community networks – The Community Planning Toolkit

Civil Society

Civil society is sometimes called ‘the third sector’, but it pre-dates either public authorities or private enterprise…

Civil society is sometimes called 'the third sector', but it pre-dates either public authorities or private enterprise...

In more detail

Civil society is all the things that exist because of what we do and plan together and not because someone either paid for them, or passed a law to say they should. It includes:

Families
Social networks (the patterns of who knows whom)
Communities
Community groups
Voluntary organisations
Charities and trusts

and the links between them. Other organisations like authorities and businesses contribute to civil society - although they are not part of it. Our social networks, for example, are influenced by the work we do and the services, like schools and places of worship, we may use. Some organisations, like social enterprises, or some large charities – which are part of civil society – also work as businesses or like public sector bodies.

Sometimes it is called the third sector or voluntary sector (as opposed to the private sector and the public sector). In fact, civil society is more accurately the ‘first sector’. Humans co-operated voluntarily to achieve common goals before we ever invented government or business.

Some accounts and descriptions of civil society focus on how it joins up with the public sector. These descriptions tend to over-emphasise the importance of large, organised voluntary organisations and charities run by professional employees. They may refer to ‘the voluntary sector’ rather than civil society. Other accounts and descriptions of civil society focus on the places where it most resembles business. Social enterprises figure largely in these descriptions. The truth is that whilst both of these types of organisation is part of civil society, most of civil society is made up by families; friends; neighbours; people helping each other out; informal volunteering – ‘lending a hand’; giving time and money to people who need it; and a multitude of small – often informal – community groups and the networks between them.

Businesses and public services make a massive difference to the quality of life in the community, but making anywhere a better place to live in the long run depends on local civil society, not what the council says or what businesses can do.

Key Facts:

Civil society is citizens linked by common interest and collective action: everything which happens in your neighbourhood which isn't the result of a decision by an elected official or because of a market price. It is the 'first sector' not the the 'third sector' because it pre-dates authorities and markets. Public services and private enterprise create opportunities, but civil society makes up the bedrock of wealth and wellbeing in almost any neighbourhood.

Page Links from here

Civil Society is a useful website with news, events and information relating to the 'third sector'

What is Civil Society was a BBC World Service radio series first broadcast in 2001 - notes and a link to listen to the programme are available on the BBC website

In this toolkit see:

Community

Community Groups

Social Capital

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

BIRMINGHAM COMMUNITY PLANNING TOOLKIT DEFINITION SHEET This sheet may be reproduced in paper or electromic or any other form but please mention it was made by Chamberlain Forum Limited for Birmingham City Council supported by Department for Communities and Local Government.

created: 2016-07-21 05:31:57

by: admin

status: f published

Community Groups

There are thousands of community groups in a city and may be hundreds in a single neighbourhood…

There are thousands of community groups in a city and may be hundreds in a single neighbourhood...

In more detail

A community is a group of people with a shared interest and an idea of themselves as such. Community groups are organisations which are made up of members of a community; are led by them; and which attempt to embody the shared interest of the community.

Not all the members of a community are necessarily members of a community group. Some residents, for example, choose not to pay subs to be members of a residents’ association. Not subscribing, however, doesn’t mean they aren’t part of the community. You don’t have to be a member of a group to belong to a community but, in general, you must be a member of the community to join, or lead, a community group.

For example, a charity to help homeless people which isn’t led by people with experience of homelessness, isn’t a community group. A housing co-operative (a sort of organisation where the members may also be the benefiaries) is a community group.

Mutual Aid

Community groups are ‘voluntary organisations’ (no one has to join one), but they are about ‘mutual aid’, not necessarily volunteering. Mutual aid means exchanging resources and services so that everyone benefits. Volunteering means giving resources (time) and services to help some needy beneficiaries. Many community groups depend on volunteers (to serve on committees or to keep a list of members etc), but community groups have to involve some element of give and take – ie exchange.

Not all community groups are small – though the vast majority are tiny. Some large organisations, employing staff could still be seen as community groups. For example, the National Farmers’ Union or Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament are two large organisations which represent the shared interest of the members of the communities which, respectively, make them up and lead them.

