Tariq Bashir, Mike Fitter and Anna Potts introduce an organisation that has been facilitating troubling conversations…
08 September 2025
This is our story of discovery and learning. It's about an evolving group of people, the challenges we have faced along the way, and how we sought to overcome them. At its heart is how Psychology can help in facilitating troubling conversations which might just change the world.
First, let's introduce ourselves.
Who is Your Neighbour? (WiYN?) provides and facilitates spaces in which people – white people in less well-off areas in particular – can speak about their experiences of living where they do, and listen to others do the same. We welcome subjects that people can feel 'shut down' for raising – like race, immigration, culture. The changes taking place in our world.
Tariq Bashir, our Director, is a Londoner. About 20 years ago, he moved to Yorkshire. He is good at making a decent cup of tea and doing dialogue – conversations in which people work at listening, hearing and understanding each other. Mike Fitter, a trustee and founder, is a Chartered Psychologist with a background in organisational psychology and a focus on supporting social cohesion and community development. Anna Potts leads on the communications aspects of our work and is also an integrative counsellor / psychotherapist.
The training that WiYN? delivers includes sessions in which we invite people to explore how they would respond if they heard statements such as these:
'I'm not racist, but we're just full. There's not enough room for any more.'
'In public you shouldn't speak a different language… only English.'
'I'm sick of immigrants sponging off us who pay our taxes.'
'I hope they all drown… even the children'
We invite you to do just that as well: take a pause now, and consider how you would respond.
Our three principles
Perhaps you'll best get a feel for how we might respond through our guiding principles. In the
words of Tariq:
Better out than in
It's better to say a thing than not say it.
When we started WiYN? there was a lot of 'You can't say that'. You could say it with your mates, with your family, in private. But outside, in public, there were things you couldn't say, you'd get shut down.
Feeling that you are being shut down about things that bother you, when you feel the world is changing – that causes frustration and resentment. Being able to say what worries you is really important.
Most people are alright
Most people are sincere, good-hearted and well-intentioned. But there are organised groups whose purpose is to blame minorities, and make their lives difficult.
Who gains when people are feeling shut down and resentful? They do, the groups that are trying to stir up trouble. They take advantage of people who are feeling anxious, worried and frustrated.
Those groups that are stirring things up, they are not most people. People who take part in the conversations that we hold are just people. They have an opportunity in the conversation to talk openly about the things that matter to them.
There will be things that get said that might be difficult to hear. But it's people saying what's on their mind, in their gut. There's got to be a space for people to be able to do that. If we can help to foster spaces where people get to be sincere and good-hearted, if someone does say something that does cause some hurt, they've not set out to do that. There's not the malice.
Curiosity is good
The thing we are trying to achieve in WiYN? is people being curious, asking questions, wanting to know stuff.
So, in every conversation we hold, what we are looking for is everyone coming out with more questions than when they went in – wanting to know more things. And that includes us: "I've heard something in that conversation that really got me thinking."
That's everyone in the room, including our facilitators, wanting to know more, wanting to understand more.
What we are not trying to achieve is – "I want you to think like I do, or have the same opinion as I've got".
A beginning in faith communities
Perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves in the story. Let's revisit our origins.
Starting in 2004, faith leaders in Sheffield published public statements each year in advance of local, General and European elections. The statement expressed concern about increased polarisation in communities because of targeting of minorities. At this time the British National Party (BNP) was doing increasingly well in local and European elections.
By 2010, this was recognised as too remote. Faith Leaders sought a way to engage directly with people in South Yorkshire drawn to the BNP. Mike Fitter was a member of the Sheffield Faith Leaders group and has been involved with WiYN? since the original idea.
At this time, mainstream politicians seemed not to know how to engage with white voters who were drawn to the message that the BNP were putting out – other than to tell them they had wrong views. This meant that the BNP had free rein. They listened to people's concerns, took them seriously, and offered their solutions. 'BNP is the Labour Party your Grandad voted for', proclaimed their flyers.
A working group of Faith Leaders came up with an alternative that seemed worth trying – to talk with small groups of people concerned about immigration, Muslims, change in their or neighbouring communities.
