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People need the headspace & the ability to feel that they can operate in a systems leadership way to authentically work in place. Otherwise, you're just organisations working in a place, you're not working collaboratively to do anything at a system level
Last year we launched our first report looking at the relevance of Place in post-pandemic London. We are now pleased to publish the second report in this series, which shares learning from approaches to place-based funding from our neighbours elsewhere in the UK and internationally. When is place the right approach to take, and what are its limitations? How can we understand the real power dynamics in a place, and how can we re-think the way we use ours? Is scale an issue, or a distraction?
As part of our wider work on building our links with other cities, supported by the National Lottery Community Fund, we invited other cities to share with us their perspectives on these issues and other key learning points as they have shaped and developed their funding practice. Featuring examples from Montreal and New York to Bradford and Scotland, these examples share how they’ve challenged assumptions and practice around impact, scale, and attribution. Common to all is a sense that it is the relationships with communities – and the intentionality of our approach to building these - which have to underpin any place-based work.
It's really delicate how we then navigate that, and we have to do it on a case-by-case basis…It's how we listen. It's how we project ourselves. It's how we respect and pay attention
Whether you already describe yourself as a place-based funder or are exploring place for the first time, we encourage you to reflect on how these relate to the place you are in and work to support it in London, taking the lessons learnt by others in the field to build an understanding of why and how place might be a useful frame for your work.
If you’d like to get more involved in our place-based work, please contact Helen.
Download the report here.