Community Groups in different forms

It isn’t always clear what the community is that a community group is drawn from. Sometimes community groups may not be exactly what they say they are ‘on the tin’. For example: the

A community group doesn’t have to have a set of written rules; most community groups don’t. A group of parents who meet at the school gate, or students who share notes and help each other revise for exams – don’t need a written constitution. Of course, they still have rules - unwritten ones – because all organisations have rules. Most community groups are unconstituted (have no written rules); many have constitutions (written rules); some may be set up as co-operatives, charities or even as limited companies.

A community group can be ‘virtual’. For some people, Facebook or Twitter are community groups. People keep in touch by writing letters and phone calls as well as through face to face meetings. Digital communications have made all of these activities – and other ways of acting as community group – easier.

Key Facts:

Community groups are made up by members of a community, led by them and representing the interests of a community. Most are very small. Most are very informal. Community groups play a big part in making social capital (the links between people) and in enabling communities to get hold of and deal with larger organisations like the council.

Page Links from here

In the toolkit:

Community

Community Planning

Community Networks and Hubs

Faith Communities

Tenant Panels

Who Leads Neighbourhood Planning?

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-07-20 15:31:05

by: admin

status: f published

Locality

If you haven’t already used Locality’s information for community groups interested in neighbourhood planning, community asset development and running local services, you should look them up now…

If you haven't already used Locality's information for community groups interested in neighbourhood planning, community asset development and running local services, you should look them up now...

In more detail

Locality is a national network of locally-based and community-led organisations and social enterprises that aim to help neighbourhoods thrive. It was formed through the merger of the Development Trusts Association (DTA)and the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres (BASSAC) in 2011 and is a charity.

Locality‘s core membership is made up of ‘community anchor’ organisations which work along the lines of asset based regeneration. It provides membership services to those bodies and membership is open to locally-based community-led organisations from £100 a year. There are local networks and consortia of Locality members in some regions.

Most of Locality’s income and activity is accounted for by national programmes which tend to be funded by central government. These include:

the Neighbourhood Planning Support Programme which is funded by government;
the government’s Community Organising Programme;
the Community Rights Programme funded by the government to help people take up rights in the 2011 Localism Act
Our Place – which was the government’s neighbourhood budgeting pilot
the Enterprising Libraries programme funded by government to help find alternative ways of resourcing libraries.

The resources and advice available from these programmes is, in general, open to any group or organisation. For example, you don’t have to be a member of Locality to use the excellent resources presented on their Neighbourhood Planning and Your Community Rights websites.

Key Facts:

Locality is a non-profit organisation funded by government and belonging to its members which are local community trusts. It provides a very wide range of advice and information about community rights in the Localism Act and in particular information for groups that are interested and involved in neighbourhood planning.

Page Links from here

Contact:

Locality, 33 Corsham Street, London N1 6DR

http://locality.org.uk

my community rights website

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-07-11 11:55:30

by: admin

status: f published

Faith Communities

The biggest communities in your neighbourhood are likely to be faith communities. Community planning is for everyone in an area regardless of their beliefs. But involving faith communities is likely to be a way of increasing the number and range of people involved – and getting involved in community planning could itself be seen as an act of faith!

The biggest communities in your neighbourhood are likely to be faith communities. Community planning is for everyone in an area regardless of their beliefs. But involving faith communities is likely to be a way of increasing the number and range of people involved - and getting involved in community planning could itself be seen as an act of faith!

In more detail

A community is a group of people with a shared interest and an identity. Faith communities are communities in which members share a religious faith or spiritual outlook. They matter for at least three reasons:

all communities matter – community planning depends on widespread and active involvement. About one-third of people has some sort of regular connection with a faith community. About the same number of people regularly attend a mosque, Anglican church or Catholic church in England. Significant numbers of people regularly attend other types of church including Baptist, Pentecostalist and Charismatic churches as well as Sikh gurdwara and Hindu temple. You can find how people in your neighbourhood describe their religious faith from the census information at the government’s neighbourhood statistics website.
faith communities (like sports clubs) frequently create links between other communities – the overlaps that stitch local society together. Not everyone who goes to a church is rich, or poor, there is usually a mixture. Not everyone who visits a local place of worship necessarily lives in the area, but they still use it and have links to people who do live locally. The links between communities within neighbourhoods and across them that faith communities can make means they are often particularly important.
members of faith communities share values and often these values have a lot in common with what you might call ‘civic values’: good neighbourliness; ‘helping out’; charity and compassionate etc. Community planning isn’t an appropriate vehicle for faith communities to spread their faith, but there is no reason why members of faith communities who get involved as participants and volunteers etc shouldn’t feel that they are living their faith – putting their values into action - by becoming involved.

