The week of the "riots" in London and across the country, we reached out for and met with our neighbours of many communities - asking how were people being affected, and how could we bring our neighbourhood together for justice and peace.

Tuesday morning, after a night of riots/disturbances/unrest/uprisings (or whatever you want to call it) as close as Birmingham we had a staff planning day booked - we took a couple of hours out of our staff planning day to discuss what we knew and how we felt about what was happening and to decide what we wanted to do about it.

We decided that on Wednesday afternoon – our usual open drop in session – we would go out into the square and listen to local people, to get a better picture of what the effects on local people were.

With "Here to listen" badges on, seven staff and volunteers spent an hour or so hanging out in the square, asking a wide range of people "How are the riots affecting you?". Everyone we approached had something to say - the most striking thing was just how much wider and richer a range of opinions and perspectives we heard in that hour than any of us had seen in the media. We learned a lot.

We also decided to call a community meeting to discuss two questions:-

• How can we stay united, hopeful and strong – and at the same time keep our communities safe?
• How can we stand up for our communities in the face of racism, cuts, greed and unemployment? 

As well as leafleting the area, we advertised the meeting through Hillz Community radio. Taking the leaflets around was a good opportunity to chat to the shop keepers, who were all happy to carry the leaflet/poster.

By Friday, things were quieter and people were calm and we began to think that maybe nobody would come to our meeting (after being worried that we would have far too many if the disturbances had continued).

However, we had 19 people come to the meeting – a really good number for the size of our building and to be sure that everyone got a chance to be heard and to hear other people. We had a good mixture of people too, and we organised the meeting so that we all met in small groups to discuss a series of questions. People got a chance to discuss the issues in the small groups with some feedback in between - and it seemed that everyone really valued the chance to talk and listen to each other.

There was a wide mixture of views but people were respectful and learned a lot about other people's perspectives. The feedback from the meeting was very positive and, despite the fact that we were fairly small in number, we were very pleased that we have such thoughtful and committed people in our community, prepared to discuss difficult issues in an intelligent and sensitive way.