Communities Working Together

Communities Working Together is a partnership bringing organisations across Argyll and Bute together to build the relationships, shared understanding and collective capacity needed for lasting change in our communities.

About

In 2022, partners including the TSI, NHS Highland/HSCP, Macmillan and LiveArgyll came together around a shared commitment: to focus on wellness rather than illness, and to shift how organisations work together to support people to live well. Communities Working Together is the space where that commitment takes shape.

Our Approach

We draw on ideas like systems thinking, co-production, asset-based development and community wealth building — and we believe that working with people rather than for them leads to better and more lasting outcomes.

Our Aim

To raise the profile of community in helping people lead good and healthy lives, and to focus the collective energy of local people.

Our Objectives

Nurture relationships and connections across a diverse range of settings and locations.
Understand and amplify what is already happening in local communities that supports health and wellbeing.
Create opportunities for better connections between people, community-based support, and local services.
Shift the balance of control for health and wellbeing back into local communities.
Build collective leadership across a wide range of complex challenges — including health, economy, population and environment.

How We Work

Much of what we do happens behind the scenes — partners working out how to approach a problem together, connecting people across sectors tackling the same challenge from different angles, contributing to strategies and governance, and asking whether we are all pulling in the same direction. More specifically, we:

Build and sustain relationships across the third sector, NHS, local authority and community organisations
Contribute to shared governance, including the Living Well Board and its subgroups
Connect people and ideas across organisations where synergies exist
Develop shared language and approaches to working collaboratively
Contribute to strategy, including the Living Well Strategy and TSI Strategy refresh
Identify and secure funding to sustain community wellbeing work across the partnership

Alongside this, we have a number of specific projects and activities — some of which you can explore below.

Click to Explore

Winter Seminar Series

The Communities Working Together Winter Seminar Series brings people together from across Argyll and Bute to explore practical approaches and shared learning. These free online sessions connect our community with inspiring speakers, sparking fresh thinking and supporting positive change.

Sessions are open to everyone — whether you work in the third sector, the NHS, local government, or are part of a community group.

Details of upcoming events can be found below as can recordings of past events.

Stay in the Loop

Join our mailing list to hear about future events and new opportunities to connect with people across Argyll and Bute.

Participatory Leadership

What is Participatory Leadership?

Participatory leadership is about creating the conditions for people to contribute their knowledge, energy and ideas to the challenges that matter most. Rather than decisions flowing from the top down, it makes space for many voices — and tends to build stronger, more sustainable outcomes as a result.

In Argyll and Bute, where the distances are real and the communities are distinct, that kind of approach matters. The challenges we face — around health, wellbeing, depopulation, rural isolation — are too complex for any one organisation to solve alone. Participatory leadership is a way of working that takes that complexity seriously.

One of the main approaches we have been developing through Communities Working Together is the Art of Hosting — a set of practices and tools for having better conversations and working together more effectively. It has been growing and evolving globally for over 20 years, co-created by a network of practitioners with no central body or single owner. What draws us to it is its practicality: these are tools you can actually use, in a meeting, a community session, or a strategic planning day, to help people think and work together more effectively.

Our Work So Far

Since 2024, we have been building a Community of Practice across Argyll and Bute — a growing network of people developing shared language and approaches to working together. We have delivered two residential Art of Hosting trainings, funded places on national training, and run regular online sessions where practitioners can share learning and support one another.

We have also developed a set of free resources — practice cards and guides — to help people bring these approaches into their everyday work. These are available to download below.

Get Involved

Join the Community of Practice — open to anyone interested in participatory approaches
Attend an Art of Hosting training or workshop when next available
Download the free resources below and try the tools in your own work

To join the Community of Practice or hear about future training dates, contact [email protected]

Free Resources

These resources were developed as part of Communities Working Together and are free to download and use. They are designed as practical prompts — most useful if you have had some introduction to participatory approaches, but accessible to anyone who is curious. The resources can be found below.