By Barry Knight and Liz Wallace
10 Jul 2023
In this blog, Rethinking Poverty’s Barry Knight and The Orwell Foundation’s Deputy Director Liz Wallace reflect on what our shared work reveals about young people’s political engagement and education... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
05 Dec 2022
The Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize was featured on the BBC Politics North programme, including winners Chopwell Regeneration Group. For more information on the night, you can download the event brochure here.... Read More
By Barry Knight
01 Dec 2022
At a ceremony held at the Cathedral in Newcastle upon Tyne on 30 November 2022, the first prize of the Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize was awarded to Chopwell Regeneration... Read More
By Barry Knight
30 Nov 2022
The final applicant for the Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize, Dwellbeing Shieldfield, is a community cooperative in the East of Newcastle. Members of the cooperative share life together, support one... Read More
By Barry Knight
28 Nov 2022
The five applicants for the Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize have so far focused on what local people can do to solve specific problems in our society – improving the... Read More
By Barry Knight
27 Nov 2022
The fifth applicant for the Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize is Citizens Advice Newcastle. This is a small, independent charity providing free, confidential and independent advice to people who live,... Read More
By Barry Knight
24 Nov 2022
The fourth application for the Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize continues the focus on race and identity, this time with an emphasis on migration. The International Community Organisation of Sunderland... Read More
By Barry Knight
23 Nov 2022
In the first two applications for the Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize, we saw the power of local people to affect issues that affect them. In one case, the result... Read More
By Barry Knight
18 Nov 2022
Even Better, based in Jarrow, the second applicant for the Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize, has a powerful way of addressing the problem of mental health. The approach harnesses the... Read More
By Barry Knight
15 Nov 2022
Local people complain that they are ignored by politicians until election time. Then, they are wooed with all sorts of promises to improve their lives. Such behaviour causes much... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
11 Nov 2022
In March, we announced the Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize, to celebrate the initiative of organisations who have developed local community initiatives as effective means to #ShiftThePower to people whose voices are rarely... Read More
By Lukasz Krebel
20 Jul 2022
Stuart Kirk, Global Head of Responsible Investment at HSBC Asset Management, last month asked investors: “Who cares if Miami is six metres underwater in 100 years?” His widely-reported comments demonstrate the... Read More
By Sean Benstead
19 Jul 2022
At the heart of the debate on community wealth building is a fundamental question about employee ownership and who or what holds the keys to wealth in our society.... Read More
By The Alternative Global
06 Jul 2022
The cost-of-living crisis is descending on all of us, and while the solutions obviously have to be, to some degree, macro-oriented and defensive (see this great blog from James... Read More
By Bonnie Hewson
28 Jun 2022
The past five years of working on the place-based funding programme, Empowering Places, has opened my eyes to the benefits of community organising. One of the themes that has... Read More
24 Jun 2022
The housing affordability crisis seems impossible to solve. Policies intended to help people priced out of the market often serve to fan the flames and increase costs. An example... Read More
By Ellie Radcliffe
08 Jun 2022
As the energy price cap rises today, CLES Senior Researcher, Ellie Radcliffe, reflects on her recent visit to the Apse Big Energy Summit and considers the role of local authorities in balancing... Read More
By Jordan Dilworth
13 May 2022
The Orwell Youth Prize, which is run by The Orwell Foundation, uses the writing of George Orwell as a starting point to inspire young people to write about their... Read More
By Barry Knight
10 May 2022
A low ebb Those of us working for social justice and human rights have faced strong headwinds in recent decades. A world obsessed with economic growth has led to... Read More
By Barry Knight
10 May 2022
A group of thinkers and activists have been meeting together over the past six months to wrestle with how we might develop flourishing lives for all. Our first step... Read More
27 Apr 2022
In its recently published Levelling Up White Paper, the government argued that the power of public procurement should be used to deliver support to communities and pledged to put... Read More
By Ian Mell and Meredith Whitten
26 Apr 2022
A growing gap in green space provision divides the UK according to recent research, with people in northern cities having access to fewer parks than their southern counterparts. Nationwide,... Read More
By Jon Alexander
21 Apr 2022
This piece on a ‘Democracy of Citizens’ is #8 in the ‘Visions for the Future of Democracy’ series curated by Involve for its 15th anniversary. We have asked authors to... Read More
By Rapid Transition Alliance
19 Apr 2022
Citizen-led retrofitting, long the poor relation of climate policy, could now be its secret weapon in accelerating rapid transition. Home renovation through the citizen-led model is making breakthroughs from... Read More
By Frances Jones
06 Apr 2022
What if gender equality was at the heart of local plans for a more inclusive economy? Efforts to rebuild and recover economic prosperity in a time of crisis often... Read More
By Jez Hall
31 Mar 2022
A new paper examining Shared Future’s Leeds Climate Change Citizens Jury highlights the co-benefits of deliberation, writes SF Director Jez Hall. Local authorities wanting to achieve meaningful carbon reduction, are increasingly turning... Read More
By Power to Change
30 Mar 2022
Power to Change has been a major funder of community-led climate action over recent years, with as much as 25% of our funding supporting community business climate action, including our CORE and Next Generation energy programmes. Our mission... Read More
By Pippa Coutts
24 Mar 2022
Levelling up is never going to be one size fits all. To support the development of areas that currently have poorer economic and social outcomes, we need to recognise... Read More
By Tiffany Lam
23 Mar 2022
How can local people build control and take action on things that matter to them? Our research shows that there are five main components of collective control: social connectedness;... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
18 Mar 2022
The Prize The Janette Kirton-Darling Memorial Prize will be awarded to an organisation that has demonstrated outstanding leadership, creativity and impact in developing a local community initiative developing effective... Read More
By Harpreet Kaur Paul
17 Mar 2022
Nearly half of the global population – between 3.3 and 3.6 billion people – lives in areas highly vulnerable to climate change. The brief window in which to limit... Read More
By Rachel Bentley
15 Mar 2022
Recent years have seen a growing number of local councils across the UK, including Birmingham, Sandwell and Wigan, as well as the devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales adopting... Read More
By Jacob Ainscough
10 Mar 2022
Economists no longer talk of decarbonisation as a cost; climate action is now widely seen as an investment. Like any investment in new economic sectors, money spent is expected... Read More
By The Alternative UK
09 Mar 2022
Fascinating article from the Vogue Business news site on the growing relevance of degrowth – producing and consuming less and less to mitigate climate meltdown – and fashion. It... Read More
By Hugh Eliis
03 Mar 2022
In November 2021, a group of ten people gathered together in Letchworth Garden City for two days of conversation. We began with a clear sense of our collective failure... Read More
By Barry Knight
03 Mar 2022
Written at the outset of the pandemic, #BuildBackBetter showed how being forced to slow down had made people want a different future. Having a profound sense of vulnerability made... Read More
By Sarah McMillan and Professor Mark Shucksmith OBE
02 Mar 2022
Earlier this week (Tuesday 25th January), the North of Tyne Cabinet endorsed the recommendations of a report by the Roundtable on Wellbeing in the North of Tyne and, in doing so, committed... Read More
By Sarah Longlands
24 Feb 2022
The Levelling up White Paper was finally published last week. But despite 332 pages of what was a rather chaotic document (part text book, part policy, part analysis), when... Read More
By Iza Kavedžija
22 Feb 2022
The World Health Organization (WHO) describes mental health as “a state of wellbeing in which an individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life,... Read More
By The Alternative UK
18 Feb 2022
As we know from long experience, Plymouth is a world-class powerhouse of social and civic enterprise – and it’s richly demonstrated in the Plymouth Octopus latest newsletter. POP (as... Read More
By Alex Chapman
10 Feb 2022
The government’s favourite term, ‘levelling up’, contains little meaning – just enough to be politically useful, but not enough to support any real plan. At NEF, we investigated the role of... Read More
By CLES
03 Feb 2022
At the close of the 2021 Community Wealth Building Summit, we reflect on remarks by our opening keynote speaker Tom Arthur MSP and the work that CLES has undertaken... Read More
By Deborah Doane
27 Jan 2022
New Podcast: How can we ensure decent, affordable housing? This episode of the Anti-Apathy Aunt podcast hosted by Deborah Doane, welcomed Gill Hughes from #thehullwewant, alongside Osama Bhutta from Shelter, responding to... Read More
By Frazer Osment
20 Jan 2022
Change is coming. It has to. Tackling the twin crises of climate breakdown and nature loss is the biggest challenge we are ever likely to face. It will hit... Read More
By Maria Lucien
19 Jan 2022
With COP 26 starting in Glasgow on 31st October 2021, we have brought together the recommendations from six citizens’ juries and assemblies run by Shared Future over the last... Read More
By Barry Knight
13 Jan 2022
If Martians landed on Earth tomorrow, they would be surprised by many things, but they would be shocked by an economic system that allows a few billionaires to play... Read More
By Rebekah Diski
07 Jan 2022
This is an article from the fourth issue of the New Economics Zine. You can read the full issue here. Last month, over 500 workers at the GKN car factory... Read More
04 Jan 2022
The politics of localism is shifting and developing, at all levels. We hear about a new national campaign being launched in the last few days. The We’re Right Here campaign is... Read More
By Josina Calliste
30 Dec 2021
This is an article from the fourth issue of the New Economics Zine. You can read the full issue here. Land is ultimately about power. Those who own the land... Read More
By Eleanor Radcliffe
28 Dec 2021
On the eve of COP26, and with the challenges we face in tackling the climate crisis becoming ever more apparent, CLES and Carbon Co-op today release a major new toolkit for councils, a... Read More
By Peter Bryant
23 Dec 2021
