Sherri Torjman believes
that a movement is emerging in communities across Canada,
and at the centre of that movement is shared space.
Sherri, who is vice-president of the Caledon
Institute of Social Policy and author of Shared Space: The Communities Agenda, believes that
in spite of the diverse range of community efforts and initiatives
underway, there exists a common thread: we are all working
towards increasing resilience in various ways.
Identifying four “cluster” areas
of resilience, Sherri believes that by “joining up”
with others who are engaged in similar work, we open the door
to innovation and increased efficacy. While acknowledging
that working in this “shared space” is not always
easy, it can have tremendous rewards – enabling all
of us to raise the bar and embrace a common agenda that is
greater than the sum of its parts.
On this page, Sherri explores the central
ideas of Shared Space and provides new insight on
how individuals and groups can collaborate for impact to increase
resilience and build strong, vibrant communities.
 Sherri
Torjman is vice-president of the Caledon Institute of Social
Policy and author of the forthcoming book, Shared Space:
The Communities Agenda. She is also the author of many
Caledon reports including Reclaiming Our Humanity,
The Social Dimension of Sustainable Development,
Strategies for a Caring Society, Survival-of-the-Fittest
Employment Policy, Innovation and Community Economic
Development, The Key to Kyoto, Are Outcomes
the Best Outcome?, and Proposal for a National Personal
Supports Fund.
Sherri wrote the welfare series of reports
for the National Council of Welfare and has authored four
books on disability policy. She has worked for the House of
Commons Committee on the Disabled, the House of Commons Committee
on Child Care and the Royal Commission on New Reproductive
Technologies.
 She
was co-chair of the Technical Advisory Committee on Tax Measures
for Persons with Disabilities. The Committee reported to the
Minister of Finance and the Minister of National Revenue in
December 2004. (To learn more, click here).
Sherri taught a course in social policy at
McGill University and is a former board member of The Trillium
Foundation.
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As one of Canada’s leading social policy
experts, Sherri Torjman’s decision to write Shared
Space: The Communities Agenda, took Tamarack’s
Paul Born by surprise. Why would a “social policy person”
write an entire book on the theory and practice
of community development?
Sherri, who describes herself as having one
foot in social policy and the other in community development,
explains that she wanted to write a book that would truly
elevate the profile of community-based initiatives across
Canada. She wanted to recognize and celebrate the wide range
of experience, practice and impact that these community efforts
are having.
Sherri cites a tremendous pattern that is
underway – a series of fantastic stories happening in
communities across the country that have yet to be woven together.
Using the metaphor of a patchwork quilt, she describes each
local initiative as a single patch that on its own can be
wonderful, but when sewn together with others creates a coherent
story – a common conceptual base that gives us all an
opportunity to raise the bar.
As to what kind of change is happening, Sherri
notes that governments at all levels are beginning to recognize
the power of comprehensive community work, thus setting the
stage for reforming government policies and practices. This
growing recognition presents communities across Canada with
an opportunity to deepen their impact by embracing a broader,
shared agenda and to create a supportive context for their
work.
The concept
of shared space
The idea of shared space can conjure up a
number of images. It speaks firstly to a physical place –
where we live, our homes, our neighbourhoods. But it is also
an intellectual space where, with a shared set of concepts,
we develop a comprehensive framework for our efforts. Shared
space is also an emotional place, because all of us who are
involved in community work share an emotional commitment to
what we do and what we hope to achieve.
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The “communities agenda” is a
term that’s just starting to emerge in our work and
many of us are still trying to figure out what it means. According
to Sherri, the communities agenda is comprised of three core
dimensions:
- Substance – What are we trying to achieve?
While many of us are working towards seemingly disparate
goals, there is still a common thread – we are all
trying to increase the resilience of our communities in
one form or another.
- Process – How do we go about doing our
work? What are some of the emerging methodologies that
allow us to do our work?
- Context - Many of us fight barriers in arenas
that are not necessarily supportive of our work. It can
be difficult to achieve positive results. Context speaks
to the need to create environments that will facilitate
our success.
