🤝 How do we live in the 21st century — together?

🤝 How do we live in the 21st century — together?

A few years ago, I wrote a reflection on how different types of citizens respond to crisis — not just financially or politically, but emotionally and socially. That question has stayed with me. Especially now, when it feels like we’re all being pulled in different directions, exhausted by the pressure to perform and the precarity of trying to belong.

Every week, I meet people in public services trying to work out what solidarity means in a world shaped by isolation, inequality, and algorithmic feeds. Not in theory, but in the everyday: how we connect, who we trust, and how we act.

And what I’m learning is this: we can’t fix this alone. But we can notice, nurture and amplify the small, real moments where people choose to show up for one another.

🧠 Beyond survival of the self: what kind of citizen do we become?

The pressures of modern life aren’t just economic. They’re deeply psychological. We’re taught to curate ourselves, compete with our neighbours, and stay busy enough to forget what we’re missing. But in crisis, different ways of being emerge.

In my early work on citizen typologies, I explored how people relate to the state, to one another, and to their own agency. From egocentric to alienated, apathetic to altruistic, each citizen type isn’t a label — it’s a way of coping. And sometimes, of changing.

The question now is: how do we build the social glue that helps people move between these roles with more confidence, care, and contribution?

🌍 What we’re seeing in practice

Here are some signals I’m noticing from councils, communities and movements across the UK and beyond. Each of them shows what it looks like to build shared resilience:

1. Making systems visible

Wigan Council’s Deal invites residents and staff to co-own change. It’s a social contract that builds on trust, mutual contribution and community strength. Services are reimagined around relationships.

At Adur & Worthing Councils, we’ve built our mission-based approach around making systems more transparent. Through our Mission Control model, multi-disciplinary teams work together across directorates and with communities to prioritise actions that reflect shared local priorities.

Try this: Create space for staff to map the informal relationships that keep services running. Who are your community allies? Where does trust already exist?

2. Creating porous places

Granby Four Streets in Liverpool shows how residents can reclaim neglected streets and transform them into places of belonging. They’ve built homes, a winter market, a community land trust, and a new sense of identity.

In Worthing, the Colonnade House Creative Hub has become a civic space where artists, designers and residents come together to explore community issues through exhibitions and conversations.

Try this: Run a walking conversation with residents to ask: what places feel welcoming? What spaces help you connect with others?

3. Backing collective action, not just individual need

The Social Change Nest supports informal groups and networks with shared finance tools and governance models. They’ve helped hundreds of mutual aid groups access funding and legal infrastructure without losing their informality.

In Adur & Worthing, our Kitchen Table participatory funding programme supports residents with small pots of funding, coaching and community learning to turn their ideas into collective cost-of-living responses — from peer support to neighbourhood meals.

Try this: Offer light-touch support for informal groups instead of always asking them to formalise. Use microgrants, meeting space, or peer coaching.

4. Practising participation as care

Participatory City Foundation in Barking has enabled thousands of residents to run everyday projects: tool libraries, neighbourhood meals, urban farms. It’s practical, social, and human-first.

Through our Thriving Together programme, we’re co-designing the future of our places by working with residents, staff and partners to explore what matters most in their neighbourhoods and how they can shape future services. We’re holding exhibitions, listening sessions, community panels, and deliberative events.

Try this: Shift your participation metrics from number of people to depth of connection. Are people making friends? Learning skills? Coming back?

5. Tapping into emotion as intelligence

Demos’ Civil Warm report shows how polarisation erodes civic trust. But it also highlights ways to rebuild it through storytelling, listening and designing with care.

In Adur & Worthing, our Community Leaders sessions have provided spaces to co-design together. These are not tick-box consultations. They’re spaces to feel heard.

Try this: Ask: how do our communications feel to someone who’s scared, ashamed or angry? Are we building empathy or defensiveness?

🔄 A practical way forward for organisations

If you work in strategy, participation, innovation, delivery or missions, here are five small shifts you can make this quarter:

1. Map your citizen types. Who’s missing from your work? Who’s retreating? Who’s showing up despite everything?
2. Create bridges between them. Pair a democratic citizen with an altruistic one on a shared challenge. Bring in alienated voices through arts or trusted intermediaries.
3. Shift from services to settings. Look at where people already gather (parks, cafes, WhatsApp groups) and support those spaces to thrive.
4. Back micro-contributions. Don’t wait for perfect proposals. Notice the people who are picking up litter, welcoming new neighbours, or sharing food — and amplify them.
5. Be brave about emotion. Acknowledge loss, fear, anger and pride in your strategies and storytelling. Invite honesty over optimism.

🫱🏽‍🫲🏾 Final thoughts: interdependence is the point

None of us fit neatly into boxes. I’ve felt like every type of citizen at different times. What helped me wasn’t a smarter service, or a slicker campaign. It was when someone listened. When I was given a chance to contribute. When I saw that I wasn’t the only one feeling the way I did.

As we face the complex crises of our time — cost of living, climate, loneliness, polarisation — the answer won’t come from any single place. It will come from our ability to stitch ourselves back into connection. To do with, not for. To build coalitions, not just consultations.

If you’re trying to do this too, I’d love to share learning. And if you’ve moved from apathy to action, or alienation to organising — I’d love to hear what helped.

Let’s make interdependence visible. And valuable.

This blog draws on lived experience, public service practice, and insights from Wigan Council, Granby Four Streets, Demos, Participatory City Foundation, The Social Change Nest and Adur & Worthing Councils.