Community

Walsall Community Dialogue Project: Showcase

This Project brings people together from different faiths, beliefs and backgrounds to share stories and make connections across communities.

Community / Walsall Community Dialogue Project: Showcase

Programme Overview

Here are some video highlights of the Walsall Community Dialogue Project:

The project, funded by Walsall For All and The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, was designed to bring people together from different parts of Walsall to engage in conversations about identity, diversity, belonging and living together.

Volunteer Community Connectors from across Walsall were trained to facilitate a series of dialogue sessions between their own community and a group from another community.

Highlights from the project have included seeing friendships develop between groups from backgrounds that had never met before, connections that will continue well beyond the end of the project. Similarly, Community Connectors have developed their confidence in delivering online dialogue and, inspired by the project, participants have gone on to set up their own initiatives such as online groups and podcasts. We are excited about Walsall’s diverse communities continuing to work together and we would like to thank everybody who’s been involved with making this project a success.

For more details on this project

Walsall Community Dialogue in action

The project began in 2019 but was paused in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We then redesigned the project to be a COVID-safe online project in Phase 2:

What we achieved

In Phase 1 we achieved:

In Phase 2 we achieved:

Dialogue Sessions

The dialogues were split up into a series of 3 sessions, with each session focusing on a different theme:

1st Theme: “How are you?”

2nd Theme: “Who are we?

3rd Theme: “How can we live together?”

After the first sessions groups were paired with other communities in order to take part in Linked Dialogue Sessions.

These sessions enabled groups from different parts of Walsall to meet one another and to engage in dialogue about identity, community and living together.

Following the official dialogues, participants were also invited to participated in creative art dialogue sessions.

Community Engagement

A huge thank you to all the community groups we worked with across both phases.

In Phase 1 we worked with:

Manor Farm Community Association
Brownhills Community Association
WATMOS
Aaina Hub
Goscote Green Acres
Walsall Creative Factory
Caldmore Community Garden
Ahmadiyya Women’s Group – From Walsall Ahmaddiya Mosque
Nash Dom
Guru Nanak Gurdwara, Willenhall
Age Matters, Walsall
St Matthews Church
DWP groups

In Phase 2 we worked with:

Brownhills Community Association
WATMOS
Guru Nanak Gurdwara, Willenhall
Walsall Disability Hub, Midland Mencap
One Love
Sewa Kitchen
Walsall Black Sisters
Multi Kulti West Midlands, CIC
ESOL Group
Signs for Worship
Faith Meeting Faith
New Testament Church of God, Walsall Faith Temple, Youth group

Art from the Community Dialogue project

Participants were invited to participate in digital art workshops to explore the themes of the project more creatively. These are a selection of the images that were created in response to a question asking groups about what would help to make Walsall feel like a more welcoming place to them and to everybody.

Community Connectors in Dialogue: Listen to a CC led podcast

Outside of the Community Dialogue Project, Liam Dacre Davis, the Community Connector from Faith Meeting Faith, interviewed his linking partner, Sharon Bassi, from Guru Nanak Gurdwara Willenhall as part of the Faith Meeting Faith Podcast. Click below to listen.