Most of the time, most of us manage to steer a reasonably safe course through our interactions, like a sanitised version of bumper cars. But from time to time, we find ourselves facing a situation, a set of beliefs or an entrenched negative expectation that we cannot manoeuvre around safely and peacefully. How do we manage the collision that follows?

British cities are becoming increasingly diverse, with rapidly changing demographics across the country as a result of rising population turnover and global connectivity (Dennett and Stillwell, 2008). This brings with it serious challenges for communities, as well as national and local governments, around maintaining positive relationships between individuals and groups in the face of growing demand on shrinking resources, while building cohesion across increasingly separate and sometimes polarised value bases (Minority Ethnic Network, 2011). These are not new issues, but they are current and pressing ones, as the 2011 riots in Britain highlighted.

This chapter looks at the emergence of Community Resolve, a Bristol-based social enterprise and charity that uses a distinctly different approach to community or public engagement than that of many larger and mainstream bodies, both in the variety of Bristol ‘publics’ it works with, and in terms of how it manages relationships both externally – with service users, other agencies and so on – and within the organisation itself. The focus on conflict as a route of engagement is innovative for a British city, and is based on the view that equipping people to manage their daily tensions in a harmonious way underpins the success of a raft of other social policy, such as education, housing or employment. In particular, the organisation is engaged in thinking about the power structures that allow or disallow engagement, and has worked on linking the status networks in the city that impact upon individual, group and community conflict at both a relational and a structural level.

The chapter is written from my particular perspective as a conflict practitioner of 20 years’ standing and founder of Community Resolve. In addition, I have been increasingly interested in the role of ‘bridge’ between academic theory and actual practice around conflict work in the UK, and a number of influential thinkers – especially practitioner-academics – have helped form the direction of our work in Bristol, influencing the methods we use to create movement in blocked relationships and personal trajectories.