On 15th November, I attended an event at The Glasshouse (formerly Sage Gateshead) to find out more about the Gateshead Community Bridgebuilders project. I was already familiar with the project and knew some of the Bridgebuilders from my time working as a community development worker in Bensham, so I was keen to learn more about their work on the ground and their aspirations for the future.
The project, funded by Lankelly Chase, created thirteen new roles - seven community workers based in Gateshead, three coordinators, one learning support role and two funding support roles. The team is recruited from the diverse communities of Gateshead, and the aim is to have a group of community workers embedded and trusted within their communities, who share lived experience with community members. The wider purpose of the project is to bring people who are usually excluded into decision making and work in a relationship-based way, listening to people when they speak about what they need.
Each Bridgebuilder has been hosted by a Gateshead VCSE organisation, receiving support from them. Hosts include The Comfrey Project, Gem Arts, Bensham Grove and St Chads Community Project.
Zahra Bazarganianpour spoke at the event about her work as a Bridgebuilder. Zahra is British and lives in Gateshead, having come from Iran to the UK twenty years ago. She is hosted by Gem Arts and has been supporting refugees and asylum seekers by running English classes and working with people housed in a local hotel, offering a lifeline for those new to the UK. She explained that as an immigrant to the UK she understands what a significant barrier language can be.
Zahra said: “I was a person living in the community and the support of Gateshead Community Bridgebuilders has been vital to becoming a community worker. For the first time in twenty years of living in the UK I have found my voice and had a chance to make a change in the community”.
Eric Bamela also shared his experiences of working with African communities in Gateshead. Eric came to the UK from Cameroon and had done a lot of volunteering at The Comfrey Project before becoming a Bridgebuilder. He reflected on the difficulty of bringing together the diverse African communities, where there are many different voices across these varied communities and much of his work has focussed on creating a round table to bring different groups together.
At the event we also heard from Bridgebuilder Paul Kerr, who is developing an accessible festival of deaf culture and arts to take place in 2024, Hakan Akarli, who works in the Turkish community to run a Saturday school for children and young people, and Christine Frazer who became a community worker after involvement in the Mutual Aid Network and works with the community where she lives in Dunston.
I was impressed by the ambition of the project and the genuinely innovative approach to recruitment and organisation structure. Central to the project is the commitment to value and empower community members and the commitment to a non-hierarchical structure is clear. I also appreciated the honesty of the speakers, sharing their triumphs and challenges; a common theme was that community work is hard and working with communities is complicated. The biggest take away from the day, however, had to be the enthusiasm and commitment of the Bridgebuilders themselves – a team reflecting Gateshead’s diversity, demonstrating the benefits of drawing on the skills and experience of those who are already well known and respected within their communities.
Looking ahead, Andy Crosbie, project coordinator, said: “It’s taken us a while to find our feet, but our team of Bridgebuilders is now hitting their stride and are determined to make a dent in the systems and structures that drive marginalisation. This isn’t community work as normal. We are genuinely trying to build something new and bring people and communities on the margins into the heart of decision-making. Their lived experience is the energy that drives all of this.”
As the event wrapped up, I took down this quote from Hakan Akarli, reflecting on his background in community volunteering, which I think sums up the strength and commitment within the team: “I don’t know what will happen but I’m not going anywhere. I live in this community, you’ll see me around”.
Find out more about the Gateshead Community Bridgebuilders on their website.