Communities in Their Places
This theme considers the current and potential future role of communities in addressing place-based challenges. Cohesive communities can mobilise social capital, tackle placed-based challenges, and identify avenues to bring about social, economic and environmental improvements in their area.
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However, there is a need to develop better understanding of individual and community behaviours, and how collaborative approaches can help shape social policies and local services that grow connectedness, build interpersonal and institutional trust and the wellbeing economy, as well as increase community resilience, and feelings of safety, health, wellbeing and quality of life.
Key questions which the ‘Communities in their Places theme’ seeks to respond to include:
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Context: What is and should be the role of communities in addressing placed-based challenges?
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Engagement: How can different communities be better engaged to help shape priorities, processes and local services?
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Outcomes: How can communities best be engaged in self-determining in their places?
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Methods: How can co-design and co-production methods be developed and mainstreamed? Where are they appropriate? Where are they less appropriate? Why?
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Funding: How can funders best design funding to drive long-term locally-driven outcomes for communities?
This theme focuses on three different types of place-based community action/ intervention domains and how capacities and capabilities can be developed within each of the domains.
First, we are investigating the role of community business including Community Interest Companies, co-operative businesses and non-profit organisations. Emphasis is placed on drawing together evidence on how community businesses can be engaged and empowered.
Secondly, the theme explores community assets, in particular, how communities come together to deliver place services such as good-bank or youth work or take over public assets such as libraries. An important current area of focus is the impact of the selling-off of public assets in the context of constrained local government finances.
Thirdly, the theme aims to examine community engagement/activism, where communities are engaged in the design, development and delivery of business-as-usual services or new policies/interventions. We are bringing together partners to debate and analyse how community knowledge and expertise can be best harnessed for the benefit of local residents and businesses. We investigate different realms of community impacts and how members of the community, local businesses, and the public institutions serving and governing the community can best collaborate to support the growth of cohesive communities. We are exploring evidence on where change is decided upon versus where it is delivered, key reasons why previous community projects have failed and how these challenges could potentially be overcome in future.
Another central aspect of this theme is understanding what works for engaging communities in terms of place-based policy designed and implemented at a variety of scales. We are exploring interventions within neighbourhoods, across local authorities, across combined authority areas, within specific geographical areas (e.g. rural, coastal) and by central government. Outputs from this theme will outline national community policy levers, how devolved approaches affect local actions, challenges experienced implementing policy and what skills are required by policymakers at various scales to engage with communities.
Whilst predominantly focused on understanding experiences and policies across the four nations of the UK, this strand of Hub activity also has an international angle. The team are seeking to use selected international examples to identify relevant policy lessons for local, regional and national stakeholders in the UK.
The team
LPIP Hub Team
Key Partners
- Professor Chris Chapman (University of Glasgow)
- Tim Davies-Pugh (Power to Change)
- Helen Goulden (The Young Foundation)
- Professor Kathryn Higgins (Queen's University Belfast)
- Paul Manners (National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement)
- Jamie Ounan (Inner Circle Consulting)
- Professor Kiran Trehan (University of York)
- Carly Walker-Dawson (Involve)
- Professor Jane Wills (University of Exeter)
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