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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 Caroline Hartnell and Barry Knight
07 Jan 2020
There is widespread agreement across the political spectrum that capitalism is in crisis and we need a new way of doing things. ‘Read the Economist and the Financial Times,’ wrote Michael Jacobs... 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 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 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 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
26 Sep 2019
Johanna Bozuwa and Carla Skandier of Democracy Collaborative have contributed to Common Wealth’s series on the Green New Deal with their piece, Shifting Ownership for the Energy Transition in... 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
24 Sep 2019
Last month we announced the launch of Common Wealth’s Green New Deal project, a series of reports that will aim to serve as a ‘comprehensive road map for a... 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 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
24 Jul 2019
A new publication from the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) ‘tells the story of community wealth building (CWB) in Preston’, reflecting on eight years of collaboration. CLES set... 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
12 Jun 2019
A new charter, Time to Build an Inclusive Local Economy ‘sets out key steps to harness the power of communities to create resilient local economies’. Developed by Development Trusts... Read More
09 May 2019
CLES last month released a new publication, New Municipalism in London, which highlights ‘the actions of three London Boroughs who are seeking to challenge traditional local economic development and... 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 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
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 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
21 Mar 2019
Compass has released a report, 45º Change: Transforming Society from Below and Above, authored by Neal Lawson and supported by Rethinking Poverty. It explains the theory of 45 Degree... Read More
15 Mar 2019
On 2 May citizens across Northumberland, Newcastle and North Tyneside will elect a North of Tyne mayor. The creation of the North of Tyne Authority and the election of... Read More
13 Mar 2019
On 6 March, the RSA Inclusive Growth Commission published their new report Inclusive growth in action: Snapshots of a new economy. In the face of a British economy that... 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
04 Mar 2019
Tear up the script, start with a blank page and change the narrative! These statements are drawn from a group of community development activists, practitioners and academics from across... Read More
04 Mar 2019
Tyne & Wear Citizens is a chapter of Citizens UK, a broad-based community organising organisation that seeks to build the power of civil society to act for social... 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 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 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
29 Nov 2018
Last week, we launched our series on ’45 Degree Change’ – the meeting point between the vertical state and horizontal emerging local initiatives. The work of local wealth building... 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 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, 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 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
