Care shaped by the neighbourhood itself.

Fertile ground for change

We work from the principles of Bottom-up Change. The knowledge and experience we share within our collaboration help us prepare the gatherings and explore together what this approach asks of Doesburg.

That starts with getting to know the community. Which connections already exist? Who brings people together? What is alive, where is the energy and how much room do people have to take something on?

The steering group is a meeting place in this: residents and professionals who come together from different places in Doesburg. There, people get to know each other’s experiences, motivations and possibilities. We look for what connects them and what they find important enough to contribute to themselves.

First listen, then design

Alongside the other facilitators, I design the gatherings. Who do we bring together? What do we want to understand? Which question helps us move forward?

Sometimes that is a gathering with key people from the town; sometimes we join conversations already happening in the neighbourhood. I pay attention to room for different perspectives and to what people want to carry themselves. That sometimes calls for a different question, sometimes for a different structure. What happens during a meeting helps us decide what a next step could be.

What grows between people

In the conversations, participants describe how they also seek each other out outside the gatherings and get to know each other differently. Connections grow between people who previously knew each other mainly through their role, or not at all.

The way of working also takes on meaning outside the steering group. One participant, for example, describes questioning the urge to come up with solutions straight away in another meeting: first explore what residents themselves find important and want to do.

At the same time, it remains a search how such separate movements can become an ongoing shared practice. People have limited time, the make-up of the group changes and a lot depends on a few committed people. That is why we keep coming back to the question: what do we want to make possible together, and who wants to and is able to carry part of it?

Between the gatherings

Reading conversations alongside one another

To support those judgments, I am developing a way for earlier conversations to contribute to preparing the next meeting.

I analyse meetings with the help of AI using the same questions, and set those readings alongside one another. Which topics come back? Where does something change? Which question stays open? A recurring theme can become a possible preparation question; a tension can be a reason to look more closely.

The transcripts remain the source. I need to be able to return to what people said, word for word, even when my first reading changes.

From source words to a next question

The published Field Guide chapter Patterns over time includes these words from Doesburg. Below are three shortened quotations, with omissions marked:

What I am learning here

In Doesburg I am learning how much attention it takes to help create fertile ground for change. Getting to know each other, understanding what moves someone and discovering what you want to carry together are essential parts of the work.

That also asks me to keep learning. When does a question help? When does a proposal help? And when is it mostly a matter of making room for something someone wants to try themselves?

The tools I develop should help us as facilitators to look more precisely and go into the conversation better prepared. The meaning and the choices stay with the people it concerns.