The Kendal Climate Change Citizens’ Jury, commissioned by Kendal Town Council gave us at Shared Future, as the facilitating team, an opportunity to reflect on the importance of instituting... Read More
By The Alternative UK
21 Dec 2021
While the COP focus is on Glasgow, and the Scottish central belt, we thought we’d share some vibrant local Glasgow initiatives and community business that address zero-waste shopping, and... Read More
By Miatta Fahnbulleh
16 Dec 2021
This is an article on levelling up and the Green New Deal from the fourth issue of the New Economics Zine. You can read the full issue here. ‘Levelling up’... Read More
By The Alternative UK
14 Dec 2021
We have long seen Devon and the English South-West as a social, economic and cultural laboratory for what might look like an “ecological civilisation”. So it’s perfectly logical that... Read More
By Mariona Sanz
09 Dec 2021
UK Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) Chief Executive, Sarah Longlands, spoke last month at La Metròpoli Pròspera, organized by the Metropolitan Strategic Plan of Barcelona. Following her appearance... Read More
By Pippa Coutts
23 Nov 2021
For over 100 years Carnegie UK has worked on place-making in different guises – as funder, as researcher and evaluator and as an advocate. In our new strategy –... Read More
By The Alternative UK
11 Nov 2021
Some quietly achieved radical localism and community wealth building going on in North Ayrshire. While the Preston Model, and its underlying logic of community wealth building, have been lauded... Read More
By Ellie Radcliffe
10 Nov 2021
In recognition of today’s Global Climate Strike and Fridays for Future’s demand for intersectional climate justice, CLES’s Ellie Radcliffe explores the role of local authorities in the UK in... Read More
By Katy Rubin
03 Nov 2021
Katy Rubin reflects on Democracy Pioneers, a project she facilitated for Shared Future to engage Glasgow’s policymakers on climate change through the medium of theatre. On 14 September, eight young... Read More
By Adam Lent and Jessica Studdert
02 Nov 2021
Adam Lent and Jessica Studdert look at the practical ways to make community power an everyday practice, not just a long-term ambition. How can community power be embedded in... Read More
By Rose Grayston
28 Oct 2021
Depending on where you live in England, there can be huge differences in your quality of life. This is down to some areas’ economic decline and low incomes, but... Read More
By The Alternative UK
21 Oct 2021
In this week’s German elections, Berliners voted with a resounding majority (56.4%), supporting a bill to expropriate 226,000 homes from private landlords, and take them into public ownership. It’s... Read More
By Tim Hughes
19 Oct 2021
Today is my final day at Involve, the public participation and democracy charity, which naturally brings with it a time of reflection after 11 years spent at the organisation, and... Read More
By Hannah Ormston
14 Oct 2021
At the Conservative Party Conference last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson remarked that ‘wages are going up faster than before the pandemic began’. These comments were made against the backdrop of... Read More
By Katy Oglethorpe
12 Oct 2021
Tell us about Tolworth, and why it was important to work there? Robin Hutchinson (Community Brain founder): Tolworth is in Southwest London. It’s part of the borough of Kingston-upon-Thames. It’s... Read More
By Rebekah Diski, Alex Chapman & Chaitanya Kumar
06 Oct 2021
The UK faces an uneven decarbonisation challenge, with some regions and industries under particular pressure to reduce emissions. Many of the places and communities most acutely affected are also... Read More
By Simran Basi
21 Sep 2021
It is easy to think of climate change as a problem for future generations to deal with and tackle, especially if its effects are not felt directly. But millions... Read More
By Jennifer Wallace & Pippa Coutts
14 Sep 2021
History tells us that periods of great disruption are often followed by periods of massive social change. But last year’s’ flurry of ‘build back’ and ‘build forward’ reports and... Read More
By Isaac Stanley
07 Sep 2021
On the 6th July CLES launched the final report of the Liverpool City Region Land Commission: Our Land. Reflecting the findings of England’s first Commission to review the use of... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
02 Sep 2021
August is often dubbed the silly season, but this one has been packed with momentous events: the publication of the latest IPCC report, the chaotic exit from Afghanistan, and... Read More
By Emmanuelle Katshila
31 Aug 2021
‘The four-day working week is a far more civilised way to go. It is part of our future, it is unavoidable, it is the way we have to go.’... Read More
By Jenny Wood
25 Aug 2021
Children are routinely thought of as our future and take a symbolic place in our culture when considering innocence, hope and imagination. But we also have a societal tendency... Read More
By Laura Seebohm
19 Aug 2021
At the start of the pandemic one women told her support worker “I’ve been told what to do for years, this is nothing new”. We know that policy decisions... Read More
By Frances Jones & Eleanor Radcliffe
12 Aug 2021
Thirteen years ago, the global financial crisis prompted human suffering across the world. In the wake of this, community wealth building emerged as an alternative approach to local economic... Read More
By Lydia Prieg
10 Aug 2021
The past year has been extremely difficult for all of us. Over 4 million people in Britain have tested positive for Covid, and over 150,000 people have died with... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
05 Aug 2021
Probably the key challenge for all those committed to progressive causes is how we scale up from the multitude of creative initiatives taking place locally. ‘At local level, we... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
04 Aug 2021
What does the experience of Euro 2020 and its aftermath tell us about the state of England today, and about the outlook of the younger generation as we emerge,... Read More
By Katy Oglethorpe
03 Aug 2021
Newham citizens assembly Newham, the East London borough: home to the 2012 Olympics, birthplace of Danny Dyer and the most ethnically diverse place in England and Wales. Soon Newham... Read More
By Marnie Rauf
29 Jul 2021
A NEW DIRECTION: STARTING SMALL “This is a unique, well-written and interesting piece, which explores how small, persistent changes can impact an individual’s entire life course. It also demonstrates... Read More
By William Walker
28 Jul 2021
A NEW DIRECTION: STARTING SMALL BY CREATING NORFOLK WETLANDS “A powerful and original interpretation of this years’ theme, drawing the link between the local environment and the climate and... Read More
By Jude Leese
27 Jul 2021
WORK EXPERIENCE AS A YOUNG CAMPAIGNER “A poem that will resonate with many campaigners young and old, touching on both the inspiration and drudgery of working to make the... Read More
By Orwell Youth Prize
21 Jul 2021
The results of The Orwell Youth Prize 2021 will be revealed at our Celebration Day on Thursday 22nd July, and we are looking forward to sharing another year of exceptional... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
14 Jul 2021
Even before the pandemic, young people in the UK faced many forms of inequality: a lack of jobs, a shortage of affordable housing, and cuts to public services –... Read More
By Lukasz Krebel
05 Jul 2021
The Bank of England’s (BoE) Monetary Policy Committee meets today, and will publish its first Monetary Policy Report since the Bank was given an updated ‘net zero’ mandate at the... Read More
By Tom Lloyd Goodwin
29 Jun 2021
Economic recovery from COVID-19 will be a long and painful process. When the pandemic struck, we at CLES argued for a new common-sense approach to economic development based on the... Read More
By Anna Tervahartiala
22 Jun 2021
As the pandemic has stood the world on its head, one of the debates which has been thrown wide open is that of the future of the economy. PSJP... Read More
By Rosaleen Tite Ahern
17 Jun 2021
The one thing we all need after the pandemic is a new beginning. Change is in the air, whether that be ideological, legislative, or deeply personal. The theme for... Read More
By Charlotte Morgan and Luca Tiratelli
16 Jun 2021
What’s the role of inclusive growth in recovering from crisis? It’s easy to see as a ‘nice-to-have’, but can be at the centre of helping us build back better.... Read More
By Barry Knight
09 Jun 2021
We have the ideas for change It is now more than three years since Rethinking Poverty began to compile resources to support the development of a good society without... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
04 Jun 2021
The results of May’s 2021 local elections will have dismayed those who care about progressive causes, as showcased in Rethinking Poverty. But can we learn anything from them about... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
28 May 2021
As outlined in March’s Talking Points, no-strings-attached direct cash payments are central to Biden’s stimulus package. While this is not Universal Basic Income (UBI), also known as Basic Income,... Read More
By Hannah Ormston, Ben Thurman, Jennifer Wallace
26 May 2021
“In nature nothing exists alone.” Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962) Over the last 13 months – and during a time of isolation, separation, and loneliness – many of us... Read More
By Christian Jaccarini
20 May 2021
With last year’s long queues and supply issues at supermarkets, the Covid pandemic has made us all re-examine how we get our groceries and where they come from. But... Read More
By The Alternative UK
13 May 2021
Other than being Bernie Sanders’ Congressional seat, we have picked up at A/UK on the singular qualities of the state of Vermont – as a “laboratory for democracy”, in... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
06 May 2021
As the UK takes further steps towards ending the restrictions of lockdown, April’s Talking Points looks at what the pandemic has meant for the future of work and what... Read More
By Tiffany Lam
06 May 2021
In the UK, Sarah Everard’s murder has prompted debate around women’s safety, with 80% of women of all ages having been sexually harassed in public spaces. In Bogota, work is being... Read More
By Joe Blakey and Jana Wendler
29 Apr 2021
Almost every city now has some form of climate target. For instance Manchester, in northern England, aims to be zero carbon by 2038. But such targets generally focus on emissions... Read More
By Isaac Stanley
21 Apr 2021
During the peak of the first lockdown, people gathered on their doorsteps to clap for carers. Now it’s time to truly recognise their value. The inadequacies of England’s current... Read More
By Jackie Brock, Sophie Flemig and Jennifer Wallace
14 Apr 2021
In so many ways, Scotland is a wonderful place to grow up. In a global context we have free education and health care, access to an environment noted around... Read More
By David Burch
08 Apr 2021
On 11th March, we released our yearly analysis of the contribution that Manchester City Council’s procurement spend makes to the city’s economy and how it can support the achievement of wider... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
07 Apr 2021
January and February’s Talking Points focused on poverty and equality and the climate crisis, looking for glimmers of hope and finding not many – at least not in the... Read More
By Malcolm Torry
31 Mar 2021
