’ — Federation is a place-based project centred on Greater Manchester
• Feel nourishing and free flowing — enabling ‘water cooler’ chats to occur.

Connecting through nature

There’s plenty of existing research about the benefits and value of nature on mental health. So, after investigating a few local activities, we opted for a foraging walk, guided by the brilliant Forage Box.

This turned out to be one of our best attended connecting events, with some organisations choosing to book their entire team on the walk. Conversations meandered through topics including, nature, life and work. Despite a deluge of rain there was an incredible sense of joy generated by the session, where we had the opportunity to discover and taste up to 14 flavours, mostly alien to our domesticated taste buds.

What we learned

Our foraging excursion was an experiment. Investing in a foraging walk, with no measurable outcomes for the programme, or for the organisations’ own objectives, could feel peculiar in a world where we are all conditioned to justifying and reporting on how we spend our time at work.

In our closing evaluation surveys, our connecting opportunities have come out strongly as activities that have most helped to sustain the community.

The cost of the foraging walk was incredibly low in comparison to any number of alternative, more structured and traditional activities we could have arranged. However, its value in terms of the immediate effect on wellbeing and creating human connection was immeasurable.

And of course, we learned how to find some delicious and ubiquitous edible plants, right on our doorstep.

This post was prepared by Paper Frogs, a delivery partner responsible for delivery of the Federation Programme. The Federation Programme is a Co-op Foundation initiative supported by Luminate. It is empowering people across Greater Manchester to challenge the ways in which technology and data reinforce inequalities.