We developed a proposal that was funded for three years by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Our focus was communities in South Yorkshire where 1) the BNP was doing well in local elections and 2) someone invited us to work with a local group because of concerns they had about views expressed by their community members.
Over the first three years, requests tended to come from ministers of Christian churches in predominantly less well-off white areas (small towns and villages near larger urban conurbations).
Initially WiYN? had a project manager and a team of group facilitators – mostly recruits from Mediation Sheffield, a local charity commissioned to help develop the methodology. After two years, when Tariq joined us, developments became in-house.
Early research findings and methodology development
At the outset a social sciences PhD researcher (Richard Slade) was contracted to research and evaluate this initial phase, working closely with the development team. The methodology was described as 'safe space' intra-community dialogue (see Slade & Steels, 2016).
In 2017, findings from a laboratory study were published which demonstrated that when high quality listening skills were used (non-judgemental, empathic, respectful), speakers' attitude structure can be changed (see Itzchakov et al., 2017). This was affirming for us, because at the heart of our method is the view that empathy leads to empathy. People being heard, being taken seriously, their experience being valued, is a basis for them being able to be empathetic towards others – including the 'other' who they are speaking about in our facilitated dialogue.
Later, we ceased describing our groups as offering a 'safe space' because the term was shifting its meaning: one meaning that became widely known and was used pejoratively of institutions described as 'woke' ,such as universities, was that of excluding those with different views.
The WiYN? development team and the researcher worked together to develop the group work methodology. Facilitators worked in pairs, chosen from a pool, choice influenced by the characteristics of the specific dialogue session.
A key learning in the first three years was that the time and work that was required between the initial contact with a local group and the readiness for group facilitation could be substantial – sometimes six months of relationship building from the time of initial contact. We recognised the importance of going slowly. Building relationships was key, and this is still the case 12 years later.
Because of the need for slow and careful development we recruited community development workers. Their role was to promote our offer, work with local individuals and groups, then brief and hand over to facilitators when the group was ready. This led usually to two or three sessions of an hour and a half each. The development worker and researcher would follow up. This might lead to further collaboration guided by the development worker, the nature of which came out of the group conversations and next steps. For example, in a group that was very critical of Muslims but acknowledged that they had never met one, we facilitated a meeting with members of a local mosque who were interested in contact. The aim was simply to meet and chat, over tea and cake. If they wished to continue meeting, we would encourage that, but not provide further facilitation, unless there was an exceptional need.
As our work progressed, we developed partnership working with local groups and organisations who would pick up the continuing element of social contact. Our focus remained on creating the conditions for being interested and ready for this step – building curiosity. We also developed partnerships that brought other specialised practices that complement our work, for example community organising.
We next recognised the need for an Operations Manager to ensure our activities were co-ordinated and delivered. (All our roles are part-time). As the Operations Manager role evolved it also held responsibility for evaluation and learning, feeding into strategic development.
The 'absent other' in dialogues
What at first seems important in the groups that WiYN? facilitates is that they talk about the 'absent other' – and they also talk about themselves and what matters to them. They do this in a way that differs from what is likely in an everyday context. This is explained later in this article, and is also illustrated by particular places and times…
Leicestershire in the 1960s. For us, one of the most relevant field research studies was led by Norbert Elias. It was the 1960s in Leicestershire, when new housing estates were built and people moved from cities which had experienced WW2 bombing. They were the migrant new arrivals. The study was republished as a book in 1994,
The Established and the Outsiders, with a new introductory chapter that summarises the findings and theory.
Their field work describes group dynamics that occur when there is a substantial number of new arrivals, 'the outsiders', that leads to a reaction in 'the established community'. These two communities were indistinguishable in terms of social class, education, employment, religion, race and ethnicity. This research therefore strips bare and reveals the power dynamics of group stigmatising vs. individual prejudice. Difference is reduced to one factor – the duration of living in an area. Thus stigmatisation and scapegoating are described and understood distinct from the dynamics of economic or social inequality, racial or religious discrimination.