Lack of income security is widely recognised as a major problem – and one that has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Could a Basic Income help? And is... Read More
By Simran Basi
24 Mar 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the UK economy and, nearly a year on from its outbreak, the number of people unemployed continues to rise. The latest figures show that an... Read More
By Shared Future
18 Mar 2021
What should Kendal do about climate change? That was the challenge tackled by a diverse group of local residents of Kendal during the summer and autumn of 2020. Commissioned... Read More
By Ellen Bassam
17 Mar 2021
Covid-19 has brought about a renewed interest in the community – of which the repair café is increasingly a part. With few other places to go, our immediate surroundings... Read More
By The Alternative UK
11 Mar 2021
When we exalt the power of the local, sometimes we mean really local. We were alerted to this stirring Glasgow story this week. A patch of ground in the... Read More
By Pippa Coutts
09 Mar 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic, with its many challenges has tested our ability to innovate. Many of us associate the idea of innovation with bright, new objects or processes, and this... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
04 Mar 2021
February’s Talking Points is inevitably focused on the climate crisis and the crisis of poverty and equality. Following the Chancellor’s budget announcement, what can we hope for? In both... Read More
By Nadia Whittome
02 Mar 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has shone a light on the discrepancy between the work we most urgently need as a society, and the work we value and reward. So many of... Read More
By Fernanda Balata
25 Feb 2021
In 2015, we put out a paper outlining a common vision for coastal communities. Our work found that creating and supporting good, sustainable jobs is completely compatible with maintaining a healthy... Read More
By Barry Knight
23 Feb 2021
On ‘Blue Monday’ in mid-January 2020, TCPA policy director Hugh Ellis was considering the future of planning and experienced a meltdown while on a train journey. He realised that... Read More
By Anupam Nanda
16 Feb 2021
The lockdowns and restrictions introduced to control the spread of COVID-19 have resulted in huge changes to urban life. Previously bustling city centres remain empty, shunned in favour of suburban or... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
15 Feb 2021
Friday 5 February saw the official launch of Poverty 2nd Ed by Ruth Lister (member of the House of Lords and vice-chair of Compass, which hosted the event; the first edition was published... Read More
By Pippa Coutts
09 Feb 2021
I was lucky enough to chair a panel discussion on Community Ownership and Towns this week, with Community Land Scotland, Greener Kirkcaldy, Power to Change, The Stove Network.* We recognised, with many others, the High Street... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
04 Feb 2021
With a new lockdown announced on 4 January and schools closed across the country, 2021 got off to a bad start. By 25 January, Gordon Brown was warning that... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
02 Feb 2021
‘Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist,’ remarked the economist Kenneth Boulding. Yet growth dominates... Read More
By Anna Coote & Aidan Harper
28 Jan 2021
Shorter working time should be at the heart of post-pandemic recovery. That’s the message of The Case for a Four Day Week, published by Polity this month, and written by... Read More
By Ruth Lister
27 Jan 2021
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed and aggravated the economic insecurity experienced by a growing number of members of society. This may encourage greater understanding of the acute insecurity typically... Read More
By Isaac Stanley
20 Jan 2021
Green New Deals aren’t just for cash-flushed central Governments. In the last year, Lewes DC in East Sussex has been growing its own distinctive variety of green economic strategy.... Read More
By Chaitanya Kumar
19 Jan 2021
An essential ingredient to achieving net-zero carbon emissions in the UK is trust. This is what we highlighted in our report last year titled Trust in Transition. Without trust, efforts to accelerate... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
07 Jan 2021
2020 has been a year like no other in living memory, with two months pre-Covid and the rest of the year forming the first part of the post-Covid era.... Read More
By Andrew Milner, Lisa Jordan and Stef van Dongen
30 Dec 2020
As the pandemic has stood the world on its head, one of the debates which has been thrown wide open is that of the future of the economy. PSJP... Read More
By Carrie Deacon and Will Bibby
23 Dec 2020
Across the country in communities, in health services and in local authorities, a change has been happening. From East Ayrshire and Cambidgeshire to Leeds and Plymouth, leading public service innovators have been redefining the relationship between... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
17 Dec 2020
Degrowth, or he end of growth is not the end of the world, says Parrique. ‘It can be the beginning of many worlds.’ … Basically, degrowth means a decline of... Read More
By Annie Quick
09 Dec 2020
This is an article from the second issue of the New Economics Zine. You can read the full issue here “The goal and objective of all economic policy should be collective... Read More
By Eleanor Radcliffe
03 Dec 2020
With fresh discussion this week about the importance of a green recovery, it is increasingly clear that post-Covid rebuilding must have a just transition away from a carbon-based economy... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
02 Dec 2020
A recent article by Gordon Brown in the New Statesman bore the title ‘How to save the United Kingdom’ – and he is not alone in painting a bleak... Read More
By The Alternative UK
26 Nov 2020
As we noted in our Editorial last week, the Biden presidency (assuming it kicks off eventually by Jan 30th) may have a worrying tendency to top-down policy direction. Which... Read More
By Holly Barrow
25 Nov 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic has once more highlighted that the UK’s social security system is in dire need of reform. Chancellor Rishi Sunak himself seemingly identified its shortcomings, as he... Read More
By Alice Martin and Annie Quick
19 Nov 2020
The impact of Covid-19 has been a powerful reminder of the leverage workers could collectively hold. Care workers, supermarket cashiers and couriers – usually dismissed as “unskilled” – have demonstrated... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
18 Nov 2020
The rhetoric across the political spectrum is that we need a green recovery. We are also seeing growing public outrage at increases in poverty. This was the background to... Read More
By Neil McInroy
12 Nov 2020
We are optimists in local government. But that optimism is being stretched to breaking point: by this pandemic, by ongoing public service austerity, rising demand, insecure finances and stalled... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
11 Nov 2020
When we think about building back better, we are thinking about power and how we make decisions, said Compass’s Frances Foley, introducing a webinar on citizens assemblies called Deliberating and doing:... Read More
By Sarah Davidson
05 Nov 2020
Those of you who follow the work of the Trust will know that our calls for governments to focus on societal wellbeing aren’t new. We have been working on... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
04 Nov 2020
With the UK now facing a second wave of coronavirus and an England-wide lockdown just announced, October’s Talking Points is less focused on recovery and the changing world of... Read More
By Jon Bloomfield
29 Oct 2020
The urgency of the climate change challenge has been visibly growing, dramatically illustrated by the bush fires that swept across much of Australia at the end of 2019. The... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
28 Oct 2020
What is a caring economy? And why invest in it now? ‘Building a caring economy’ was the topic of a New Economics Foundation (NEF) briefing, hosted jointly with the Women’s... Read More
By The Alternative UK
27 Oct 2020
A/UK’s joint report with the Local Trust, where Plymouth residents wrestle with COVID, and point to the future Communities and localities have often responded quickly, effectively and innovatively to... Read More
By Chaitanya Kumar
22 Oct 2020
In the first of its kind in the UK, a National Citizens Assembly has deliberated and this week produced a detailed set of recommendations to get the UK on... Read More
By Barry Knight
21 Oct 2020
My favourite history book, The Sleepwalkers, tells the story of how the great powers drifted into the First World War without reason or regard to consequences. This is a... Read More
By APLE Collective
20 Oct 2020
Saturday 17 October marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, and the APLE Collective (Addressing Poverty with Lived Experience) have produced videos for the event. They focus... Read More
By APLE Collective
15 Oct 2020
On 17 October the APLE Collective are lighting up the UK map with the voices of lived experience, sharing what it feels like to be heard as part of... Read More
By Neil McInroy, Joe Bilsborough & Charlie Fisher
14 Oct 2020
Just over a year ago, our organisations – the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) and Development Trusts NI (DTNI) – jointly penned Time to build an inclusive local... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
07 Oct 2020
This month’s Talking Points picks up August’s discussions of the changing world of work and the knock-on effects on cities. It also looks at the inexorable rise of poverty... Read More
By Isky Gordon
01 Oct 2020
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is not a new idea but has recently gained some credence, with interest in possible pilot studies shown by the Scottish national government and one... Read More
By Michael Orton
30 Sep 2020
Readers of Rethinking Poverty are warmly invited to give their views on proposals for a better social security (welfare benefits) system. The proposals are from a project called the... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
17 Sep 2020
Wikipedia describes the Doughnut, or Doughnut economics, as ‘a visual framework for sustainable development’, the name deriving from the shape of the diagram, ie a disc with a hole... Read More
By Hannah Ormston
16 Sep 2020
What does community mean to you? Whether it means stopping to catch up with your neighbour in your local park; knowing where to access support if you need it;... Read More
By Jessica Tunks
10 Sep 2020
This piece was a Senior Winner of the Orwell Youth Prize 2020. I live Walthamstow, an area that has often been associated with violent crime, and was once... Read More
By Chris Williams
09 Sep 2020
Good things come to those who wait, or so that saying goes. Like so many small-scale fleets across the UK, fishers in Eastbourne have been squeezed to the point... Read More
By Maya Stokes
03 Sep 2020
This piece was a Senior Winner of the Orwell Youth Prize 2020. Did you hear? London is burning, and not for the first time. It appears that, despite... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
02 Sep 2020
Lockdown has seen huge changes in the world of work – most notably the rise of home working. With the furlough scheme coming to its end and the government... Read More
