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 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 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 Plans made a few weeks ago seem outdated at best or undoable at worst.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 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 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 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
19 Nov 2019
The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) has launched ‘The manifesto for local economies’, setting out a vision for ‘how the next government should create local economies that serve... 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
05 Nov 2019
The IPPR and WWF have published a collection of essays, Putting people at the heart of the green transition, which sets out what ‘a Green New Deal (GND) could... 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
24 Oct 2019
A new report from Carnegie UK, Public policy and the infrastructure of kindness in Scotland, explores the decision to put kindness at the centre of the Scottish National Performance... 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
22 Oct 2019
A new report from the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) and Power to Change, Building an inclusive economy through community business, ‘explores how community businesses can support the... 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
11 Oct 2019
Green New Deal for Nature, by Simon Lewis, of University College London and University of Leeds, forms part of Common Wealth’s Green New Deal (GND) series. The report advocates... 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
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
19 Sep 2019
A new report, How to achieve shorter working hours, commissioned by the Labour Party and written by Lord Skidelsky, was published last week. It argues that ‘a reduction in... 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
12 Sep 2019
Common Wealth have published another report in their Green New Deal series, this time looking at political movements and institutions. Written by Miatta Fahnbulleh of the New Economics Foundation,... Read More
10 Sep 2019
The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) have published the second provocation in their new series, ‘CLES on… regeneration’, arguing regeneration needs recalibration ‘in order to root the development... Read More
05 Sep 2019
Common Wealth have recently published the report Why We Need Publicly Owned Energy for a Green New Deal. Written by Cat Hobbs, founder and director of We Own It,... Read More
04 Sep 2019
The Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) have launched a new series of provocations, ‘CLES on…’, drawing on their thirty years’ experience of ‘working to develop stronger local economics... 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 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
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
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
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 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 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