People Powered Places

When I think about being place-based and what it means, it conjures up a number of interesting thoughts. I think about an ecosystem of residents, public bodies, anchor institutions, the voluntary community and faith sector, community foundations, funders, corporates; and the list goes on.. . and the action happening locally within this ecosystem, making it part of the fabric in a place. So, place to me is not necessarily geography but more about the interplay between relationships and assets and how they can be harnessed effectively for the common good of the local community. 

Devolution -  a word often banded about in the political sphere -  has seen a deliberate shift from local to hyper-local spaces. We’ve seen the Big society agenda and what that meant to local people; we now hear ‘People Powered Communities’ with an explicit focus on community-led approaches. In other words, there is a growing movement that looks to put local people’s voices at the heart of change.

The focus on People Powered communities and encouraging groups to be independently active and attract their own funding has removed barriers. For example, at the London Borough of Newham, we want to ensure Newham residents are meaningfully and effectively involved in local democracy. As a result we have established our local Community Assemblies, the largest participatory budgeting programme in the country as well as the first Permanent Standing Citizens assembly.

Big local is a great example of effective place-based funding in action; PEACH ( People’s Empowerment Alliance of Custom House) was successful in securing grant funding from Big Local over a 10-year period. Their purpose is to empower their community in Custom House (a local area in Newham) by supporting each other and to build their strength as a community so that they can have a say over decisions that affect them.

Over the years I’ve learnt a lot about funding and being place-based. Place-based funding is integral to the way we fund and having a real commitment to learning about the place and respect for what is already there.

At Newham, we’ve recently launched the Newham Funders' Forum in collaboration with London Funders. This is a space for funders currently active in Newham to come together to hear more about funding in the borough, share insights, and discuss how we might be able to support greater collaboration in the future.  A key focus going forward will be to maximise the different strengths, insights, skills & relationships among funders to increase the impact of what and how we fund in Newham, recognising that we as funders might not have all of the answers.

To truly demonstrate effective placed-based funding, one needs to invest in people and relationships. Starting with strong local leaders for some funders has been integral, for others, this can perpetuate the issue of the ‘hard to reach’ or ‘easy to ignore’. To be effective at place-based funding,  the National Lottery Community fund has put it  succinctly in their Putting good ingredients in the mix publication:

1. Funders must listen deeply, facilitate effectively and challenge appropriately.
2. Agree realistic ambitions and clear objectives.
3. Work on what’s possible, build on local assets and invest in potential.
4. Working separately with different communities may be needed to begin with, to build confidence and trust.
5. Giving power to local people is an important component of achieving and sustaining change, however, “over ‘romanticising’ community members can perhaps be as disempowering in the long term as the failure to share power – they don’t have all the answers and cannot be expected to”.
6. Partnerships or consortia can effectively bring together organisations that may not have worked together before. This can be done by making collaboration a requirement of funding applications.
7. Partnerships can help distribute power, but tensions and disagreements need to be worked through, funders have an important opportunity to offer support and constructive challenge.
8. Agreeing on the right lead organisation is vital; it doesn’t automatically have to be the ‘obvious’ choice, such as a local authority.

Like many boroughs, we are looking at how we can embrace and put these principles into practice. By working collectively, across sectors and communities, we can already see that the residents in Newham feel they have a greater say in how decisions affect their lives.