A narrative analysis of four UK community project founder: A generativity perspective

As part of the UK government’s ‘Big Society’ agenda, increasing policy drivers have encouraged partnerships between commissioners, service providers and local-level organisations and charities to organise and deliver educational, practical, and emotional support to vulnerable people within communities (National Council for Voluntary Organisation, 2016). Community-based projects require leadership to initiate and enhance service provision, hence the need to explore the experiences of founders of existing projects in order to uncover their accounts of their motivations. In this preliminary study, four project founders (aged 44–69) completed in-depth semi-structured interviews, to identify the events that precipitated their involvement and the experiences that sustain their practices. A narrative analysis identified prominent themes and these were linked to ideas about generativity. This revealed that their leadership roles evolved in response to ‘crisis’ points in their life histories, located in tensions between personal values and dominant discourses. Leadership emerged as a way to navigate these conflicts, with participants drawing upon ‘what worked for me’ to create a community project that would embody their values in an enduring way. This study concludes that the narratives of the four community project founders are consistent with theories of generativity, and future research is needed to fully recognise and nurture leadership figures within communities.