Diversity Social - Nov 2017

As we begin to look more earnestly into issues of diversity, what that means to us and what our preferences are, we decided to dedicate our November social to thinking about our community in terms of the actual make-up of households. Each attendant had 30 'household' squares to fill in with the different cereals that represented people of different ages, from babies and toddlers through to people over 60. We also used cat and dog biscuits to represent cats and dogs in households. It was a fun an engaging exercise that helped us visualise the kind of community make-up we'd each ideally like, whilst also facing us with the limitations and imagined realities of how the ideas in our heads might look and even work. Along with more traditional household constituents, some of the more unusual make-up of households included 3 generations of family living under one roof, older women living alone in households and having a younger lover hopping between stays in each of their houses, and (my personal favourite) a household of 20+ cats managed by 2 babies that was proposed by one of our youngest attendees (see image directly below)! As the development team explore the issue of diversity further, in light of considering specific sites and financial models, the issues of who would live in the community become ever more pressing. This was a great exercise to get us all thinking about it, and having fun together. Below are just some of the attendees working models...