At The National Lottery Community Fund we are embarking on a series of open enquiries to build a shared, evolving view of how civil society can navigate, adapt to and thrive in the future. Join us in our specially designed Miro Board to browse relevant resources and provocations, as well as to share and progress ideas.

This is an experiment: we're hoping we've created a space where we can all gather and collectively build on our experience and knowledge. The board will be open for collaboration & contribution for 2 hours - everything will then be visible 24/7, for people to browse at their leisure.

During the 2-hour period we'll facilitate a couple of exercises, we'll let you know timings of those nearer the time. You're welcome to come for 2 minutes, 20 minutes or the full 2 hours.

These open enquiries are for anyone working on, with and in civil society or their local community. You don't need to be an expert, but you do need to be willing to bring your experience, knowledge, ideas and a sense of curiosity to the table. We're looking for people who want to share what they know and think, and simultaneously want to know more and develop their own ideas.

Theme 3: Active Adaptation, Resilience and Coping in the Long Crisis

In crisis and tragedy, both the best and worst of us are revealed. We have seen this clearly in our communities as we rapidly bolstered our resilience - with outpourings of social solidarity from clapping for carers, surges for people signing up as volunteers for the NHS or in the local community, thousands of people getting involved in mutual aid to support their neighbours, and the transformation of ways of working between public services, civil society and communities. But the pandemic has also revealed many of the inequities, injustices, and the entrenched inequalities that contribute to some communities facing circumstances and conditions that make them more vulnerable.

Structural racial injustice, an epidemic of isolation and disconnection, precarious work which is further threatened by automation and the economic consequences of the pandemic, and a looming climate crisis, will all create a state of uncertainty, unpredictability and challenge for communities for some time. To bolster our communities both now and in the years ahead we will need us to adopt new models, mindsets and structures that will better enable active adaptation and ways to build our resilience.

In this session we will reflect on the nature of the long crisis and how we can better support the adaptation and resilience of our communities. What has the pandemic shown us about new ways of working with communities, and the shifting roles of citizens, civil society, public sector and business in developing adaptive and resilient communities? What do we need to stop, continue and do differently in the face of the long crisis? How can we support communities to assess potential and ongoing risks? What information, resources, and shifts in power would better enable communities to be able to build resilience from within in the future? How might we ensure that adaptation activity is geared towards progress and transformation, not just plaster sticking? How can we help communities out of a cycle of short-term fixes?

Over the next few weeks we're also exploring the following themes:

Thriving and powerful communities (16 February, book here)

The everyday infrastructure you need now (19 February, book here)

Equipping communities to anticipate, imagine and shape the future (26 February, book here)

Ecologies, constellations and ecosystems (2 March, book here)