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You are here: Home / Archives for Localism

Neighbourhood approaches to public services: research and event to mark 10 years of the NANM

May 16, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Images clockwise from top right: Bradford MBC, Roger Bunting (Flickr), Nick Richards (Flickr), Wikimedia commons, and James Clarke (Flickr)

Are you involved in a neighbourhood or locality approaches to local public services?  This could be as a public sector employee, elected Member, volunteer, or community worker.

To mark our 10th anniversary we are conducting an important piece of research to build up a picture of neighbourhood or locality approaches across England in 2018 – where it being used, what models are in place, and what factors are likely to affect its future.

The research involves a survey which we hope you can contribute to. If you have not yet completed it, please take part here >>  https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/NANM2018

The survey results will be triangulated with a literature review of the evolution of neighbourhood approaches to date, and horizon-scanning of what is emerging around neighbourhoods and localism, in the UK and further afield.  The finished research will be made openly available and we hope it will provide a valuable tool for those directly involved in delivering or managing neighbourhood approaches, as well as policy-makers and research in local public services and localism.

The research will be published at a free-to-attend national event we are hosting from 10-4 on Thursday 5 July 2018 at the Whitechapel Ideastore, London.

Book you place here.

You can keep in touch with further news on this research and the July event by joining our mailing list using the sign-up form on this page.

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Filed Under: Event, Event news, Featured, Research Tagged With: events, Localism, neighbourhoods

Our “Spotlight on Communities” event – 27 January 2017

February 8, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

Access all the presentations from the day here on our post-event resources page HERE.

For us events are about the power of making connections – between the people in the room, between like-minded groups and networks – and within local communities.

Access all the presentations from the day here on our post-event resources page HERE.

Some call these ‘intentional networks’ – created through personal relationships, not structure charts – and for specific purposes as well as mutual support and professional development. Almost everyone among the seventy-five people in the room knew at least one other person, some knew many more.  A few discovered connections with people they initially thought were strangers.

Interests and goals overlapped.  The common thread was enabling individual citizens to have more influence over their neighbourhoods regardless of income, social status, skills, or confidence.

Real-life examples were shared from York the hosts, plus Barnsley, Wakefield, Durham, and Bradford.  The fact these places are relatively close made examples seem more relevant.

Most shared the view that these ways of working need human and financial resources to happen, but in today’s financial climate that requires strong arguments to budget holders and funders – based on hard, compelling evidence.  Experiences on this score were listened to with interest.

Many also shared the view that this is about more than minor adjustments to ways of working but something bigger, and more radical – a new mindset about how local amenities and services are controlled and delivered – and about the relationship between citizens and local government.

The day left us tired but inspired – and as ever, it sparked as many new questions as were answered – around demonstrating social value, partnerships with volunteers, sharing power, sharing budgets… 

The risk, is that conversations ends just as they start to get somewhere.  The true measure of success for days like this is whether we can find ways for those who took part to pick up the conversation another time, move forward, and draw new people and networks in.

So our final question is – who wants to host the next stage of this conversation?

To find out more about the event or help us plan another just drop a line to ben@neighbourhoodmanagement.net

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Filed Under: Event, Event news, Featured Tagged With: events, Localism, neighbourhoods

RSA Blog: Devo-Big and small acts of kindness

June 12, 2015 by Paul Leave a Comment

In a blog post on the RSA web site, Paul Buddery considers the role of localism against the backdrop of a government increasingly committed to devolution.

He suggests that after years of argument, counter-argument and downright inertia, devolution’s moment has arrived.  Big is once again beautiful. But where does this leave localism? While devolution is a technical change, localism is best understood as a philosophy – a theory or attitude that can guide decision making. One reason that small can still be beautiful is that a knowable space may be a good environment for reciprocal altruism.

Over the coming months the RSA will be teasing out different localist assumptions, testing their weight and applications in an attempt to ensure that the benefits of devolution are fully realized.

Read Paul’s full blog post on the RSA Blog. [Source: RSA Blog 29 May 2015]

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Filed Under: Neighbourhood News Tagged With: big society, community, devolution, Localism, regions

Local devolution is not big devolution in miniature

February 25, 2015 by ben Leave a Comment

Dolls in the Rain by byjoelodge on FlickrWe would argue it’s more human, more interesting, and more radical by far.

We have heard the word “Devolution” everywhere over the past six months;  from Scotland’s referendum, to new financial and political powers for Manchester, Leeds and  Sheffield.  We have also heard increasingly about groups of local activists seizing the initiative in their own communities – to re-open a local pub, to save libraries, or to win contracts to deliver services previously run by local authorities.

