What is this all about?
At Flowhesion we simply want all communities to live better, feel better and achieve more!. We are about promoting community cohesion i.e. adhering to the rule of law, British values, individual liberty and mutual respect. We believe it can all come together regardless of our background and we call this fusion Flowhesion! We are terribly passionate about partnership and collaborations setting ourselves a high bar to delivering them. We are working with our partners in innovative ways. Our Team comprise of individuals that have lived experience or leaders in their respective fields and our knowledge, experience and networks are unparalleled.
View our Collaboration and Partnership Standards.
We know every great journey starts with a first step so we feel it’s important to get to work right away!
Our Aims are as follows:
- Bring our experience, networks and knowledge to contribute to and positively influence the work of British values and community cohesion across the United Kingdom.
- Utilise our skills set and knowledge base to work respectfully with partners; public, private and charitable to eliminate the barriers within and between communities of identity.
- Apply our experience and knowledge to Publicise and disseminate literature, research, and relevant publications through social platforms, events and collaboration,that will promote community cohesion and tolerance.
- Add weight to reframing the debate on community cohesion by commissioning, participating in research, projects, activities and workshops that puts community cohesion at the top of the public agenda.
Our Outcomes are as follows:
- Deliver sector leading, off the shelf or bespoke training packages for the public and third sector. Our training will provide current knowledge, toolkits and grounded theory on how to engage communities of identity on pressing issues as CSE, gangs, drugs, alcohol and substance misuse, FM, FGM, HBV etc. Contact us for tailor made packages or public speaking engagements on these issues!
- Commission and undertaking timely research projects for our academic and public sector partners. Our research seeks to drive community cohesion and improve outcomes for communities of identity.
- Advise Local Council’s, the NHS and other public sector bodies to improve their models and thinking on engaging communities of identity to build better community cohesion. We have unrivalled experience in advising on programmes of work to bring those at the margins of our society to the centre.
- Manage the delivery of complex community cohesion programmes for councils across the northwest and the third sector. We will work inline with your vision and aspirations, we are outcome focused and are led by an unrivalled academic grounding and expertise.
Our Unique Approach
We believe any person, group or entity that wishes to work towards building a cohesive society needs to firstly have a good understanding of the academic disciplines of sociology and social capital and be able to demonstrate that their work is guided by them. We believe tying all our work to this evolving knowledge base ensures that we are able to deliver projects and activities to those that need it most and yield measured, tangible and empirical results. Furthermore, We take seriously Robert Putnam’s and Lewis Feildstein’s idea of bonding and bridging capital in understanding community isolation and integration. That’s why their theories play a central part in the Flowhesion foundation’s cycle of assessing, delivering and reviewing all the work that it undertakes. Essentially, Bonding capital constitutes a ‘sociological superglue’ that creates strong in-group loyalty and allows members of a similar group, ethnicity, religion or identity to get on well together. This appears on the surface to be a positive trait, however such communities are symptomatic of having out-group antagonism i.e. fears, misunderstandings or suspicion of other communities. Furthermore to combat such detriment Putnam and Lewis advocate for the use of building more bridging capital; that is interaction between different socio-economic classes of society. Therefore bridging capital allows different communities to form more trusting, mutual and sustainable relationships. The promotion of such activities are therefore encouraged. At the Flowhesion foundation we are always assessing the bonding and bridging capital impact of the work that we do.
Building innovative approaches to community cohesion and resilience is needed more then ever as outlined by recommendations made in The Casey Review:
‘Build local communities’ resilience in the towns and cities where the greatest challenges exist, by: Developing a set of local indicators of integration and requiring regular collection of the data supporting these indicators. (3) Identifying and promoting successful approaches to integration.’
Read: The Casey Review