Building resilience
Despite the diverse array of community initiatives
underway, Sherri recognizes a common theme – a shared
strength, vibrancy and hope for a better future.
This idea led Sherri to the concept of resilience
and an abundance of research on resilience spanning several
fields – from ecology and economics to mental health
and child development. After poring through the research and
discovering there was no single definition for resilience,
she took some poetic license with the concept and identified
four major dimensions, or “clusters” of resilience.
Sherri contends that community work being done in each of
the resilience clusters plays an equally important role in
creating strong and vibrant communities:
- Sustenance – Our most basic needs and how we meet
them – these include affordable housing, income
security, health and clean water and air.
- Adaptation – Inherent in the ecological perspective
of resilience, adaptation is the ability to change in
the face of obstacles and threats. Key components in this
area include social networks, literacy, and early childhood
development.
- Engagement – Engagement moves beyond adaptation
and views the individual as “agent” in his
or her own life. It’s an active role that includes
participation in organizations and local decision-making,
and involvement in recreation and cultural activities,
to name just a few.
- Opportunity – The economic and financial assets
we create in communities are also critical to resilience,
such as job creation, skills training, collective entrepreneurship
and individual benefit accounts.
Sherri adds that it is important to note
that not everyone will be working in all four clusters at
the same time. Some groups will work in one cluster, while
others will perhaps be working in two or three. The four clusters
of resilience provide a framework that can show us where we
are vis-à-vis other elements and where opportunities
for collaboration may exist. When we work in the four clusters,
we are working in shared space.
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Working in shared
space
Once we have a clear understanding of what
we’re trying to achieve, we can then focus on how we
intend to achieve it. When we collaborate within and across
clusters, we have the opportunity to enhance and expand the
scope of what we’re able to achieve.
The idea of collaboration within and among
clusters comes from much of the literature on innovation compiled
by Harvard University and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD). Focusing on the interactions within
clusters from an economic perspective, the research explores
how firms often join up to achieve innovation in areas such
as research & development, marketing and purchasing -
and it’s at the interface of these collaborations that
real innovation occurs.
To facilitate this innovation, Sherri identifies
three keys aspects of our shared work:
- Knowing – Much of our work involves creating
a rigorous and persuasive base of evidence. A lot of us
are trying to do this over and over again in our own areas
when in fact, the knowledge we are seeking may already
exist. By working in shared space, we can consolidate
our knowledge and help one another towards a common goal.
Also important are the kinds of evidence we use. The OECD
makes a distinction between codified knowledge - quantitative,
hard data - and tacit knowledge, the qualitative stories,
personal experiences and information. This kind of qualitative
data is just as important as the quantitative data –
if not more so. We need to validate this kind of qualitative
knowledge in our work and ensure that we consistently
bring it to the table.
- Doing – Working collaboratively is something
that is not necessarily supported in our culture. We’re
encouraged to be competitive, to stand out, to be the
best. If we are to work together successful, we will need
to learn new skills –particularly in the area of
leadership – in order to overcome barriers that
may exist.
- Reviewing – It’s important that
we monitor and assess our efforts on an ongoing basis
– and change course if necessary. Again, this challenges
a culture that says we are failures if we do not achieve
what we originally set out to do, and can pose difficulties
when reporting to funders. However, working in shared
space can show us new opportunities that perhaps were
not apparent from the outset, and there are many lessons
to be learned from “failing”.
Creating an
enabling environment
Creating an enabling environment is the context
of the communities agenda, and governments and funders play
a key role in creating an enabling environment for working
in shared space.
Firstly, governments and funders can be exemplars.
They can model initiatives that contribute to resilience through
their human resources and procurement policies, by paying
a living wage and by promoting an improved quality of life.
Governments can also be powerful examples
of working in shared space when they break down artificial
barriers between departments to address a common issue. Sherri
gives an example of one community group having to submit 10
different reports to 10 different funding departments because
each needed its own documentation. Another example cites five
funding government departments funding a single project, with
each requiring original receipts.