By Manal Nadeem
27 Aug 2020
This piece was a Senior Runner Up of the Orwell Youth Prize 2020. 7th of June 2020. Saturday. The cars do not honk or hiss. The people do not... Read More
By Jennifer Wallace
26 Aug 2020
The Carnegie UK Trust works to improve personal, community and societal wellbeing. Many of the issues that we work on, and the partners and groups who we work with,... Read More
By Rosaleen Tite Ahern
20 Aug 2020
This piece was a Senior Winner of the Orwell Youth Prize 2020. If you could knock the world down and begin again what would you build? Bright lights, creature... Read More
By Andrew Webster
19 Aug 2020
‘Indeed, the one thing these prophecies had in common was that, ultimately, all were reassuring. Unfortunately, though, the plague was not.’ ‘The truth is that nothing is less sensational... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
13 Aug 2020
The last few months of lockdown have seen organisations across the country finding innovative ways to meet the challenges presented by the pandemic. As we edge back to ‘normal’,... Read More
By John Hudson, Neil Lunt and Ruth Patrick
12 Aug 2020
As the UK emerges tentatively from lockdown, and the economic and social implications of the crisis start to solidify, there is an inevitable and valid debate about what shape... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
05 Aug 2020
With recovery packages being debated the world over, we stand at a crossroads. This month we start by looking at the widely divergent options we face, and the need... Read More
By Hannah Ormston, Rachel Heydecker and Pippa Coutts
04 Aug 2020
The Carnegie UK Trust works to improve personal, community and societal wellbeing. Many of the issues that we work on, and the partners and groups who we work with,... Read More
By Barry Knight
30 Jul 2020
To follow up his article, #BuildBackBetter, Barry Knight is researching practical ways to make this happen. In the first of a series of articles, he examines the role of... Read More
By Alex Talbott
28 Jul 2020
Reports from the collective frontline of being young in lockdown In the acres of Covid coverage, young people’s future has been a political weapon for every side – school,... Read More
By Andrew Webster
23 Jul 2020
‘What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest – health, integrity, purity (if you like) – is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never... Read More
By The Alternative UK
22 Jul 2020
It doesn’t exist, says Jason Hickel. And more from the “de-growth” discourse. Here, we turn to economist and anthropologist Jason Hickel a lot when we want to hear a... Read More
By Frances Jones
17 Jul 2020
Build back better. It’s a powerful phrase, but as post-Covid-19 economic policies begin to emerge, those three words are starting to ring hollow. Based on what we have seen... Read More
By Jonty Leibowitz
16 Jul 2020
Covid-19 and the climate emergency both expose in different ways the fundamental lack of resilience in how we develop local economies in the UK. There has been a lot... Read More
By Gemma Lawrence
10 Jul 2020
The #BuildBackBetter coalition, which consists of 350 organisations from business, trade unions and civil society, was launched on 29 June. On its website it is described as ‘a platform for... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
08 Jul 2020
As the UK moves further away from lockdown, the question of recovery comes ever more to the fore. This month we start with the new #BuildBackBetter coalition, launched against... Read More
By Andrew Webster
07 Jul 2020
‘All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with... Read More
By Andrew Simms
02 Jul 2020
A decade of economic hardship seemed to have transformed for increasingly urban workforces the promise of shorter working weeks and better work – life balances into bleaker futures, of... Read More
By Anya Bonner
01 Jul 2020
Across the country, the COVID-19 pandemic is both highlighting and reinforcing existing inequalities, poverty and exclusion faced by many in the UK. Most of these problems existed long before... Read More
By Andrew Webster
30 Jun 2020
‘The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.’ Albert Camus, The Plague This is the third in a series of articles in which Andrew Webster... Read More
24 Jun 2020
The crisis reveals much and will change more – for good or bad. Everything feels like it is now up for grabs. There is much pain and suffering and... Read More
By Andrew Webster
23 Jun 2020
‘Perhaps the easiest way of making a town’s acquaintance is to ascertain how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die.’ Albert Camus, The Plague This... Read More
By Alex Talbott
18 Jun 2020
While human suffering is not a win for climate justice, could new timescales for international cooperation foster the mechanism for urgent environmental action? Our body has a virus, a... Read More
By Holly Barrow
17 Jun 2020
As the coronavirus pandemic wreaks havoc across the globe, it has once again become clear that not all of us are equally equipped to weather this storm. Casting a... Read More
By Andrew Webster
16 Jun 2020
‘Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.’ Albert Camus, The Plague Barry Knight’s 2017... Read More
By Alex Talbott
11 Jun 2020
With our worlds increasingly online, young people’s contribution to the design of our digital future is essential. Unsurprisingly, the impact of technology (both positive and negative) wove its way... Read More
By James Morrison-Knight
10 Jun 2020
‘If I’m honest I am just tired Tired of everyday filling up my car and Knowing that I’m paying for the bombs in Iraq Tired of pretending like it... Read More
By Neil McInroy & Tom Lloyd Goodwin
09 Jun 2020
Long before the Covid-19 pandemic, our economy was failing many people and the planet. The imperative then was to create an economy that serves our needs, and shares wealth... Read More
By Alex Talbott
04 Jun 2020
Students challenge a restrictive curriculum: why education should be more than academic. The subject of education is perhaps the area where we are naturally most willing to accept the... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
03 Jun 2020
As the UK takes the first faltering steps out of lockdown, the focus is more than ever on the ‘what next?’ question. Will the coronavirus crisis lead to a... Read More
By Marian Barnes
02 Jun 2020
Sometimes, when times seem unlike anything we have known before, we need to reach for ideas that are not new. The current crisis does not necessarily mean that we have... Read More
By Alex Talbott
28 May 2020
What is ‘community’? What does it look like? How has our perception of the term changed in the course of the coronavirus crisis? Any meaningful engagement with the idea... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
27 May 2020
Monday 11 May saw the launch of a new report from Positive Money called The Tragedy of Growth. That same day a webinar brought an audience of almost 900... Read More
By Andrew Simms
26 May 2020
Quieter streets, cleaner air, more time – amidst the human tragedy of the Covid-19 outbreak other experiences are inviting people to ask more of the quality of their home... Read More
By Alex Talbott
21 May 2020
The Orwell Youth Prize is a social justice-based writing programme and prize for young people (aged 12-18) from across the UK. This academic year, the Prize has been working... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
20 May 2020
Almost a year ago, on 1 March 2019, I met with a group of people from Oxford – city council officials, an elected councillor and staff of social enterprise... Read More
By Neil McInroy
18 May 2020
For some in the local economic development community there is talk of a post crisis “bounce back” – reflective of an idea that the economy is on a purely... Read More
By Lauren Pennycook
14 May 2020
COVID-19 and Wellbeing Blogs: The Carnegie UK Trust works to improve personal, community and societal wellbeing. Many of the issues that we work on, and the partners and groups... Read More
By Avila Kilmurray
13 May 2020
Reaching beyond ‘silos, egos and logos’ was the challenge that Neal Lawson of Compass threw out to activists in Northern Ireland. A webinar on 28 April, ‘Empowering Voices in... Read More
By Katy Goldstraw, John Diamond
12 May 2020
The unprecedented challenges created by the global COVID-19 pandemic have brought about many examples of human kindness, compassion and value-driven policy responses. Painted rainbows in windows across the country... Read More
By Andrew Simms
07 May 2020
In the debate over the global response to Covid19 a battle of hashtags has broken out between those urging a quick return to ‘normal’, and those saying that ‘normal’... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
06 May 2020
Life continues to be dominated by coronavirus. This month’s Talking Points focuses mainly on the all-important question of ‘what next?’ Has the market economy had its day? Will we... Read More
By Gemma Lawrence
05 May 2020
We recently looked at the ‘explosion in citizen-led action in response to the coronavirus pandemic’. This week, we look at how some businesses have responded to the crisis. In... Read More
By Andrew Simms
30 Apr 2020
How quickly the brain adapts to the new normal – Emily Maitlis, BBC Newsnight, 25/03/2020 In late 2018 the Rapid Transition Alliance launched with the purpose of building a... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
29 Apr 2020
‘Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That,... Read More
By Ben Cooper
27 Apr 2020
In 2019, the electoral landscape of Yorkshire and the Humber changed dramatically. Nine Labour seats went to the Tories, who won the most votes in the region for the... Read More
By The Alternative UK
24 Apr 2020
From our beginning, we’ve identified Universal Basic Income as a foundational policy for A/UK – as a way to ground active citizenship, encourage creative living, redistribute wealth and collectively... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
22 Apr 2020
Last week, we covered New Economics Foundation’s (NEF’s) first weekly economics briefing which looked at how we can win the economic recovery after coronavirus. This week’s focused on ‘Fixing... Read More
By Ben Thurman
21 Apr 2020
COVID-19 and Wellbeing Blogs: The Carnegie UK Trust works to improve personal, community and societal wellbeing. Many of the issues that we work on, and the partners and groups... Read More
By Sarah Arnold
20 Apr 2020
The Minimum Income Guarantee would make sure no one falls through the gaps in our social security system. Yesterday the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) revealed that nearly one... Read More
By Sue Tibballs
17 Apr 2020
“Neighbourhoods are the cells which keep society whole. We are threatened with infections, from outside and from within; our powers of resistance and eventual recovery depend largely on whether... Read More
By The Alternative UK
16 Apr 2020
Coronavirus, and its strange distancing, compels us all to rethink how we come together. Our mutual care and sense of collective responsibility is expressed by NOT being physically close,... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
15 Apr 2020
New Economics Foundation (NEF) will be holding Weekly Economics Briefings to discuss challenges the coronavirus crisis poses to progressives — from analysing policy decisions to highlighting the organising being done in... Read More
By Matt Mellen
09 Apr 2020
