1. Communities of practice Why bother?
Angie Hart
Academic Director,
Community University Partnership Programme (Cupp) 1

2. Communities of Practice
“…groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise” (Wenger & Snyder, 2000)
Emphasise sharing and mutuality
No fixed boundaries between ‘experts’ and ‘non-experts’
Expectation that members will work across organisational and disciplinary boundaries
Challenging current structures and hierarchies

3. Community of Practice Inter disciplinary Cross agency
Collaborating for mutual benefit
Exchange of knowledge between sectors
Boundary spanning
Shared passion

4. CoPs ‘boundary cross’
CoPs aim to be inclusive, to make connections and consolidate learning across potential lines of division in relation to joint enterprise.
Boundary crossing causes people to look afresh at their own assumptions.
Two ways CoPs facilitate boundary crossing:
‘boundary objects’ – e.g. language, artefacts
‘brokering’ – e.g. linking differing perspectives

5. Benefits
Clustering projects together under a shared theme to promote longevity and impact
Helping different stakeholders keep up to date with information and skill development
Mechanism for assessing the viability and value of new pieces of work or projects
Influencing key decision makers by providing them with well worked and mutually owned solutions to shared problems 
Explicitly working with power differentials and different knowledge bases 

6. emergence
Hydrogen and oxygen are the elemental gases that make up water, but the ‘wetness’ of water is an ‘emergent property’ of the system not reducible to hydrogen or oxygen (Zajonc 2010, 81).

7. The principles of emergence mean that over-controlling approaches will not work well within complex systems–that in order to maximise system adaptiveness, there must be space for innovation and novelty to occur (Ramalingam, Jones et al. 2008, 21).

8. My CoP membership Resilient practice CoP
Pan Sussex Strategic Group for Care Leavers
Community University Partnership Programme

9. Brighton and Sussex Community Knowledge Exchange
7/4/06
Skills useful for a CoP
‘Brokerage and ‘Convening skills’
Technical and network knowledge
Ability to think creatively
Ability to work with complex interpersonal dynamics
Staying power
Ability to draw upon a raft of communication skills at a wide variety of levels
Passionate about making a difference in relation to the topic
Exchanging Knowledge between Universities and Communities

10. Community of practice: issues and challenges
Creating a win / win
Different agendas
Importance of boundary spanning –overinvestment in individuals?
Hybrid community of practice and work plan group
‘Don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness’

11. Bridging cultures Respectful of different knowledge/expertise
‘Click factor’
Know what you want from partnering
Always prepare to translate and explain
Confidence to be vulnerable
Prepared to be taken down a peg or two
Explicitly elevate ‘on the ground’ expertise
Emphasise ‘practice’ and relationships rather than organisational form or structure: ‘Communities of practice
Don’t get stuck with one narrative

12. Further resources
Hart, A., and D.Wolff ‘Developing communities of practice through community-university partnerships’ Planning, Practice and Research 21(1)
Put communities of practice into ‘youtube’

13. Cupp news: Sign up for email updates www.cupp.org.uk
“Community university partnerships in practice”
Edited by Angie Hart, Elizabeth Maddison and David Wolff 13