Yes — if funders step up

Today we’re less than a month away from the first deadline for neighbourhoods to submit plans for Pride in Place, the UK government’s £1.5bn investment in doubly disadvantaged communities. (You can read more here: https://lnkd.in/eE2N5qfk ) As the work gets up and running, I’ve been in lots of conversations about the supporting infrastructure that will be needed. I thought I’d share some notes in the interests of joining dots. NB: This is all still very fluid. The question that keeps coming up is how we stop Pride in Place from being just another initiative. The risk is that we end up, 10 years and £ billions later, with some renovated high streets but social capital and civic agency still low and falling, and a sense of places falling further behind. (In which case we will probably also be living under some flavour of destructive populist government.) If we get this right, however, Pride in Place could help to bring about a tipping point. Not on its own of course— the trends at work are far too big for that — but because (a) it adds momentum to a movement that has already been growing for years. And (b) it comes together with wider plans — e.g. the NHS neighbourhoods agenda — in a way that multiples impact. For that to happen, Pride in Place will need to be approached with the right mentality — not as a technocratic project but as part of a much wider and deeper handing over of power to communities. And it will also need to be supported by infrastructure, so that it’s not just 300 separate plans. What kind of infrastructure? Here are some examples: 1️⃣ Methods for activating community agency. We now have a mature set of methods for activating community agency. For example, I’m doing some work with Public Life on their wonderful Citizen First model, run previously in Essex and currently live in Liverpool. There would be value in codifying these models and making it as easy as possible for local areas to use these methods (e.g. maybe we can make it simpler for local areas to collaborate to run an incubator together, across a region). There is also work to be done on funding and delivery models. For example, what is the role of keystone institutions — Combined Authorities, Universities, football clubs, and even major philanthropists — collaborating to fund these methods in their regions? [Continued in the replies...!] | 39 comments on LinkedIn

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Demos is Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank. We produce original research, publish innovative thinkers and host thought-provoking events.

Demos is Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank. We produce original research, publish innovative thinkers and host thought-provoking events.

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