This pandemic is a further wake up call things need to radically change and many of the emergency measures help the planet too The human tragedy of the coronavirus... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
08 Apr 2020
Since the last Talking Points went out, our world has been completely turned upside down. The country is in lockdown. Nothing is certain. March Talking Points is inevitably focused... Read More
By Barry Knight
07 Apr 2020
What does it mean to ‘build back better?’ Coronavirus has changed our world forever. Plans made a few weeks ago seem outdated at best or undoable at worst. The... Read More
By Romy Krämer, Graciela Hopstein and Halima Mahomed
02 Apr 2020
The global Corona pandemic might very well be the biggest crisis of our lifetime. The current situation has the potential to not only disrupt the status quo but to... Read More
By Gemma Lawrence
01 Apr 2020
The last few weeks have seen an explosion in citizen-led action in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Last week, we looked at the 1000s of Covid-19 Mutual Aid groups... Read More
By Uplift
31 Mar 2020
These are uncertain and challenging times for people trying to push for progressive, people-first solutions to the crisis presented to us by COVID-19. Being deliberate in the way in... Read More
By Stuart Cartland
26 Mar 2020
The current national and global crisis in which we find ourselves has exposed the myth that a society based upon individualism can work, flourish and be sustainable. We can... Read More
By Julia Unwin
25 Mar 2020
We’ve known that a global pandemic would come for decades, and it’s been modelled and planned for time after time. But when it comes it’s a massive and terrifying... Read More
By Neil McInroy
24 Mar 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic has destabilised our present and will profoundly affect our social, economic and political future. Whilst we do not know how events will progress, we can be sure that things will never be the same again. There will be no going back. The... Read More
By Helen Barnard
23 Mar 2020
As we come to terms with what Coronavirus could mean for us and our families, we urge the Government to keep people who are restricted by low incomes front of... Read More
By Neal Lawson
20 Mar 2020
Most of us have experienced nothing like this before. It is strange, forbidding and dislocating to a degree probably only experienced by those alive in the early 1940s. Events... Read More
By Daniel Button
19 Mar 2020
During a pandemic, the last thing we should be doing is putting more barriers in the way of access to healthcare. Rishi Sunak has announced increases to the Immigration... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
18 Mar 2020
Over 900 local groups have now been established across the UK to provide support to people throughout the covid-19 outbreak. A spokesperson for Covid-19 Mutual Aid UK said: ‘In... Read More
By Bertie Russell
18 Mar 2020
The case for ambitious and transformative environmental policy is being made with increasing fervour and a series of “Green New Deals” – a reference to Roosevelt’s economic reform programme... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
11 Mar 2020
There has been so much bad news on poverty in February that it sadly has to be the top story in this month’s Talking Points. We also offer a... Read More
By Miatta Fahnbulleh
04 Mar 2020
The vote to leave the EU should have been a wakeup call. Instead, we’re three years on and little has changed. Brexit is making it harder to deal with our economic and... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
28 Feb 2020
Almost a year ago, on 1 March 2019, I met with a group of people from Oxford – city council officials, an elected councillor and staff of social enterprise... Read More
By The Alternative UK
19 Feb 2020
We are very pleased to bring you news of Flatpack Democracy 2.0 (buy here). This is the compendious update to the original booklet from Peter Macfadyen, ex-mayor of the... Read More
By Isaac Stanley
13 Feb 2020
A fairer innovation economy won’t come as a gift from the powers that be. This week we launch a new phase of our Everyone Makes Innovation Policy programme, in... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
05 Feb 2020
On 23 January, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that the ‘Doomsday Clock’ has moved 20 seconds closer to midnight – the closest it has come to signalling a... Read More
By Aidan Harper
29 Jan 2020
Are we ‘owed’ more leisure time? We live in an economy which systematically extracts from us the time we have: in exchange for wages we give employers labour, effort, and... Read More
By The Alternative UK
22 Jan 2020
Much inspiration to be had from Totnes over the years – birthplace of Transition Towns, for example. Like many, their council has declared a climate emergency – but unlike... Read More
By Barry Knight
15 Jan 2020
‘I feel in complete shock. At the end I thought my heart had stopped.’ So read a text sent by a friend of mine as she left the cinema... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
08 Jan 2020
2019 has been a tumultuous year. While poverty and inequality continued their inexorable rise, the climate crisis finally erupted on to the national agenda. At the same time solutions... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell and Barry Knight
07 Jan 2020
What is the society we want? There is widespread agreement across the political spectrum that capitalism is in crisis and we need a new way of doing things. ‘Read the... Read More
By Barry Knight
18 Dec 2019
In December 2018, Barry Knight attended Tyne & Wear Citizens AGM, describing it as the ‘most remarkable meeting he had ever attended’. A year later, he attended the 2019... Read More
By Issy Petrie
11 Dec 2019
What will our towns be like in ten years’ time? And how about in 100 years? As we begin a decade that will bring significant change to the UK,... Read More
By Barry Knight, Maria Chertok, Natasha Kaminarskaya
10 Dec 2019
What does Hull, a city on the eastern seaboard of England, have in common with provincial cities in Russia? Answer: not only have they been left behind by economic... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
04 Dec 2019
This month’s Talking Points focuses on the way our economy works: the role of business in society, Wales’s ground-breaking Foundational Economy model, and the primacy of the local, for... Read More
By Barry Knight
27 Nov 2019
Important lessons emerged from a one-day conference ‘Transforming Blackpool together: how evidence is changing our town’, held at the Blackpool Winter Gardens on 14 November. Frank Oberklaid, a paediatrician... Read More
By Anupam Nanda
22 Nov 2019
The idea of a four-day working week is gaining traction. Recently, several high-profile companies have trialled reduced hours. And in the UK, the Labour Party has pledged a 32-hour four day work... Read More
By Thomas Barrett
20 Nov 2019
This article, by Thomas Barrett, was originally published on NewStart, a website for making places better. Subscribe for just £49 per year here. Wales will be the first country in the... Read More
By Anna Fowlie
13 Nov 2019
To coincide with the 10 year anniversary of the publication of the Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, the Carnegie UK Trust... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
06 Nov 2019
This month’s Talking Points looks at a variety of ideas for improving people’s lives – from good architecture to kindness and a newly woven social fabric. We also look... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
06 Nov 2019
On the 4 November, economist Ann Pettifor was speaking at the London School of Economics. ‘The Case for the Green New Deal’ was the title of her fascinating talk,... Read More
By Global Fund for Community Foundations
01 Nov 2019
The upcoming “Pathways to Power” Symposium aims to take discussions around #ShiftThePower to the next stage by developing strategies to make the idea a reality. One promising approach is... Read More
By Claire McCarthy
30 Oct 2019
The world of work is changing. The work of the Changing Work Centre and the Commission on Workers and Technology demonstrates that. For many that brings a sense of... Read More
By The Alternative UK
23 Oct 2019
“The Wigan Deal” beats austerity by putting unique human relationships at the core. Does it anticipate a more radical future too? This affecting, even moving video above comes... Read More
By Ed Mayo
16 Oct 2019
It is a time of great distraction. Our plans to leave the European Union are burning, our government is fiddling with its leadership and, while it makes for news... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
09 Oct 2019
This month’s Talking Points looks at rising poverty and inequality and what can be done about it – from reforming Universal Credit to introducing UBS/UBI, taxing wealth more, and... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
02 Oct 2019
The introductory statement to the UN Climate Action Summit on 23 September 2019 makes chilling reading, though it insists that there are still solutions available: ‘The last four years... Read More
By Jon Edwards
25 Sep 2019
The core premise of Neal Lawson’s ‘45° Change’ is that the post-1945 welfare state approach to dealing with societal challenges has broken down. The neoliberal, market-driven system that has... Read More
By Bob Rhodes
18 Sep 2019
As part of its Manifesto for Social Care Reform, the Centre Welfare Reform proposes a radical reinvention of social services and the reintegration and refocusing of social work on... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
11 Sep 2019
This month’s Talking Points ranges widely from US companies’ new professed purpose of improving our society to a change of direction at Joseph Rowntree Foundation, ideas for transforming public... Read More
By Mathew Lawrence
03 Sep 2019
Executive summary Tinkering at the margins of an economic model driving environmental breakdown is guaranteed to deepen the climate emergency. To thrive, only a systemic response to a systems... Read More
By Chris Williams
28 Aug 2019
The UK’s 25 year environment plan — to lead the world in the ‘natural capital approach’ — contains many bold statements about the capacity of this approach to produce positive change for nature. One aim is... Read More
By the CLES team
21 Aug 2019
Last week CLES hosted the second annual Community Wealth Building Summit, the only event like it in the UK and the largest event in CLES’ history. The 200-strong delegate... Read More
By Fran Bennett
14 Aug 2019
This ‘Poverty and social security: where next?’ blog series has given valuable pointers about what a future government should do to mend social security and tackle poverty over the... Read More
By Thomas Barrett
07 Aug 2019
We are all familiar with the gaps in high streets left as stores close. This article from New Start describes a pilot scheme called Open Doors, to be launched later this year,... Read More
By Lukasz Krebel
01 Aug 2019
Today the ONS has published its latest GDP statistics, showing that UK GDP grew by 0.3% in the three months to May 2019. This monthly release typically attracts widespread media... Read More
By Sally Thomas
29 Jul 2019
Reflections from the 2019 annual conference of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) Our annual conference looked at the future of housing, focusing on our tenants, homes, communities... Read More
By Hannah Ormston
25 Jul 2019
Now, perhaps more than ever, our peer-to-peer interactions, social networks and relationships, matter. The importance of personal agency and control in the decisions that affect our lives should not... Read More
