This is the first of five posts setting out our overarching categories of place-based working. Once they are all published, we will share a diagram of the whole ‘field’ and link the pages together for clarity. If this is the first time you have come to this Substack, we suggest looking at our pieces on dimensions and mechanisms before reading these.
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The first category comprises work by civil society networks, groups and organisations to enhance life in a community or neighbourhood of between five and forty thousand people.
This type of work reflects a long tradition of social activism alongside residents in often economically disadvantaged contexts.
There are two distinguishing features of all mechanisms in this category. First, the work is not time limited. The activism is not tied to grant or government funding. Second, the civil society networks, groups and organisations leading the work are tied to a single place. They rarely shift the activity elsewhere.
The diagram below -just a prototype at this stage- tries to summarise the way in which the category broadly works. There are different ways in and we’ve identified three mechanisms that sit within this category.
Change is achieved by building connections and alliances with local residents, and gaining a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities of living in the place. This is a process of engaging in the social infrastructure of the place by connecting with residents and connecting residents to each other. Activities that connect local people are then fundamental to this category, as they generate the opportunities for social action. Those working in this way will stand alongside residents in response to crises, such as pandemics, and create new ideas and local approaches. These relational approaches to change develop the social infrastructure in place and enable new avenues for equity in spaces and services. The work generally focuses on everybody living in place, not sub-groups. Each new process and action widens the social connections and grows the potential for change. In this way, this category works in a continuous and evolving way.
Some places use mechanisms from this category to generate community power and influence wider systems, but working in that way is not definitional of the category.
How is change achieved in the continuous local social change category?
The process of change described in this diagram supports the overarching objective of stronger connection, trust and belonging between residents. This changes how things are understood and happen in a place. Impact on human development outcomes is viewed as a welcome side-effect more than a driving goal.
Many examples of work in this category depend on a building and the use of physical space to hold the connection and activity. Pembroke House Settlement, for example, operates from a century old quasi-religious setting with long historical antecedents for local people. Some work in this category integrates models of activism with community power to fight for changed relationships with local government services. Other examples are solely focused on community relationships and mutual support. There is significant space for community insight, passion, radicalism and imagination in this category.
Some examples link activity across many places to lever change in central government policy. For example, there is good evidence that ties the creation of the Welfare State post Second World War to the work of the settlement movement in the U.K. and the U.S.
In addition to Pembroke House and other settlements, Grapevine in Coventry and Bob Holman’s Easterhouse project in Glasgow exemplify work in this category. There’s also a lot of this approach in the recent evaluation of place-based social action from the National Lottery Community Fund and published by Renaisi.
For each of the categories, my assumption is that elements outside of the grey box would be out of scope for an evidence strategy. For example, in Continuous Local Social Change, we wouldn’t seek to test how or whether the work is influencing state and economic systems. I find this quite a liberating parameter, and see this implication this as one of the main benefits of the taxonomy. However / and, I’m minded to reflect that for a lot of organisations, (in particular large ones, such as SCUK, but also many others), the goal to influence national systems through learning or practice identified at a local level is a fundamental part and impetus for the work, as well as a critical piece value that a large(r) organisation can provide.
These two goals (those at the local and national level) will always be connected in some way, but I wonder if the implication of this for large orgs is that they require two, separate evidentiary strategies. In the book Measuring Social Change, Alnoor Ebrahim argues organisations can operating multiple, but distinct performance (impact) strategies, based on different levels of inference and control around the change they seek to make. In this case, Continuous Local Social Change would fit in their Ecosystem strategy; while efforts to influence national policy resulting from that might be best understood through their Adaptation / Emergent evidence strategy.