Marsh Farm Outreach bring decades of experience of grassroots work researching, developing, fighting for and piloting new ways of community organising ‘from the bottom up’ to the board.
After 20 years of striving to deliver the ‘large group capacitation’ approach to organising (Organisation Workshop) into the UK and two successful pilots, we feel sure the Organisation Workshop can add a highly effective and all important ‘move to action’ mechanism to the Community Organisers’ toolkit and training offer. We’re particularly keen on helping with development of the academy and the overall strategy for building the community organisers movement.
Having contributed to the original bid for community organisers programme funding and worked at board level as host representatives in the first couple of years of the original community organisers programme, we have first-hand experience both of board working and an overview of the progress and growth of the movement throughout its lifetime.
This overview, coupled with our work as hosts for a team of qualified community organisers in the first phase, gave us a good grounding in the pros and cons of building a national, grassroots movement within the confines of a government funded programme.
Having ‘learned the ropes’ in the early phase we, like the Community Organisers’ team generally, have been able to carry our learning into the current phase, where our work building a Social Action Hub and developing the training to fit emerging needs is ongoing.
At this stage of the process we feel we have a lot to offer in terms of taking the Community Organisers’ strategy, training, and movement forward and we are very keen to commit to representing organisations on the board.
Our vision for the Community Organisers’ movement is to unlock, through collective action, the power that resides in communities to transform local spaces, democracy, and economy and build a more participatory practice.