The Leicestershire study found that there was a substantial power differential between the two communities – which was entirely due to differences in the degree of organisation of the people. The established community had high internal cohesion and communal control, which was maintained by established families going back two or three generations, social institutions (societies, church, clubs), and gossip (praise of own community, denigration of the newcomers/outsiders). The newcomers were strangers not only in relation to the established residents but also to each other. 'Exclusion and stigmatisation of the outsiders by the established group,' the authors wrote, 'were thus powerful weapons used by the latter to maintain their identity, to assert their superiority, keeping others firmly in their place.'
One way that the power differential was maintained was by the established group ascribing to the whole of the outsider group the bad characteristics of its worst section. By contrast, its self-image was of the good characteristics of its best members. Thus, there was always evidence to show that their group was good and the other group bad.
Regarding the members of the village (the established community) as prejudiced does not adequately address the situation. The dynamic was maintained by group stigmatisation. 'Thus one misses the key to the problem usually discussed under headings such as "social prejudice", if one looks for it solely in the personality structure of individual people. One can find it only if one considers the figuration formed by the two (or more) groups concerned, or in other words, the nature of their interdependence.'
This is maintained by the imbalance of power and the tensions inherent in it. One group can only effectively stigmatise another group as long as it is well established in positions of power from which the stigmatised group is excluded.
South Yorkshire in the 21st century. Do these findings and conclusions drawn from 1960s Leicestershire apply to 21st century South Yorkshire? There is more ethnic diversity now, which means some perceived 'outsiders' more clearly stand out due to appearance and culture, whereas in 1960s Leicestershire the distinguishing characteristics of 'outsiders' were less apparent. That said, one of WiYN?'s facilitators Brad,
notes that being 'from Sheffield' can make one definitely 'other' in South Yorkshire villages.
A significant difference is that the established community in the 1960s was relatively stable and had the resources to self-organise. Contemporary South Yorkshire, especially away from the cities, has been ravaged by economic decline, and defeat. The Miners' strike of the 1980s is still having its impact.
Some of the rioting in the summer of 2024 was outside the asylum hotel near Rotherham, and led to the police being angrily attacked. The police were there to keep order, and to defend the hotel and its occupants. The sense in communities of being overlooked is experienced painfully when the media and some politicians say the State is more committed to migrants than its established communities. People respond with anger, with a sense of betrayal.
The summer of 2024 was also the 40th anniversary of the
Battle of Orgreave – regarded as the key event in the defeat of the Miners' Strike. Its significance is expressed in the documentary film '
Strike: an uncivil war', now available on Netflix. Unresolved trauma does not fade unless processed. The Home Secretary recently announced a long-sought inquiry into the Miners' Strike, violence at Orgreave, and its aftermath (to be chaired by the Bishop of Sheffield). This may help. (95 miners were prosecuted for riot and unlawful assembly and were found not guilty – police had fabricated evidence).
Peace Studies and the 'Succinct moment'
We have also found that a grounding in peace studies and its methodologies is helpful – for example the work of John Paul Lederach, particularly his 2005 book
The Moral Imagination: the Art and Soul of Building Peace.
Our approach to research and development, and indeed to this article, draws on a principle stated by Lederach in the opening chapter of his book:
The academic community, unlike the artistic community, often begins its interaction with a journey into the world by stating a problem that defines both the journey and the interaction.
The artistic community, it seems to me, starts with experience in the world and then creates a journey toward expressing something that captures the wholeness of that feeling in a succinct moment.
The two communities share this in common: Ultimately, at some moment in time, they both rely on intuition. While I have never been a big fan of problem stating, I have come to appreciate the art of posing a good question.
The question this book poses is simple and endlessly complex: How do we transcend the cycles of violence that bewitch our human community while still living in them? I could call this the statement of the problem.
We recognise the '
succinct moment' referred to by Lederach as potentially a transformative moment, at which a shift occurs in a facilitated group. 'Transformation views the presenting issues as an expression of the larger system of relationship patterns. It moves beyond the "episodic" expression of the conflict and focuses on the relational and historical patterns in which the conflict is rooted.'