Aren't Most People Not Active Believers?

More people in England are not members of a faith community than those who are. Likewise, there are many more people who are not members of sports clubs than those who are. If you want to use community networks as a way of involving people in community planning, however, you can only work with communities that exist. Your target should be to try to involve faith communities, sports clubs and every other kind of community which exists in your neighbourhood.

Key Facts:

Faith communities are often large communities which own local assets including a meeting place. Involving them is a way of involbving more people in community planning and matters because: every local community matters; faith communities may act as 'glue' between other communities (young and old, for example); and faith communities frequently share 'civic values' which are close to those behind the impulse to work together to make better places to live.

Page Links from here

Engaging Faith Communities in Urban Regeneration - from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website

Have a look at the Faith Based Regeneration Network, the Faithful Neighbourhoods Centre and the Nehemiah Foundation

In this toolkit:

Community

Community Groups

Community Hubs and Networks

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-06-23 12:45:57

by: admin

status: f published

Development Trusts

Community assets can be managed to provide services and the money made re-invsted back into community activities. Development trusts are community-led organisations that are frequently set up to achieve this…

In more detail

A development trust is a partnership organisation which brings together people and organisations with a stake in a locality to enable them – through shared ownership of assets – to lead and attract investment in making the neighbourhood a better place to live. Typically, a local development trust is a body set up to manage a local asset by people and organisations with an interest in the improvement of an area to:

carry out improvements to the locality including the local physical and social environment and the skills of local people
provide services to earn income and enable others to carry out improvements to the area
lobby for and promote the improvement of the area by larger organisations including in partnership with local people and organisations.

Development Trust Structures

A trust is non-profit body which operates as a social enterprise: in a business-like way, but generating social value as well as economic value and re-investing any surplus into its own development and that of the area. Trusts do not have a particular legal structure and they can be set up as non-profit companies limited by guarantee (CLGs), with or without Community Interest Company (CIC) status, co-operatives or charities (including as Charitable Incorporated Organisations). In order to achieve their objects, trusts must be able to enter into contracts to employ staff, pay contractors, charge customers etc and so need to be incorporated (have their own legal identity).

Asset Based Regeneration

Local development trusts are a form of neighbourhood company. They are often associated with and active exponents of an approach to local development called asset based regeneration. This was developed by a number of pioneering trusts from the 1960s onwards and become the guiding philosophy of the Development Trusts Association which merged to form Locality in 2011.

Asset based regeneration emphasises the ownership of local assets (as opposed, for example to their management or the ability to earn fees) in order to generate revenue that can be re-invested in the area. Although the most obvious asset for development trusts to use ion this way might seem to be housing (which generates ready and reliable revenue in the form of rents), not many trusts own housing but tend to own areas of land and community buildings instead.

Key Facts:

Development Trusts are community-led bodies which may be supported by local businesses and public agencies as well as individual members. They are generally set up to manage a lcoal asset or group of assets - typically including a building which is used as a meeting place and offers workspace. Any profit they make from services they provide is re-invested in improving the neighbourhood.

Page Links from here

Locality is the network for development trusts and other similar bodies.

In this toolkit see:

Neighbourhood Companies

Community Assets

Social Enterprise

Community Asset Transfer

Locality

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-06-16 11:08:47

by: admin

status: f published

Community Cohesion

To what extent do the communities which share a neighbourhood, and therefore an interest in its improvement, have the ability to work and plan together?

In more detail

Community cohesion is the extent to which the communities which share a neighbourhood, a city or a country, overlap and have points of common interest. A neighbourhood has been described, at best, as a ‘community of communities’. In many neighbourhoods, however, communities may share a physical space... but their members may live separate lives.

The video below presents what a range of people think of community cohesion. It was made in 2009 and features Hazel Blears who was the Government minister responsible for communities:

Making bridges between communities is one of the most likely ways of improving neighbourhoods. Remember: communities are not just defined by ethnicity, but by class, age, housing tenure and many other factors and are brought together by many other interests. The networks you build as part of successful community planning in your neighbourhood are what will make your neighbourhood strong and sustainable.

Key Facts:

Community cohesion is the measure of the extent to which communities which share the same neighbourhood are able to work and plan together to improve it.