By Sally Witcher
23 Jul 2019
How would you design a new social security system from scratch? Not an opportunity that comes along every day, so probably not a question many have devoted time to... Read More
By Dr Hugh Ellis
18 Jul 2019
It might not be immediately obvious why anyone would want to have a relationship with a planner let alone an organisation dedicated to promoting the values of a planning... Read More
By Barry Knight
16 Jul 2019
This article is based on a talk to the Voluntary Action History Society on 10 June 2019. Arthur Marwick said that a society without an understanding of its history... Read More
By Barry Knight and Colin Greer
10 Jul 2019
The unseen driver of our troubles causes no pain. But it is quietly destroying you and me. What is it? We reckon that most of you will have thought... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
09 Jul 2019
This month’s Talking Points reflects on the causes of inequality and puts forward some suggestions for tackling poverty rather than just more ‘bad news’. We also look at the... Read More
By Louisa McGeehan
02 Jul 2019
If a future government wants to tackle poverty, its first priority should be child poverty. Growing up in poverty steals away children’s life chances – poorer children are likely... Read More
By Pierre Calame
26 Jun 2019
The European Union has seen globalization in narrow economic terms as the creation of a single global market rather than the irreversible, interdependent relationships between the world’s societies and... Read More
By Barry Knight
24 Jun 2019
What follows is the text of a speech given by Barry Knight at a conference of the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations (SFHA) on 12 June 2019. The speech... Read More
By Stephen Timms
19 Jun 2019
An incoming Labour government will be confronted with the severe problems currently facing claimants grappling with universal credit. What will the Labour party need to do to put social... Read More
By Stephen Pittam
18 Jun 2019
In April I attended Ariadne’s annual meeting in Belfast. Ariadne is a European peer-to-peer network of over 600 funders and philanthropists who support social change and human rights. Participants... Read More
By Manny Hothi
11 Jun 2019
Is the angry and exasperated tone of Phillip Alston’s report on poverty in the UK counter-productive? Let’s compare this with responses to climate change. For years David Attenborough and... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
05 Jun 2019
A big story this month is the launch of a new review of inequality in the UK, but will it make a difference? Discussion of the four-day (or shorter)... Read More
By Mark Wilkinson
04 Jun 2019
In this blog, Mark Wilkinson, Losing Control advisory council member, reflects on the Losing Control conference in February, CTRLshift: an emergency summit for change in May, and the way community groups in towns and... Read More
By Indra Adnan
30 May 2019
CTRLshift is all about ‘shifting control’ from national-level political parties and corporations to the people and organisations collaborating in towns, cities and regions – very much the agenda of... Read More
By John Veit-Wilson
28 May 2019
Poverty is growing in the UK, and it’s not only that more people are suffering, but the hurts and indignities they suffer are getting worse. Much of this avoidable... Read More
By Aaron Tanaka
23 May 2019
Editors’ note: In this article, Aaron Tanaka, director of the Center for Economic Democracy and cofounder of the Boston Ujima Project, envisions a new approach for economic development that is... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
21 May 2019
The devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have all three put wellbeing at the heart of their approach – codifying their values and goals within wellbeing frameworks... Read More
By Claire Ainsley
16 May 2019
For people living in poverty in the UK, the workings of the social security system are too often part of the problem, not part of the solution. People will... Read More
By Kim Soliman and Laura Ross Gakava
14 May 2019
For two days in February we were welcomed to ‘Losing Control’, a gathering of like-minded folk seeking to connect, inspire, debate and conspire about how to lose control. As... Read More
By Barry Knight
08 May 2019
Barry Knight attends an assembly of Tyne & Wear Citizens to meet the candidates in the North of Tyne mayoral elections Something is stirring. A new populism is on... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
01 May 2019
The big development this month is the re-emergence of the Green New Deal in the UK, offering a way forward to address poverty, inequality and climate change. Also this... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
24 Apr 2019
Systems change is an area Rethinking Poverty intends to look at in a systematic way, examining some of the key concepts such as emergence and design, equifinality, etc. While... Read More
By Roy Payne
16 Apr 2019
The government’s new Working with Communities policy is important because it establishes the principle of ‘community consent’ to long-term planning decisions affecting the local community. This has the potential... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
10 Apr 2019
I have been very aware for a while that Rethinking Poverty should be including climate change in its focus. But a gut feeling about the interconnectedness of everything isn’t... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
03 Apr 2019
New economic models feature prominently in this month’s Talking Points. The publication of new reports from NEF and Compass has revived the debate about universal basic income vs universal... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
28 Mar 2019
On 1 March I met with a group of people from Oxford – city council officials, an elected councillor and staff of social enterprise Aspire Oxford – to talk... Read More
By Reverend Paul Nicolson
26 Mar 2019
I am delighted to make this politically independent contribution to debate the left’s poverty and social security agenda in the 2020s. I work without allegiance to any political party,... Read More
By Barry Knight
22 Mar 2019
What follows is the text of a speech given by Barry Knight at a one-day conference in Blackpool on 22 March 2019. The objective of the conference was to... Read More
By Peter Hetherington
20 Mar 2019
Here Peter Hetherington reviews Brett Christophers’ new book on enclosure in neoliberal Britain. Jason Hickel’s blog, posted yesterday, also focuses on enclosure and the role it has played as the engine... Read More
By Jason Hickel
19 Mar 2019
What do we need for a good society and a sustainable future? We need to de-enclose social goods and restore the commons, so that people can access the things they need... Read More
By Mary-Ann Stephenson
14 Mar 2019
Our social security system is not working. A succession of cuts and changes over the last eight years have left a fifth of the population (more than 14 million people)... Read More
By Steven Burkeman
12 Mar 2019
In 1901, Joseph Rowntree began creating what was to become the village of New Earswick, 2½ miles north of York. Today, New Earswick is a thriving mixed community of... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
06 Mar 2019
Is the zeitgeist changing? While the beginning of February saw a spate of calls for the rich to pay more taxes, the end of the month has seen a... Read More
By Donald Burling
27 Feb 2019
Rethinking Poverty encourages its readers to contribute their thoughts so that we can all engage in developing the society we want. Here we publish an article by Donald Burling... Read More
By David Burch and Neil McInroy
20 Feb 2019
From time to time a new policy concept emerges, which seems to capture the mood and desire for a certain type of change. Today in economic development that phrase... Read More
By Rachel Gregory
14 Feb 2019
Universal Credit is hailed as the biggest welfare reform since the welfare state was introduced. While support exists for the principles behind its introduction – simplifying the legacy benefits... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
05 Feb 2019
Why is inequality increasing? Because the rich aren’t paying their way A discussion panel at the recent Davos World Economic Forum became a sensation after a Dutch historian took... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
30 Jan 2019
What is community wealth building? On the one hand, it seems like a new idea. The Labour Party established its Community wealth building Unit less than a year ago,... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell and Barry Knight
23 Jan 2019
Here, we follow up the article by Neal Lawson and Caroline Hartnell on ‘45 Degree Change’ and examine initiatives identified by Aditya Chakrabortty in a series of articles called... Read More
By Thomas Barrett
16 Jan 2019
Another great example of how an area can be transformed when the city council works closely with local residents at every stage of a regeneration project, led by ‘what... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
09 Jan 2019
Deepening poverty and inequality Gordon Brown provides what seems like a fitting epitaph for the year. ‘I’m seeing poverty I didn’t think I would ever see again in my... Read More
By Barry Knight
03 Jan 2019
Last year was a bad year for anti-poverty campaigners. Poverty rose significantly and yet the government summarily dismissed reports from the UN and JRF. If we are to produce... Read More
By Katy Goldstraw
19 Dec 2018
Current discussion of a good society takes place in a period of profound global change, and there is no agreement about what a good society would look like. In... Read More
By Barry Knight
12 Dec 2018
In all my years of working with voluntary organisations and community groups, I have never been to an AGM like it. The room is packed, the energy high, the... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
05 Dec 2018
The UN report on poverty in the UK … The big event in the area of poverty this month has to be Philip Alston’s damning report on poverty in... Read More
By Barry Knight and Caroline Hartnell
28 Nov 2018
Moved, humbled, inspired, sad, angry – these are some of our feelings after watching A Northern Soul, a film by Hull-born documentary-maker Sean McAllister, shown on BBC2 on Sunday 18... Read More
By Neal Lawson and Caroline Hartnell
21 Nov 2018
We want to change the world. Of course that means ending poverty and stopping climate change. The problem is, though, we really don’t know how to do it. Two... Read More
By Gill Hughes and Sarah Hatfield
15 Nov 2018
We are Gill Hughes of the University of Hull’s Youth Work and Community Development team and Sarah Hatfield from Timebank. Together, we convene the #thehullwewant project. The project is... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
07 Nov 2018
March Talking Points featured a heading: ‘A big shift in the economy needed – but where are the ideas?’ In June we asked: ‘Why are there no ideas “lying... Read More
By Ghiyas Somra
24 Oct 2018
Rethinking Poverty advocates a move away from ‘top-down approaches drawing on the views of professional experts’ such as the bottom-up approach 45 Degree Change and actually hearing from the communities... Read More
By Pat Thane
17 Oct 2018
Surveying British history since 1900 for my new book Divided Kingdom. A History of Britain, 1900 to the Present, my most shocking discovery was that the extent and causes... Read More
