Evaluating Cross-Community Work in Holme Wood: Making Connections?

Abstract

This report shares the learning from a local project carried out by the Active Faith Communities Programme which was designed to improve cross-cultural relationships on Holme Wood, an outer-city estate in Bradford. With policy increasingly concerned with finding ways to promote cohesion and meaningful interaction between different groups, this report considers the possibilities and challenges for practice in a particular setting. Holme Wood has traditionally been populated by people from white British ethnic backgrounds. This is gradually changing through a small and diffuse inflow of newcomers from different cultural backgrounds. Key findings include: the importance of taking into account the local context when designing interventions to improve cross-community relationships; the tendency of ‘newcomers’ to the estate who were from different cultural backgrounds to be isolated; the importance of bringing these isolated newcomers together for mutual support, while also developing their opportunities for wider relationships; the significance of the challenges inherent in this work, including: – the time-consuming nature of the relationship building work which is necessary to do this work effectively; – potential tensions between work which aims to develop opportunities for mutual support between newcomers and work which aims to connect these newcomers with the more established residents and organisations.