Val Birchall reflects on how fragmented cultural funding and governance are undermining place-based cultural development, and argues that local government reorganisation and devolution present a rare opportunity to create a more coherent cultural ecosystem. While Local Government tackles another reorganisation, the promise of devolution and the increasing challenge of funding discretionary services, the government has … Continue reading “Art Without Architecture – The Accidental System for Supporting Cultural Development and Why It Needs Addressing”
Author: Guest
We Are Guest – Part Five
Join LPIP Hub Place Fellow Helen O’Gara as she finishes her blog series ‘We Are Guests’, exploring the felt experience of the community development workforce. This final blog brings knowledge mobilisation into focus and asks what policy creation and implementation should look like. View the other blogs in the series. What should it look like? … Continue reading “We Are Guest – Part Five”
How Does Civic Power Accumulate?
Mark Swift argues that places must move beyond one-off participation initiatives and invest in the civic infrastructure that enables civic capability, confidence, leadership and influence to accumulate across the life course. This blog is based on Mark’s recent report – Building Civic Capability: A Life Course Framework for Place. From participation to capability Over the … Continue reading “How Does Civic Power Accumulate?”
We Are Guests – Part Four
This is the fourth blog in the series ‘We Are Guests’, by LPIP Hub Place Fellow Helen O’Gara. Helen looks at the interaction of policy with the community development workforce based on interviews with four community development professionals. View the other blogs in the series. What is policy? “It’s a messy space, but I sometimes … Continue reading “We Are Guests – Part Four”
Universities and Place-Based Lifelong Learning for Climate Action
Dr Andrew Reeves highlights the key role that civic universities can play in their localities to support learning towards action on climate change through collaboration with a range of public, private and community sector bodies. It has long been established that the societal transformation needed to address the climate emergency relies on commitment and changes … Continue reading “Universities and Place-Based Lifelong Learning for Climate Action”
The Implementation Doom Loop: Why UK Regional Policy Keeps Failing
Dr Glenn Athey argues that the UK’s national policy system is itself a primary, structural cause of the regional economic disparities it repeatedly promises to fix — and sets out how national and local leaders can break the cycle. This blog draws on his Local Policy Innovation Partnership (LPIP) research at the University of Birmingham, … Continue reading “The Implementation Doom Loop: Why UK Regional Policy Keeps Failing”
We Are Guests – Part Three
LPIP Hub Place Fellow Helen O’Gara’s series ‘We Are Guests’ continues with a third blog exploring the community infrastructure and experiences of funding felt by the community development workforce. View the other blogs in the series. “I think what you need is a common something that you can work together on” “They’re almost a … Continue reading “We Are Guests – Part Three”
We Are Guests – Part Two
LPIP Hub Place Fellow Helen O’Gara continues her series on the felt experiences of the community development workforce, ‘We Are Guests’. This second blog explores the emotional experiences involved in working with communities. Other blog in the series: We Are Guests – Part One As I talked with four people, from different parts of the … Continue reading “We Are Guests – Part Two”
We Are Guests – Part One
As part of her Place Fellowship, Helen O’Gara presents a series of blogs exploring the felt experiences of community development professionals. Helen has spent time interviewing four community development practitioners across different parts of the UK who have been in the same place for between 19 and 50 years. The resulting series explores some of the themes, … Continue reading “We Are Guests – Part One”
What Needs To Happen To Make the Civic University Work? Learnings From Queens Communities and Place (QCAP) Belfast
Professor Kathryn Higgins and Dr Andrew Grounds show how QCAP demonstrates that effective civic engagement requires long-term institutional investment and system-level change in funding and incentives. Universities across the UK are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their civic role. Place-based partnerships, community engagement strategies and social value promises feature prominently in institutional strategies, and while … Continue reading “What Needs To Happen To Make the Civic University Work? Learnings From Queens Communities and Place (QCAP) Belfast”