By Jenny Hodgson
10 Oct 2018
Regular readers of the Rethinking Poverty blog and our Twitter followers may have noticed frequent mentions of #ShiftThePower and #TheHullWeWant – and may well have wondered what these have... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
03 Oct 2018
Ten years on from the crash and nothing learned Ten years on from the collapse of Lehman Brothers on 15 September 2008, there has been a bevy of articles... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty, Compass, TCPA, University of Hull, UCL
26 Sep 2018
What would a good society look like and how can we achieve it? As described in yesterday’s blog, a small group of people got together in Letchworth Garden City... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty, Compass, TCPA, University of Hull, UCL
25 Sep 2018
A small group of people got together in Letchworth Garden City on 26 and 27 July. With UK politics in a worse state than perhaps ever before, the aim... Read More
By Julia Unwin
14 Sep 2018
Scrapping top-down attempts at building a good society and shifting the power to those people who we seek to help are some of the main ideas put forward by Barry... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
04 Sep 2018
The government’s new Civil Society Strategy … August has seen the launch of the government’s new Civil Society Strategy. Civil Society Media quotes Jeremy Wright, the culture secretary: ‘Our... Read More
By Gerry Salole
29 Aug 2018
‘Although we move with the better classes, our thoughts are always with the masses.’ (Ross Coggins, 1976) In 1976, an exasperated development worker, Ross Coggins, attending his umpteenth... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
14 Aug 2018
Child poverty is worsening Child poverty is soaring, says NPC chief executive Dan Corry in a recent Guardian article. Resolution Foundation analysis suggests that child poverty has risen from 1.6... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
07 Aug 2018
What is ‘good help’? According to a new report published by OSCA and NESTA, Good and bad help: How purpose and confidence transform lives, ‘good help’ is help that... Read More
By Barry Knight
24 Jul 2018
Barry Knight reviews Poverty: The facts (6th edition) by Alan Marsh, with Karen Barker, Carla Ayrton, Morag Treanor and Moussa Haddad (Child Poverty Action Group, 2017) and The New... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
17 Jul 2018
Plight of poor people worsening … June has produced plenty of bad news on this front. Analysis by the Centre for Social Justice, a right-wing think-tank, shows that the wages... Read More
By Michael Weatherburn
12 Jun 2018
The publication of Barry Knight’s Rethinking Poverty: What makes a good society? (2017) no doubt raised eyebrows when its author suggested that one of the most effective ways to... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
06 Jun 2018
How can funders help develop the kind of civil society we need? How can funders support development of a civil society that will provide ‘a creative response to everything... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
29 May 2018
‘Focusing on basic services, such as housing, food, communications and transport, is, we conclude, far more effective at driving down the cost of living than spending the same money... Read More
By Barry Knight
21 May 2018
Beatrice Webb’s observation that poverty has little to do with individual sloth and everything to do with economic mismanagement and social structure led to systematic government action to regulate... Read More
By Barry Knight
16 May 2018
The title of this article is taken from a quotation from Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey – better known as the rapper Loki. Based on his experience of growing... Read More
By Chris Goulden
11 May 2018
Universal basic income (UBI), or citizens’ basic income, is one of the ideas put forward in Barry Knight’s book Rethinking Poverty: What makes a good society? as a ‘promising area for... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
08 May 2018
Why is wealth inequality soaring? By 2030 the richest 1 per cent will own two-thirds of global wealth. Dominic Frisby offers 10 reasons why this is happening in the... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
03 May 2018
Why do we value children so little? This question was posed by Ingrid Wolfe, consultant in children’s public health medicine and director of the Evelina London Child Health Partnership,... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
24 Apr 2018
Barry Knight’s book Rethinking Poverty:What makes a good society? was published last September, eliciting a wide range of responses, published on the Rethinking Poverty blog. Barry’s new paper, summarised... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
04 Apr 2018
A big shift in the economy needed – but where are the ideas? ‘Reflective Corbynites and thoughtful Conservatives are agreed on one thing—the time is ripe for a big... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
29 Mar 2018
‘Since 1945 Britain has experienced two models of political economy,’ said Rachel Reeves, MP for Leeds West, launching her new pamphlet, The Everyday Economy, at The Trampery in London... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
26 Mar 2018
‘If the crucial issue is how to ensure adequate resources for all, why are we asked to discuss the ‘Good Life’ at all?’ writes John Veit-Wilson. ‘… what they... Read More
By Reverend Paul Nicolson
23 Mar 2018
The main point of Barry Knight’s book is that ‘our efforts to end poverty over the past 75 years have failed’. I disagree. There have been some significant successes.... Read More
By Sara Bryson
21 Mar 2018
The persistence of poverty, it seems to me, continues because we fail to tackle a central crucial issue: power. We have centuries of writing, analysis and debate in relation... Read More
By Nat O’Connor
19 Mar 2018
Barry Knight, and others, are right to move beyond the word ‘poverty’. It is a loaded term and people carry so many preconceptions into any conversation on poverty that... Read More
By John Veit-Wilson
14 Mar 2018
In response to Barry Knight’s invitation to give feedback on his recent article ‘Rethinking Poverty: Towards the Webb Legacy’, I’m puzzled why there isn’t more emphasis on asking why... Read More
By Barry Knight
07 Mar 2018
Purpose of this paper This paper has two goals. The first is to learn from reactions to the publication of Rethinking Poverty given during a wide range of public... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
07 Mar 2018
New Guardian series on alternative economics ‘It’s time to take on the zombies’ is the title of the first article in Aditya Chakrabortty’s new fortnightly series called ‘The Alternatives’... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
01 Mar 2018
‘The problem with the word poverty is that it embodies so many negatives,’ said journalist Stephen Armstrong, author of The New Poverty, speaking at Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s (JRF) ‘Talking... Read More
By Chris Goulden
01 Mar 2018
I completely agree with the book’s aspiration for us all to think differently about poverty. That’s also the foundation of new JRF research from the Frameworks Institute that seeks... Read More
By Peter Hetherington
26 Feb 2018
Peter Hetherington finds compelling arguments in a recent book challenging preconceived ideas about the role and responsibility of government and the assumptions of both the political right and left.... Read More
By Bassma Kodmani
22 Feb 2018
I started to highlight the sentences that inspired me, as I often do, with the intention of citing Barry Knight’s Rethinking Poverty in my own lectures or writings, but... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
19 Dec 2017
After more than 70 years, the Webb Memorial Trust will close at the end of 2017. This follows a decision in 2010 to spend down the endowment of the... Read More
By Tom Skinner
19 Dec 2017
Reflections from Tom Skinner, Director of Greater Manchester Poverty Action We had a fantastic time at our Rethinking Poverty event last week, and I want to thank everyone who... Read More
By Lisa Jordan
18 Dec 2017
Before getting into the heart of the Rethinking Poverty dialogue I want to first say ‘thank you’ to Barry Knight and the Webb Memorial Trust for helping me understand... Read More
By Jennifer Wallace
12 Dec 2017
Working for an organisation with a hundred-year history tends to change your perspective. While most analysis of the relationship between the state and citizens starts from the postwar social... Read More
By Albert Ruesga
11 Dec 2017
A doff of the hat to my colleague Barry Knight for his recent book, Rethinking Poverty: What Makes a Good Society? In the US, we live in a society where few... Read More
By Jessica Goble
17 Nov 2017
Living Wage campaign links community with politics and business, says Jessica Goble As a programme officer for the Living Wage Foundation, the point that most struck me from Rethinking... Read More
By Kate Green
15 Nov 2017
How to end poverty in rich countries has been the subject of much hand-wringing over the years. When the Webb Memorial Trust kicked off our programme of work in... Read More
By David Bonbright
24 Oct 2017
Last month I attended a very British event at the London School of Economics. A hundred or so of us gathered in the Shaw Library, named after George Bernard... Read More
By Gerry Salole
19 Oct 2017
The title of this book, Rethinking Poverty – What makes a good society?, promises a theoretical treatise on the elimination, or reframing, of poverty and destitution in the UK.... Read More
By Barry Knight
18 Oct 2017
This article was originally published in the New Statesman magazine and online How to reinvent the welfare state for a new political era: voters want both freedom and security... Read More
By Bodille Arensman
18 Oct 2017
On 20 September 2017 the Erasmus Centre for Strategic Philanthropy (ECSP) organised a learning event on poverty for philanthropists in the Netherlands with the aim of discussing the challenges... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
05 Oct 2017
This book offers a summary of a Webb Memorial Trust research programme that asks how we might construct a society without poverty rather than the slightly different question as... Read More
By Keiran Goddard
04 Oct 2017
Rethinking Poverty argues that the ‘narrative around poverty is broken’ … and, assuming we want our social narratives to render experience with something like fidelity, it’s a claim that... Read More
By Jon Edwards
28 Sep 2017
The launch of Barry Knight’s book Rethinking Poverty has certainly acted as a catalyst for thinking and reflection. Although the emphasis in the book is on the crisis in... Read More
By Christopher Harris
28 Sep 2017
Joseph Stiglitz, the 2001 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, has written for a long time about the failure of neoliberal economics and the resultant human suffering... Read More
By Rosie Ferguson
26 Sep 2017
One in four families in the UK today is headed by a single parent, making them an everyday part of the fabric of our society. We’ve become a much... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
26 Sep 2017
We invited some attendees at the launch of Rethinking Poverty to share their thoughts on the messages that feature in the book. Read more from the Rethinking Poverty discussion forum: Starting... Read More
By Barry Knight
21 Sep 2017
