Redefining the relationship between community organisations and groups and Sheffield City Council

What do we want the relationship between Sheffield City Council and community groups and organisations to look like?

In February we had a great conversation at Broomhall Centre with co-facilitation from the Andy Freeman from Space to Breathe CIC, which culminated in this ginormous Venn diagram - a brilliantly tangible output from our work! We asked our working group "What do we all bring to the relationship?"

Our VCFSE Relationship working group (official name still TBC...) involves representatives from all kinds of community groups and organisations around the city, from small volunteer-led groups and new social enterprises to large service providers and community anchors. A really varied group, but with lots in common in terms of what they felt voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise organisations bring to the relationship: long-term, trusted relationships with and support for people and communities; deep understanding of people, places and issues; an independent voice; financial and social value; flexibility, creativity and responsiveness.

As we focused on the middle bit of the Venn, what we do together, we generated lots of aspirations and direction for the year ahead, with people and Sheffield at the heart of everything we do:
- Real human relationships, sincere conversations, openness and trust
- Shared problems, solutions and learning
- Making the case for system and policy change together
- Coming together to work in the heart of communities

Over the next year, we're going to get into the HOW we make this happen, focusing on different aspects of our relationship at each session.

We've added a full write-up of this session to the documents on this page.