Finding the Balance: Learning across distances
Cath McNally
Delivering the Community Leadership Collective across Scotland means constantly balancing connection and accessibility. The geography alone brings its own challenge. It’s a real commitment, not only in time but in stepping away from community work, family life, and caring responsibilities.
We want to honour that commitment while still holding onto what makes the Collective special: the energy that comes from being together in a room. Online spaces make participation more flexible, yet they can sometimes feel distant. In-person gatherings, meanwhile, have a different kind of richness. They allow for conversation that flows naturally, ideas that build, and a togetherness you can feel – the laughter, the small shared moments, the sense of being part of something larger.
Co-designing the programme means continually walking that line. There are moments when attendance is smaller than planned, when the carefully designed activities need to shift or simplify, and when the weight of distance feels heavy. At times, it’s hard not to wish everyone could be there to share in those collective sparks – the moments that make the room come alive.
But every adjustment is a form of learning. We’ve adapted the format of the programme as we go; increasing the number of in-person sessions and making each one shorter – reducing travel time and making participation easier. We’ve also reduced the number of online sessions, focusing on quality rather than quantity. The online space now has a clearer purpose: to bring in external expertise that complements the Collective’s work, offering participants fresh insight through short sessions centred on information-sharing, light discussion, and Q&A. Meanwhile, the in-person sessions focus on creativity and hands-on collaboration, giving space for playful learning, shared reflection, and connection.
For those who can’t attend, the flexibility to access the same content through The Hive, our online learning resource, means no one is left behind. It’s a different route to learning, but one that still leads back to the Collective – each leader contributing in their own way, in their own time, to a powerful and growing peer network.
This work is, at its heart, about learning in the open. We’re honest that we’re still finding what this balance looks like – between physical presence and flexibility, between participation and practicality. Each change we make reflects something we’ve learned from participants, facilitators, and the realities of life across Scotland’s communities.
It’s not a perfect equation, and maybe it never will be. But in navigating these choices with care, transparency, and agility (something we are becoming more confident with as meaningful collaboration and co-design evolve) the Collective continues to grow stronger, shaped by the lives and rhythms of those who make it what it is.