Page Links from here

In the toolkit see:

Community Networks and Hubs

Civil Society

Community

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-06-14 15:28:26

by: admin

status: f published

Community Networks and Hubs

Some neighbourhoods thrive on change and others seem to decline? One of the factors – perhaps the most important – in this is the local community network and the people and places which help generate it…

Some neighbourhoods thrive on change and others seem to decline? One of the factors - perhaps the most important - in this is the local community network and the people and places which help generate it...

In more detail

Communities and community groups are made up of links between people who share common interests. Because people may have many interests, communities are also linked to form a kind of network. Which people sometimes call the local 'community network'.

Local Community Network

Community networks vary in terms of their visibility, strength and flexibility (how well they cope with newcomers and other changes) and how inclusive and diverse they are:

highly visble community networks are easy to get hold of - whether as a member of the local community, or as a local business or manager of a public service
strong community networks don't just focus on one person or one group to support them but are supported by many different people
flexibly community networks cope well with change - new communities that come into the area and new managers of local services are quickly absorbed
inclusive community networks link a high proportion of local households and businesses
diverse community networks link people and communities that are different to each other (young and old; Muslim and Christian; business owners and residents etc).

Places with visible, strong, flexible community networks which are inclusive and diverse tend to improve faster than those without. They are also more able to deal with setbacks and challenges. This is because community networks help to create a sense of trust, belonging and connection to local decision-making. This adds social value; it can also add hard economic value to the area. In Birmingham, for example, researchers found that neighbourhoods in which more people said they felt involved in local decisions; trusted their neighbours; and felt that different communities co-existed well, were also the neighbourhoods where property prices increased most rapidly. People - it seems - want to live in neighbourhoods where there is a strong community network.

Mapping your Community Hubs

In any area (either a geographical area or an area of interest) there will be some key people, groups, places or institutions which play a significant part in linking communities and community groups together to make the local community network. These 'network-makers' are sometimes called ‘community hubs’. It’s usually applied to physical locations, buildings – particularly meeting places - but hubs can be people, or groups, websites, or habits and customs (for example, having a neighbourhood get-together once every couple of months).

Improving the local community network could start with taking stock of the community hubs which help to build it. Things to bear in mind

hubs tend to be general rather than specific, for example – a building that people can go into for a wide range of purposes (and maybe, nothing in particular) rather than somewhere you can only go for one thing.
where hubs have a specific formal purpose - such as training, for example, they work in such a way as to enable more general use. The most valuable part of a training course may be the networking that it enables participants to undertake.
calling a thing a community hub, doesn’t make it a community hub. Effective hubs can take on a wide range of forms and belong to different groups in society – they aren’t all local council-run community centres.
community hubs are places where communities meet, but they aren't necessarily community-run (and being community-run isn't enough on its own to ensure a place will be a community hub). Local pubs and shops can act as community hubs.
food is a common factor in a lot of hubs – cafes and community lunches etc bring people of different communities together. Markets and festivals are, likewise, things which people from a wide range of backgrounds find easy to take part in.
minority communities tend to have places and activities that relate to their identity as hubs – specialist shops, places of worship, cultural activities etc.
regularity and predictability matter – if people are used to something happening on the first Thursday of the month, for example, it helps it to become established as a hub.
people who act as hubs are not necessarily who you might think of as 'community leaders'. They are enablers of information sharing and joint action, rather than necessarily being the leaders of it.

Increasing 'Hubbiness'

As well as thinking about what the hubs are in your neighbourhood, it can make sense to consider ‘hubbiness’ - as an adjective. How ‘hubby’, for example, are your community group meetings? Perhaps you can’t always be ‘hubby’, but you might be able to include times when it is easier for newcomers and outsiders to take part; space on the agenda for information exchange; and you might have people in the group whose job it is to welcome people in?

Key Facts:

The local community network is the sum of the links within and between communities that share an area. A visible, strong, flexible network that is inclusive and diverse supports the development of the neighbourhood in the right directions. Community networks are generated and supported by 'hubs' - which can be buildings, groups, people, websites or ways of doing things. Hubs are things which bring people together and enable them to link. If you want to improve your neighbourhood, start by thinking about your community network and the hubs that generate it.

Page Links from here

Community Network Analysis is a series of videos from the Orton Family Foundation in Vermont USA - it is presented as part of a tool called Community Heart and Soul' but also makes general points relating to community networks.

In this toolkit:

OR you can use the navigation menu above right to look at other parts of the toolkit.

created: 2016-05-14 15:40:05

by: admin

status: f published