If and when this 'succinct moment' occurs, it is a point which our facilitators dwell on, draw attention to. Here are a few examples from our facilitated groups, which also serve to showcase our work more broadly:
Members of a Catholic Church, concerned about new arrivals from West Africa, recognised their own collective history of migration (grandparents and great-grandparents) – of being Irish miners who had come to South Yorkshire to work in the mine. They had direct experience of racism and exclusion. Some of the older members recounted (a few from direct memory) that during WW2, they had invited Italian prisoners of war from a nearby camp into their church for Sunday services, 'because they were good singers'.
Another succinct moment arose when the history of anti-Irish feeling was recalled, leading to an expression of empathy towards Muslims and other minorities.
A moment of learning for us – local people said 'We built this place'. (The church, literally, stone by stone.) 'We know migration, it's part of our history… but we expect new people to accept that we made this place, and to respect that.'
A story of anger about gypsy travellers being violent, the conversation building momentum against them. The facilitator invites participants to share their experience of violence in their own communities: 'Who do you know that would as soon knock you out as look at you?' This led to recounting of male violence in those communities, which was a moment of change. A young women observed, 'We thought we were talking about gypsies, but actually we're talking about men being violent.'
A group of women met regularly in a community centre. Two of our female facilitators explored 'prejudice' with them. Although they recognised their own prejudices in some contexts, they were adamant that their strong negative feelings about Muslim women who wore the niqab (full veil) was not a prejudice.
At the end of the session the group was keen to have a further session. The facilitators made a plan. At the beginning of the next session they introduced to the group a female colleague who is of Muslim Arab heritage. She spoke to the women and after a while left the room. Shortly after this a woman in a black niqab came in. Immediately the room went quiet, and there were hushed tones. This person then spoke to them and they realised she was the facilitator who had left the room. There was relief and some excitement. The facilitator then took off the niqab and invited the women to examine it. They were very interested and asked questions about how it felt wearing it – some tried it on when given the opportunity.
Their experiences related to exotic views – on an Arabian charger crossing the desert, and feeling more feminine. It was interesting that the initial prejudice transformed from personal anger and resentment to a sense of allying with the niqab wearer, but from the perspective of a dominant cultural belief – an indication of our collective colonial history, described by Edward Said in his book Orientalism.
Developing our offer nationally
Over the past four years we have further developed our organisation. We made a significant decision to develop our communications strategy and a website; and later, with further funding, we recruited our national development manager. This is enabling us to offer our work nationally. In particular we now offer:
Training in responding to troubling conversations – how to respond to things that are difficult to hear in everyday situations. The challenging statements we shared at the start of this article are examples of ones we can use to explore participants' feelings and reactions; along with the options they have in response, which can include not responding. In this way we learn together the effects of different types of response.
Training in facilitating groups based on our three principles – for groups and organisations who wish to apply our methodology in their own context.
Consultancy and support for partner organisations who wish to learn and apply our methodology.
This is not competency training… skills are important, but equally vital is the empathic, collaborative mindset and framework when 'hard to hear' things are being said. This needs to be embedded in partner organisations, and in their facilitators, their values and beliefs.
We choose our partners carefully.
New research questions, and an invitation
In 2025 we have been awarded a £200,000 grant over four years by the
Paul Hamlyn Foundation to develop our work, and our national offer in particular. We intend to explore some assumptions that underpin our work, formulated as five questions.
To what extent does being heard, taken seriously, and heard with empathy lead to empathy for others and the confidence to question peer consensus, leading to attitude change?
Do we need to ask different questions in different ways to have confidence in our assumptions?
Do external changes – mainstreaming of anti-migrant narrative by politicians, the riots in the summer of 2024, stories of migrant threat that spread rapidly and the ability to mobilise quickly for serious violence – undermine our assumptions?
We also assume that people being able to work through their own identity, individual and collective, helps to build a positive sense of identity without blaming others. This helps undermine anti-minority stories which use perceived threats to identity as a way of blaming others. We haven't developed a way of testing that assumption. How do we do so?
The assumption underlying our national work is that we share our approach, so it is embedded in the work of other organisations/networks. If this is sufficiently widespread and in-depth, will it help lead to reduced hostility and more welcome for migrants? How do we test this?
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