Playing a bridging role in building social capital

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Playing a bridging role in building social
capital

• Where does the university fit in?
• Professor Angie Hart, University of Brighton
• Ms Sally Hiscock, Community and Voluntary Sector
  Forum, Brighton and Hove

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Structure of our talk

• Role of the university within the community
• Definitions of social capital
• Examples of bridging in practice

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Metaphorical inadequacy
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Lets recognise complexity
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Picturing interdependence 1
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Defining the territory 1

• For HEIs, facilitating social capital is mediated
  through their core functions
• Research
• gaining suitable adequate funding
• finding the right partners
• partnering on subjects relevant to local problems
• formalising the status of community researchers
• addressing community researcher needs
• facilitating productive links
• understanding international perspectives

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Defining the territory 2

• Teaching servicing a widening range of
  students, disciplines skill-sets use of
  community members as teachers
• Students facilitating student involvement in
  the community incorporating community
  involvement into syllabus, including reflective
  practice

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Defining the territory 3

• Curricular development relevance of curriculum
  to the real world keeping up to date with
  societal changes
• Professional training public servicing
• involvement with professional training and
  updating making oneself available to those
  outside the university who request or require
  input
• Corporate level Corporate plans carry
  aspirational targets audit and evaluation at
  various levels of practice in relation to public
  and community engagement is carried out

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What is social capital?

• Social capital is defined by its function. It
  is not a single entity, but a variety of
  different entities having two characteristics in
  common They all consist of some aspect of social
  structure, and they facilitate certain actions of
  individuals who are within the structure
  (Coleman 1990, p.302)

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• Features of social organization such as
  networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate
  coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit
  (Putman 1995, p.67)
• Social networks and the associated norms of
  reciprocity and trustworthiness. The core
  insight of this approach is extremely simple
  like tools (physical capital) and training (human
  capital), social networks have value (Putman
  2007, p.137)

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Definitions

• Woolcock (2001 13-4) has argued for the need to
  make a proper distinction between different types
  of social capital. He distinguished between
• Bonding social capital which denotes ties between
  people in similar situations, such as immediate
  family, close friends and neighbours.
• Bridging social capital, which encompasses more
  distant ties of like persons, such as loose
  friendships and workmates.
• Linking social capital, which reaches out to
  unlike people in dissimilar situations, such as
  those who are entirely outside of the community,
  thus enabling members to leverage a far wider
  range of resources than are available in the
  community.

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• From a recent critical review of the concept
  (pre-credit crunch)
• It is important to reach beyond the technical
  character and terms of the social capital debates
  and consider the hypotheses that social capital
  is implicated in a disruption to the traditional
  distinction between economy and society, indeed
  in a redefinition of the economy-society
  relationship, whereby the social is increasingly
  being understood, imagined, mapped and defined in
  economic terms (Adkins 2008, p. 1223)

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Community capital

• Valuing local knowledge and leadership
• A focus on network agency participation
• Recognising an interdependence between the worlds
  of social, economic, human and natural capital,
  reflecting this in appropriate methodologies
  ways of working
• Recognising that places and spaces are key units
  of organisation
• (adapted from Hess Adams 2005)

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Picturing interdependence 2
Social capital
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CUPP at Brighton

• Community University Partnership Programme was
• initiated in 2003. Our aims are to
• Ensure that the University's resources
  (intellectual and physical) are available to,
  informed by and used by its local and
  sub-regional communities
• Enhance the community's and University's capacity
  for engagement for mutual benefit
• Ensure that Cupps resources are prioritised
  towards addressing inequalities within our local
  communities

www.cupp.org.uk
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Whos involved?

• CUPP director
• Academic director and associate academic director
• 5 further full-time equivalent members of CUPP
  team
• Academics
• Students
• Community colleagues - in partnership with all
  community and voluntary, social enterprise and
  public sector in Brighton Hove, East Sussex
  and West Sussex (Community Fellows)

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How we organise

• CUPP steering group
• Research helpdesk - access point to university
  (including senior researchers group)
• 150 enquiries per year
• Student community engagement - curriculum
  development
• 300 students per year
• Knowledge Exchange - community university
  partnership projects
• 15 projects per year
• Communities of Practice South East Coastal
  Communities Programme
• 4 communities of practice developed

www.cupp.org.uk
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Brighton and Hove Community and Voluntary Sector
Forum

• Sally Hiscock
• Chief Executive

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Third Sector in Brighton and Hove

• 1,600 third sector organisations
• Generates 96 million to the local economy
• Employs 8,000 people
• 43 income comes from grants, of which 62 comes
  from outside the city
• 31 of organisations have reported an increased
  in service contracts
• 19,200 volunteer positions, giving 57,600
  volunteer hours per week, equivalent to an annual
  salary of 24 million

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How do we know?

• Taking Account economic and social audit of the
  third sector 2008
• Partnership between CUPP, CVSF, Working Together
  Project, SCIP, funded by BSCKE, with BHCC and
  BHCPCT
• Survey, case studies and national research
• Findings and recommendations

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What was the impact?

• Outputs
• Data available for the sector and partners
• Development of skills, knowledge and experience
  around methodology
• Practice around reflective learning techniques
  and partnership working
• Franchisable model for third sector profiling
• Outcomes
• Empowering for under-represented groups
• Ensuring parity with other sectors

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Social capital gains and challenges

• Bonding social capital sector colleagues
  learning and working together to promote our
  collective voice and demonstrate local value
• Bridging social capital establishing cross
  sector links and networks
• Linking social capital developing a two way
  street between local academics as local third
  sector specialists
• Spreading social capital trickle effect?
• Challenges project priorities, involving the
  sector and reflecting on practice

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Beyond the project to other sectors and outputs

• Other partnerships
• South East Coastal Communities of Practice
• Dialogue 5050 Group
• Community Engagement Framework
• Local Strategic Partnership

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Resilient therapy community of practice

• Academics, parents and practitioners joining
  together to develop a new therapeutic methodology
• Ground work a joint project between academics
  and practitioners
• Evolving community of practice of 24 people
• Sharing knowledge, offering mutual support,
  co-creating (fits with Putmans definition),
  challenging conventional relations of power
  (Cornwall and Gaventa)

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