Ideas for Connecting with your Community

harvested by Amanda Palmer

On Wednesday, August 3rd the ABCD Learning and Action Team got together for our monthly gathering! This month we were reflecting on this resource from Australia, 52 Ways to Connect with your Neighbours.

A harvest of our conversation has been shared below, where we captured ways we have connected with community in the past, or our own versions of ideas from the list based on our own community contexts.

blue and green blobs with white text containing ideas for connecting with your community.

Ideas for Connecting with your Community:

  • For new groups/collectives, ask everyone to share their journey for arriving to the collective

  • Invite people to create a playlist together that gets used - e.g. ask for them to share their guilty pleasure song

  • Host community art activities to help break the ice and make it easier to get involved for the first time

  • Host a cultural gathering where people can share

  • Encourage neighbours to create/decorate hello cards on their doors to introduce themselves

  • Collect and share stories of your community’s history

As we were discussing ideas that resonated with us, an interesting shared tension point surfaced with regards to our place-based communities.

There is a different kind of intimacy experienced with people we share walls/borders with, as with our neighbours see/hear/experience the margins of each other’s lives. In some ways can make it even more awkward to connect, and there is less of a chance to opt in or opt out due to proximity. What if they say no!? What if they say yes!?

What we realized is that sometimes what makes us uncomfortable is what we need to do to be comfortable. That discomfort is completely normal and understandable, AND if we can move past it there are many ways we can start to build those connections!

Learning from Eachother, Community ConversationCDLIABCD, neighbours, connections, ideas, ABCD LAT