Community cohesion

Our approach to community cohesion

TCC is not just a communications consultancy. We are behaviour change experts. We believe that effective two-way communication between local authorities and their partners and the local community is the key to good community cohesion and sustainable change. This drives all our work.

We have extensive experience in community engagement. Our campaigns work because they integrate strong branding with work with peer networks in a local context. This enables us to overcome individual and group-level barriers to changing behaviour.

We have a track record of successful engagement with communities in deprived areas and in increasing participation from hard-to-reach or traditionally disengaged groups (e.g. younger people, BME groups, white working class groups, migrant population, etc.). We are acknowledged leaders in the development and use of traditional and innovative engagement techniques.

Our team are experts in community cohesion work and have worked for several local authorities with low scores on the local Place Survey's community cohesion measure. We understand that cohesion matters to everyone in the community – not just to minority groups – and that it is a highly complex and localised issue.

We work with local authorities, health authorities, local partnerships, Government departments, regeneration bodies, the third sector, companies and individuals to increase member or public participation and to ensure they are responsive to their members/wider community’s needs. We design communications and training packages for our clients that are designed to equip people to take action and make a difference.  We are currently working with the Equality and Human Right Commission on a programme of involvement and consultation events to develop its new Single Equalities Scheme. Three of our local authority clients have achieved Beacon Status with the assistance of our engagement tools.

We are rapidly establishing ourselves as market leaders in working in areas that score poorly on the NI1 Place survey indicator (the percentage of people who believe people from different backgrounds get on well together in their local area) – in particular in Barking & Dagenham, Thurrock and Boston.

The key to delivering effective communications is to understand the prevailing community narrative – the stories that people use to explain their lives in relation to other people and organisations.  This means understanding the narrative as it actually is – not how we would like it to be. 

If we do not understand the prevailing narratives then we risk communicating in ways that do not resonate with the pre-existing beliefs and attitudes of our audience – and will therefore not be believed or will be discounted.
The key to our approach is therefore developing and delivering a narrative that reflects the aspirations of an organisation and its partners in a way that feels authentic and honest to as many people as possible. 
We then develop supporting language and messages that at worse do not alienate entire sections of the community and at best actively supported our narrative.  The narrative will:

  • Explain complex organisational problems, challenges and solutions
  • Provide a framework for memorable stories
  • Have emotion and tone
  • Define what we want to do, what we are and what we are against
  • Be positively received across the community
  • Have messages that reinforce the narrative – underpinned by useable and understandable facts
  • Resonate with reality
  • Accept criticism as a useful way to get 'traction'


Social marketing is crucial to the long-term success of our behaviour change campaigns. We draw on the social marketing principles of behaviour change, insight, segmentation, marketing mix, exchange and competition theories. To go beyond an individualistic approach, we emphasise community engagement and the building of social capital, in addition to seeking opportunities to move “upstream” and influence policy. Segmentation allows us to vary our approach in order to target groups effectively. This is vital to facilitate behaviour changes and make them sustainable.

Our approach includes:
Developing a clear, consistent and congruent narrative
Using insight techniques we gain understanding of how local residents perceive their area, neighbours and service providers. Using this knowledge we develop a new emotionally intelligent narrative for the local authority; a narrative in tune with what people feel. We work with them to keep this narrative consistent.

Building leadership
We assist with member development of the council and support councillors in their work of engaging with residents.
Enhancing the ability of influencers, staff and others to have congruent conversations
We train front-line staff in conversational communication techniques so that staff become better at actively listening to residents.

Developing a peer to peer communication network
We exploit word of mouth communication networks. We recruit, train and support local residents who are influential in their communities to communicate resonant and positive messages to their peers. These are often more trusted and effective message carriers than service providers themselves.

Creating shared challenges
Using a variety of feedback mechanisms  we identify issues of concern to the whole community (long-standing and newer residents), such as anti-social behaviour. Residents are then encouraged and empowered to work together to lead a campaign, and then work with relevant strategic partners to effect change.

Improving how the council listens
We develop and implement new engagement techniques such as ‘neighbourhood walks’, ‘community conversations’, ‘just listening’ events and question and answer sessions.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 24 June 2009 16:04