Do With - A conversation with Cormac Russell and Adam Lent
Cormac Russell’s interview with Cormac Russell and Adam Lent offers a powerful philosophical and practical foundation for the emerging “Do With” movement that People’s Powerhouse is helping to lead. The conversation explores the limitations of traditional institutional models and argues for a deeper shift towards community-led change, relational democracy, and neighbourhood-based power.
At the heart of the interview is Cormac Russell’s belief that communities are not simply recipients of services, but active producers of wellbeing, care, safety and change. Drawing on his early experiences working in residential childcare in Ireland, Russell reflects on how the move from large institutions to “community care” often failed because systems removed people from institutions without rebuilding the relationships and community structures around them. His central critique is that while institutions frequently speak about community, they rarely treat community itself as the primary vehicle for care and transformation.
This directly connects to the emerging principles of the Do With movement. “Do With” represents a challenge to traditional top-down approaches to policy, engagement and public services. Rather than designing solutions for communities or imposing change onto them, the movement advocates working alongside people, recognising local strengths, lived experience, and informal networks as essential forms of expertise. This closely aligns with People’s Powerhouse’s core belief that “when Northern people’s voices are actively listened to in a neutral way, better decisions are made.” 
A major theme throughout the interview is the distinction between doing “to”, “for”, “with”, and ultimately “by” communities. Russell acknowledges that “with” approaches are important, but argues that genuine empowerment begins by understanding what people can already do themselves or with their neighbours before institutions intervene. This mirrors People’s Powerhouse’s mission “to play a transitional role in helping people advocate for themselves.” The Do With movement therefore becomes not simply a participation exercise, but a deeper rethinking of power, where institutions become enablers rather than directors of change.
Russell also identifies what he calls the “iron rule” of institutions: that institutional priorities often overpower community-first values. Even well-meaning systems can unintentionally suppress local leadership through bureaucracy, commissioning processes, procurement systems and rigid service structures. This critique strongly resonates with the work emerging through People’s Powerhouse conventions and Coast-to-Coast listening activities, where repeated themes have centred around the need to “democratise democracy”, amplify “soft intelligence”, and strengthen the bridge between communities and power holders. 
The interview repeatedly emphasises neighbourhoods as the “primary unit of change”, suggesting that health, safety, resilience and democratic participation are fundamentally relational and local. This links closely to Coast-to-Coast’s listening methodology, which prioritises:
trusted local listeners
everyday conversations
lived experience
informal community settings
reflective dialogue rather than extractive consultation. 
The Local Listener model itself reflects the principles of Do With by recognising that meaningful insight and connection already exist within communities and that trusted local people are often best placed to facilitate conversations and uncover hidden strengths. 
Importantly, the interview does not romanticise communities or suggest institutions are unnecessary. Instead, it argues for a new relationship between systems and people. Russell suggests that institutions should become “alongsiders” that create space, remove barriers, and support communities to build their own capacities. Success, in this framing, is not permanent institutional involvement, but creating enough confidence, connection and local agency that communities can increasingly shape their own futures.
This idea closely supports the wider ambitions within the People’s Powerhouse strategy, particularly:
strengthening democratic participation
enabling local empowerment
creating more truthful conversations between people and power
ensuring lived experience shapes decision-making. 
Ultimately, the interview provides a philosophical underpinning for the Do With movement. It argues that the future of democratic renewal, public service reform, and community wellbeing depends less on delivering solutions to people and more on creating the conditions in which people can shape solutions together. In this sense, Do With is not simply a method of engagement. It is a different way of understanding power itself: relational rather than transactional, participatory rather than extractive, and rooted in the everyday strengths and wisdom of communities.