Secondly, governments and funders can be
investors. They can invest in programs like affordable
housing, income security, and accommodations for people with
disabilities that facilitate community engagement in shared
space.
Lastly, governments and funders can be enablers.
They can provide support for comprehensive community work
by encouraging local decision-making, both multi-sectoral
and long-term. They can also provide support for an evidence
base to gather and interpret local data to make the case for
what they need to do. Removing barriers to access (e.g. user
fees) is also an important aspect of the enabling role.
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Collaboration
not a magical solution
When Sherri first began reviewing the literature
on resilience, she was essentially working in shared space
– venturing into different streams of research to achieve
innovation in her own field. Sherri says it was scary at first,
because she didn’t know what would happen, but that’s
where the strength lies – in different perspectives
and constructs coming together to create something new.
However, Sherri cautions that there are many
inherent challenges in collaboration, and it doesn’t
always work. Collaboration is not appropriate for every endeavour
– it takes time and effort and it’s important
to be selective. Leadership styles and organizational structures
are not always conducive to collaborative work. Many processes
are competitive, which can add a whole other set of challenges
around the collaborative dimension. Our goal is to work around
those challenges and turn them into opportunities.
The trap of always
“doing”
Many of us engaged in community initiatives
get so caught up in the “doing” aspect of our
work, it can be difficult to work in shared space, which can
make us feel as though we’re standing still and losing
ground.
We are so committed to our goals and passionate
about making things happen, we just keeping “doing”
and skip the rest, without taking the time to think things
through and work together.
This is where governments and funders can
create space for this to happen, to allow us to share our
learning in a very strategic way. This sort of deep, focused
learning is a very rare thing, and yet it is essential to
our work.
Looking to the
future
Sherri notes that we are moving from a deficit-based
approach focusing on what communities lack to an asset-based
approach focusing on what communities have, which is essentially
an emphasis on resilience. This is inherently a hope-based
approach, as it is this embedded vibrancy and hope for a better
future that keeps everybody going. It’s taken a long
time to get here, but if we want to create the kind of enabling
environment that will allow our efforts to flourish, the time
to put into practice the concepts we feel are valuable is
now.
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Shared
Space: The Communities Agenda – This
first chapter of Sherri’s forthcoming book defines
the term “communities agenda”, and develops
it within the context of theories on resilience and innovation.
It also builds on community experience in designing and
implementing comprehensive local initiatives.
The
Caledon Institute of Social Policy –
A social policy think thank, Caledon brings an independent
and critical voice to a range of social policy areas. Core
activities include conducting research and analysis, fostering
public discussion on poverty and social policy, and developing
practical proposals for social program reform at all levels
of government.
Reclaiming
Our Humanity – This Caledon paper, written
on behalf of the Coalition of National Voluntary Organizations,
the Canadian Council of Social Development and the United
Way, discusses the constitutional, political, social and
economic context of social development. Identifying key
directions for the future, it sets out a vision of vibrant
communities that provide support, promote inclusion and
encourage learning.
From
Restless Communities to Resilient Places: Building a Stronger
Future for all Canadians – This June
2006 report by the External Advisory Committee on Cities
and Communities calls for governments at all levels to appreciate
the value of place and address imbalances in resources and
decision-making power at the community level.
Place-Based
Policy and the Communities Agenda: Taking Stock, Moving
Forward – In this tele-learning seminar
for Action for Neighbourhood Change, Neil Bradford of the
Canadian Policy Research network discusses the current state
of research and learning about place-based policy and the
communities agenda.
Place-Based
Public Policy: Towards a New Urban and Community Agenda
for Canada – Read Neil Bradford’s
report on the increasingly complex challenges that govern
the quality of life in our cities that cannot be solved
by one or two players acting alone. Instead, Bradford argues
that it will be our ability to set aside traditional, segmented
approaches and develop a “place-based public policy”
rooted in collaborative, multi-level governance.
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