Community Projects Don’t Sit Still

I’ve never seen anything change as fast as a community project.

Not weather. Not moods. Not politics.

Community projects shift faster than language can keep up.

It’s like the moment something becomes “established,” it starts to destabilise. As soon as you think you know what it is, it becomes something else. The centre moves. The edges move. The people move. The needs move.

So I stopped trying to treat them as stable things.

I treat them as always changing.

That changed how I work. I no longer build around permanence. I build around movement. I don’t aim for “holding it together.” I aim for staying responsive.

That’s why words always fail with these projects.

Every statement is already behind.

Every description is already a kind of lie—not because it’s false, but because it freezes something that is moving. Most statements about community work aren’t descriptions. They’re attempts to slow it down, to contain it, to make it legible enough to manage.

But the work doesn’t want to be managed. It wants to be listened to.

I’ve come to think these projects are made of two things:

Language.

And decisions.

Not plans. Not structures. Not models.

Language is what names what is happening right now.

Decisions are what respond to what just changed.

That’s the project. Not the program. Not the branding. Not the framework. Just that living loop: speak → decide → adjust → speak again.

I honestly don’t know how big organisations do it.

They live in slow environments—layers of approval, fixed roles, frozen policies. And then they try to touch work that is fast, volatile, relational, and constantly re-forming. It’s like trying to steer a river with a filing cabinet.

Community projects don’t want stability.

They want attention.

They don’t need to be held together.

They need to be noticed, again and again, as they become something new.

The mistake is thinking change is a problem to solve.

In this work, change is the work.

More posts about:

• Archived About
• When Truth Moves Slower Than Harm
• Community Projects Don’t Sit Still
• The Giveaway Table
• Reflections: A Starting Point