The temptation is to see these developments as similar responses at different scales to the same issues; scepticism of Whitehall and Westminster politics, disillusionment with ‘big’ power and big projects, and a widespread sense of traditional power seeming distant and disconnected from daily human local lives.

One reading of all this is that the big devolutionary tilt – in Scotland, and in the English city regions – now just needs to be replicated or given another shove, on a smaller scale and we’ll have achieved ‘more power to local communities’?

We are not so sure.  When we meet with others involved in neighbourhood and community projects we often hear them describe their Town Hall or County Halls as feeling just as distant as Whitehall.  For many people it seems that shifting power from Westminster to their own city council or local authority doesn’t lead to them feeling decisions are being taken closer to them, or that they have more control.  It’s just one group of decision-makers ‘somewhere else’ being replaced by another.  The headline priorities of newly empowered cities reinforce this: grand transport schemes and other infrastructure projects; steel and glass, rather than people and communities.  The human element is often reduced to workforce statistics – reinforcing our concern that future ‘devolved’ decisions of re-invigorated cities will feel no more focused on local communities than Whitehall’s decisions today (see high speed rail, housing, and healthcare).

And if you study what the more ambitious local authorities are saying about getting closer to communities and neighbourhoods is it really about surrendering decision-making power and budgets to communities?  In some cases it is – but more often the stated goals are about building cleverer administrative systems for tailoring services and pre-empting needs.  This is smart, necessary and important if public services are to meet spiralling demand, but it is not the same as devolving power, money, and decisions to villages, estates and neighbourhoods.

Yet, almost in a parallel world across the country there is a renewed energy and enthusiasm going into community-led activities to improve or create something right where people live.  We have seen this in the take-up (slow but steadily growing) of ‘community rights’ to create local plans, take over community buildings, or to bid for contracts to run local services.  We have also see it in the amazing energy which has been collected and released by the Big Local programme where £1million has been offered as a catalyst for change in 150 communities.  And then there are myriad examples of new organisations trying to meet pressing needs in their communities in new and imaginative ways, often using technology to turn labour-intensive tasks (like matching users to support, or distributing information) into very simple tasks.

This small and local devolution is not some kind of replica in miniature of city-regional devolution, in many cases it feels like a challenge to the culture and structure of city-regional government.  So while the newly empowered cities may quickly start looking like scaled-down versions of Whiltehall, local devolution looks very different; you could even say, the polar opposite.

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Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Big Local, community rights, devolution, local government, Localism

Five models of localism: which are you?

November 26, 2013 by Paul Leave a Comment

What does effective representation and accountability look like ? Does it look the same at local authority, ward and neighbourhood level? Can academic theory and research help? If there are differences, do we have the language to discuss them?

The next NANM open space workshop, Five models of localism: which are you?, is on Wednesday, 4 December 2013, 10:30 to 15:30 (coffee from 10:00) at The University of Manchester, Sackville Street Campus (nr Manchester Piccadilly Station), Manchester. You can book on-line at Eventbrite.

In their recent paper Who is accountable in localism? Liz Richardson (University of Manchester) and Catherine Durose (University of Birmingham) identify five models of local accountability based on new research and a review of existing literature. They call their first model the ‘British Political Tradition’ in which power and influence is hierarchical and public agencies see citizen involvement happening mainly at local elections when the public’s role is either as voter, or candidate. Community participation efforts therefore focus only on encouraging more people to stand for election, or to turn out and vote.

At the other end of their scale they describe a model which constantly seeks the public’s involvement as decision makers and problem solvers. In this model, local public bodies see power as coming from many directions and their own role is one of mobiliser, enabler, and convenor.

It is self-evident most of those involved in neighbourhood working aspire to an enabling model. But how can we test the extent that practical experiences of communities match what we aspire to?

That is the question that we’ll explore during the workshop.

To start Liz Richardson will introduce us to the five models she and Catherine Durose have proposed, and explain how they are intended as a practical guide or diagnostic to enable others to test what models of local accountability exist in practice.

We will then convene open space discussions to enable participants to identify which model they think they are working in themselves. This will be a participative day and we hope everyone attending will contribute from their own first hand experiences.

You can find out more about the event and book your place on our page on Eventbrite.

We have funding to cover the costs of this event, which means we can make it free to attend. But we will gratefully accept contributions towards the cost of catering and logistics. Our suggested contribution is £10, which would also entitle you to become a member of the NANM for two years from the date of the event.

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Filed Under: Event, Featured Tagged With: accountability, Localism, neighbourhoods, representation, research

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