We are working with selected local communities in Birmingham and London to enable them to monitor and express their unfolding experience of cuts in public spending and plans for a ‘Big Society’, and to develop strategies and methods for turning these changes, as far as possible, to their advantage.
Working closely with residents in each locality, we aim to build knowledge about how they experience the effects of spending cuts and concurrent efforts to build a ‘Big Society’. Locally generated testimony of day-to-day experience in a time of rapid and radical change will enable local residents and civil society organisations to reflect on their own lives and activities, and to gain insights to shape and drive their own decisions and actions.
We will work with local partners to identify opportunities for improving the quality of their lives in the context of these changes, and to develop strategies that will enable them to realise such opportunities. They will identify barriers and how to address them, and design substantive action to achieve their objectives.
The core economy is profoundly influenced by the rules, protocols, and power relations that emanate from the state and the market. Our focus with this project is on building social and economic capacity in the face of the changing relationship between state and citizen: strengthening social networks, social cohesion and community based assets; enhancing opportunities to generate income through employment and enterprise; and finding resources – human and financial – to support these activities. We will draw together learning from local experience and work with our partners to explore wider implications for policy and practice – to be communicated in ways that influence decisions at local and national levels.
This project is supported by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, the City Bridge Trust and the LankellyChase Foundation.
For further information contact julia.slay@neweconomics.org