🌿 Place-Based Relational Praxis                   

In my previous article, Rethinking How We Work: Why Complex Times Call for Place-Based, Asset-Driven Collaboration, I explored the frameworks that help us work better together across systems and communities.

This time, I want to slow down.
Before we design another strategy, form another partnership, or launch another initiative, let’s talk about the conditions that allow genuine collaboration to take root.
Because without those conditions, even the best-intentioned effort can struggle.
But when they’re present – when the soil is rich and ready – almost any model can flourish.

Coherence Before Formalising

My good friend David Lilly often reminds me:

“Coherence before we formalise an approach.”

Before we jump into a collective impact initiative, a place-based plan, a community of practice or any collaborative model, we need to pause – to make sure we do no harm.

Before any project begins, great questions to ask:
• Are we aligned in spirit, not just in plan?
• What do we need from each other for this to work?
• What does the community need from us?

Readiness comes before action. Without shared purpose, trust, and understanding, even the most sincere work can unintentionally cause harm – especially in communities already carrying trauma or a loss of faith in systems.

Real collaboration doesn’t emerge from compliance; it’s born from relational accountability – when people feel seen, valued, and part of a shared rhythm.

We see this everywhere: volunteers stay longer when they feel appreciated and connected; employees thrive when they trust their leaders. Community work is no different.
Without coherence, the best plans dissolve into paperwork.
With it, even small steps ripple far.

From Frameworks to Living Systems

I draw from many traditions:

• ABCD’s belief in local gifts and community-led action.
• Appreciative Inquiry’s curious questions that generate possibility.
• Psychodrama’s sociometry, which maps how people connect, distance, or isolate – revealing what helps us stay in relationship
• Systems thinking, which reminds us that economic, cultural, and social forces are interdependent – and that place-based practice must engage multiple stakeholders for a whole-of-community approach.

Together, they whisper the same truth: transformation isn’t about rolling out a model; it’s about becoming part of a living system.
In sociodrama, we lay out a system, take up different roles, and sometimes even reverse them – gaining awareness of the whole and shifting its dynamics.

(If you’re curious to experience this in action, join Cissy Rock for The Systems We Live In: A Dramatic Exploration this November.)

Once we see ourselves as actors within the system, not implementers of it, something alive returns – a spark of local imagination, a new current beneath the surface.
That’s where practice becomes art.

Doing By, Not Just With

As Cormac Russell puts it, we’re being called to move from place-based to place-conscious approaches – and I’d add, toward people-attuned, place-based relational praxis.
This “doing by” honours autonomy, dissent, and the right to re-imagine power.
It’s what I call localised spontaneity – the courage to let each process unfold as its own living experiment rather than a franchise.

It takes inclusive leadership and deep listening: knowing when to hold space, when to step in, when to connect the dots, when to slow down – and when to gently challenge what’s no longer serving.
What works in Villawood or Waverley might not work in Lithgow or Deniliquin – and that’s exactly the point. Each place has its own pulse.

The Soulgen Way

At Soulgen, we don’t chase best practice – we nurture better practice: practice that fits this place, this time, these people.
We don’t scale processes – we proliferate connection.
We don’t train people to follow steps – we help them warm up to seeing differently.

As both David and Cormac remind us in their own ways, we’re moving from evidence-based practice to practice-based evidence – learning from what emerges when people act together.

Our role is to bring coherence where there’s fragmentation, curiosity where there’s certainty, and creative courage where systems have gone cold or rigid – to rekindle the living spirit in people, places, and organisations.
That’s where spontaneous, collective change begins – in relationship and shared purpose.

Closing Thought

Maybe the work isn’t so much place-based as it is people-attuned.
When trust, coherence, and spontaneity align, new possibilities surface naturally.
Those are the Soulgems – the small revelations within our place-based relational praxis that quietly transform the outer system.
They remind us that community isn’t built by design alone, but by the pulse of human connection.

✨ Join the Conversation

If this resonates, I invite you to join our upcoming Soulgen session: “Lens on Strengths – Engagement & Participation” (November 21, Crows Nest).
We’ll explore how to cultivate these very conditions – coherence, trust, and relational accountability – so that engagement and collaboration doesn’t just look good on paper but feels alive in practice.