Regulating engagement through dissent

This chapter focuses on the work co-produced with Coexist, one of the Productive Margins programme's community partners, in response to the theme of ‘spaces of dissent’. Coexist is a social enterprise set up to create a space where different communities and individuals can grow, share, collaborate, and learn what it is to live in coexistence with each other. Coexist performs the role of regulator, responsible for the safety of the users of Hamilton House and ensuring that the project is economically sustainable. In the period covered by the research, Coexist discovered problems reconciling its core purpose and values — being open to all and providing space for the community — with the challenge of managing the unequal power relations that make this vision potentially unachievable. Here, the chapter foregrounds notions of dissent not only as a practical question facing Coexist, but also as a means of addressing wider issues of privilege, disagreement, and other difficult aspects of socially engaged work.