Currently, most people living in de-industrialised communities are powerless to shape the decisions made about their areas. John Boswell, John Shillick and colleagues at University of Southampton write that deindustrialised communities are:
“…‘held back’ by a systemic lack of power. Local people have lost effective control over their lives, livelihoods, and the future development of their area, and are instead reliant on the discretionary power of various, often distant, decision makers… the challenges facing ‘left behind’ places go beyond particular deficits in employment, investment, or social infrastructure, and instead points to a more fundamental lack of power in the hands of local citizens.”
ONS recorded a decrease of 8 percentage points between 2014/15 and 2021 in the percentages of people agreeing that others in their neighbourhood can be trusted – Office for National Statistics (2021) Social capital in the UK April 2020 to March 2021
Putnam R (2000) Bowling Alone
Our chance to reconnect: Final report of the Talk project (2021) – 73% of people saying that they would like our society to be closer and more connected in future
Robinson D (2023) In conversation: Mayday Trust and Relationships Project
Feedback from an attendee at our November 2023 Celebration of Grimsby
Boswell J, Denham J, Furlong J, Killick A, Ndugga P, Rek B, Ryan M & Shipp J (2020) Place-based Politics and Nested Deprivation in the U.K.: Beyond Cities-towns, ‘Two Englands’ and the ‘Left Behind’
A new approach is needed to rebalance power to ensure that citizens are central to the long-term transformation of the places they love. Evaluations of place-led change have shown the benefits of trusting citizens, in an area, to own funding and deliver for their area.
Funding is just one element of the backing leaders need. Operationally, our goal is to create an ecosystem of support, bringing different worlds together, new expertise to the table and create a forum for collective change – proactively working to remove power asymmetries. We see everyone as a citizen of the place with an equal contribution to the change. We intentionally design interactions to reinforce our equality and shared humanity. One social leader mentioned that at one of our events “I was able to sit next to [senior politician] and we just talked about our lives. I’d never done anything like that before with someone in [their] position.”
In Grimsby we work alongside inspired leaders to bring complementary skills, either from our own team or from a national network of partners. For example, we worked with national communications agency The Change Arc who ran a series of workshops in Grimsby on how you can better tell your story and link it to a collective narrative. Partners at New Local and We’re Right Here came to share their experience and perspective on new ways communities and the council can work together. Over more than 10 events in 2023 we brought local and national partners together to find common cause, share expertise, build partnerships, and connect to resources.
We have recognised the power inherent in people coming together, supporting each other and sharing a vision for change. Within a relatively short period of time that has fostered new, positive relationships – one partner commented “One thing that kept coming up with people I spoke to was how the relationship between the community and the council had changed [in a] year.”
You can read about all of the principles and the approach in this essay