As the first anniversary of the launch of the campaign to #ShiftThePower approaches, there are clear signs that people in the Global South are developing it creatively. A prime example took... Read More
By Paul Nicolson
21 Sep 2017
In Rethinking Poverty Barry Knight and the Webb Memorial Trust turned to participatory research to provide opportunities for ‘…individuals on low incomes to develop and express their own ideas’. They rightly... Read More
By Andrew Milner
21 Sep 2017
The Webb Memorial Trust launched the book Rethinking Poverty: What makes a good society? in the Shaw Library at the London School of Economics (LSE) on 13 September 2017.... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
19 Sep 2017
John Akinde performs ‘The Youth Will Not Die’ at the launch of Rethinking Poverty, a new book by Barry Knight, Director of the Webb Memorial Trust. Find out more... Read More
By Stephen Pittam
15 Sep 2017
Gandhi recognised that there are limits to what protest can achieve in trying to change society. He was a strong advocate of the ‘constructive programme’. So, Barry Knight is... Read More
By Barry Knight
13 Sep 2017
Our society is drifting. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fight against poverty. Without an underlying story to guide action, progress has stalled. Around one-in-five of the... Read More
By Neal Lawson
13 Sep 2017
I try to love everyone and while I fail, I at least think everyone is lovable. I know that every life is as valuable as any other and... Read More
By Barry Knight
31 Aug 2017
This article was written for Discover Society Let’s talk about security and freedom We live by the stories we tell ourselves. The most important storyline is how to live... Read More
By Barry Knight
31 Aug 2017
In a blog for Policy Press, Barry Knight, Webb Memorial Trust Director asks: What’s next for poverty? Progress on poverty has stalled. The proportion of people living in poverty... Read More
By Richard Rawes
17 Feb 2017
In our final exclusive comment piece as part of the 75th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, Richard Rawes, chairman of the Webb Memorial Trust, says we can resolve the... Read More
By Kate Henderson
16 Feb 2017
Government must support all kinds of house builders to build the homes we need, says Kate Henderson, the chief executive of the Town and Country Planning Association, in the... Read More
By Seb Klier
15 Feb 2017
Government must do more to protect the millions of people renting in the private sector, argues Seb Klier, from Generation Rent, in the latest of our exclusive articles compiled... Read More
By Paul Hunter
09 Feb 2017
A suburban renaissance will be key to solving our housing crisis, says Paul Hunter from the Smith Institute, in the latest of our exclusive articles compiled as part of... Read More
By Martin Wheatley
08 Feb 2017
The building of new council homes should be a key part of solving our housing crisis, argues Martin Wheatley, from the campaign for social housing (SHOUT), in the latest... Read More
By Jennifer Line
07 Feb 2017
In the latest of our exclusive articles compiled as part of the 75th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, Jennifer Line explores what community-led housing has to offer in response... Read More
By Ruth Davidson
07 Feb 2017
In the latest of our exclusive articles, compiled as part of the 75th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, Ruth Davidson from the National Housing Federation explains creating communities, and... Read More
By Rys Farthing
03 Feb 2017
The experiences of children in poverty should guide our approach to tackling poverty, argues Rys Farthing in the latest of our exclusive articles compiled as part of the 75th... Read More
By Alice Martin
02 Feb 2017
In the latest of our exclusive articles compiled as part of the 75th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, Alice Martin argues the government needs to get smarter about selling... Read More
By Terrie Alafat
01 Feb 2017
Terrie Alafat CBE, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, says the sector must do more to prepare for the challenges which lie ahead in the latest of... Read More
By Sarah Daly
31 Jan 2017
‘More must be done to tackle fuel poverty’ 31/01/2017 Sarah Daly, director of strategic sustainability and partnerships, Sustainable Homes, says more must be done to end fuel poverty in... Read More
By Duncan Bowie
30 Jan 2017
Duncan Bowie, senior lecturer in spatial planning at the University of Westminster, argues for a fundamental change in housing policy in the latest in a series of exclusive articles... Read More
By Toby Lloyd
27 Jan 2017
Toby Lloyd from Shelter explores the need for government intervention to reduce the welfare bill and tackle poverty in today’s exclusive article, compiled as part of the 75th anniversary... Read More
By Peter Kenway
26 Jan 2017
In today’s exclusive article, compiled as part of the 75th anniversary of the Beveridge Report, Peter Kenway from the New Policy Institute examines the relationship between the growth of... Read More
By Brian Robson
25 Jan 2017
In the first of a number of exclusive articles which shine a light on the link between poverty and housing, Brian Robson, from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, argues housing... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
21 Oct 2016
Most commentators now agree that the shortage of housing in the UK is reaching crisis proportions, with rental costs rising sharply and those on low incomes particularly seriously affected.... Read More
By Barry Knight
30 Aug 2016
In October 2016 the New Statesman will publish its annual Webb Memorial Trust supplement. This year we explore the theme of agency; who has the understanding, responsibility, and power to bring about... Read More
By Neil McInroy
27 Jul 2016
For too long we have either turned a blind eye to poverty and disadvantage or hoped that a general rising tide of economic wealth would trickle down. The... Read More
By Barry Knight
22 May 2016
Barry Knight, Director of the Webb Memorial Trust, contributed a chapter to Effective Philanthropy: Another Take published in April 2016 by Philanthropy for Social Justice and Peace to coincide with... Read More
By Caroline Hartnell
13 May 2016
What is the role of business in reducing poverty? This was the question before a meeting hosted by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty (APPG) and the Webb... Read More
By Georgia Smith
15 Mar 2016
The word ‘poverty’ features heavily in the lexicon of British politics. The Prime Minister has proposed an “all-out assault on poverty,” Labour MPs and peers recently campaigned hard to... Read More
By Abigail Scott Paul
15 Mar 2016
Abigail Scott Paul, JRF – Understanding and developing a new language around poverty in the UK Abigail Scott Paul, Head of Engagement at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, delivered the... Read More
By Deborah Mattinson
15 Mar 2016
Deborah Mattinson, Britain Thinks – How to have an effective conversation with the public Deborah Mattinson, Founding Director of Britain Thinks, picked up the theme of public engagement. The... Read More
By Kate Bell
15 Mar 2016
Kate bell – Where next for anti-poverty campaigners? Next up Kate Bell drew on her experience as a former policy advisor to the Labour Party and coordinator with CPAG... Read More
By Emily Fu
15 Mar 2016
Emily Fu, TNS BMRB – What drives public attitudes to welfare? Emily Fu, Associate Director at social research agency TNS BMRB, examined the emotional drivers of public attitudes towards... Read More
By Barry Knight
15 Mar 2016
Drawing on research conducted by YouGov, Director of the Webb Memorial Trust, Barry Knight, reflected on current sentiments towards poverty in the UK. He defined this as an area... Read More
By Richard Rawes
18 Feb 2016
Richard Rawes, Chair of the Webb Memorial Trust, reflects on recent events at the Town and Country Planning Association, Institute of Economic Development and New Economics Foundation. The Trust... Read More
By Barry Knight
29 Apr 2015
A report launched today commissioned by the Webb Memorial Trust discusses how in-work poverty is the product of three variables: levels of pay, levels of in-work benefits, and the... Read More
By Rethinking Poverty
29 Apr 2015
Low-paid parents can be helped to overcome the greater barriers they face in striking the right balance for their families between work and parenting through better childcare support, more responsive... Read More
By Georgia Smith
24 Mar 2015
Detailed summary of 'A Future Without Poverty' cross-party conference organised by The Fabian Society and Bright Blue on 2nd March 2015 at the Hallam Conference Centre.
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By Georgia Smith
24 Mar 2015
Panel Discussion: A future without poverty Chair: Oliver Wright, Whitehall correspondent, the Independent Charlie Elphicke MP, PPS to secretary of state for work and pensions Helen Goodman MP, shadow minister for... Read More
By Georgia Smith
23 Mar 2015
An arresting start to the proceedings was provided by the Seasons Playhouse in Liverpool, ‘Young Voices’. Part of the Poverty Ends Now (PEN) initiative, the actors spoke brief... Read More
By Georgia Smith
23 Mar 2015
Question Time: Who has the best plan to tackle poverty? Chair: Ian Birrell, contributing editor, Mail on Sunday Jeremy Browne MP, former Home Office minister Philip Collins, chief leader... Read More
By Georgia Smith
23 Mar 2015
Sam Bowman, deputy director, Adam Smith Institute Alison Garnham, chief executive, Chid Poverty Action Group Andrew Harrop, general secretary, Fabian Society Chair: David Kirkby, researcher, Bright Blue Alison... Read More
By Georgia Smith
23 Mar 2015
Seema Malhotra MP, shadow minister for preventing violence against women and girls Hannah Pearce, head of public affairs, Age UK Cllr Harry Phibbs, Hammersmith and Fulham council Chair: Daisy-Rose... Read More
By Georgia Smith
23 Mar 2015
Dragons: Tessa Awe, chief executive, CVS Brent Chris Goulden, head of policy, Joseph Rowntree Foundation Cllr Gary Porter, leader, LGA Conservatives Innovators: Richard Jones, chief executive, Joshua Project Alex... Read More
By Georgia Smith
23 Mar 2015
A Future Without Poverty Conference – closing remarks Andrew Harrop, general secretary, Fabian Society Ryan Shorthouse, director, Bright Blue Andrew Harrop celebrated what he saw as the left and... Read More
By Alan Milburn
10 Mar 2015
Many thanks to the Fabian Society and Bright Blue for organising today’s event and to the Fabians for your important Inequality 2030 report. Thanks are also due to the Webb Memorial... Read More
By Webb Memorial Trust
08 Sep 2014
In spring 2014 the Webb Memorial Trust launched the Paul Goggins Memorial Prize. Paul Goggins MP was the Secretary of the APPG Poverty and a champion of the anti-poverty agenda in... Read More
By Webb Memorial Trust
27 Mar 2014
This submission from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Poverty is based on a specially commissioned debate, held on 24 January 2013, between Professor Jonathan Bradshaw (York University), Christian Guy... Read More
By Peter Hetherington
18 Mar 2014
Peter Hetherington examines outcomes from a recent anti-poverty conference in Newcastle co-organised by the Webb Memorial Trust.
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By Deborah Hargreaves
18 Mar 2014
Deborah Hargreaves, Director of the High Pay Centre, discusses some of the main findings from a recent report commissioned by the Webb Memorial Trust on pay ratios.
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