The Young Foundation - a centre for social innovation

Local Innovation

Our Local Innovation team works on practical projects to improve public wellbeing, empower neighbourhoods to improve their quality of life, and help local authorities to innovate. Through the London Collaborative, the team assists London's public agencies in tackling big strategic challenges.

The aim of the team is to accelerate local authority action and innovation on issues such as neighbourhood empowerment, community engagement, youth crime and wellbeing, by working with local authorities, the voluntary and community sector, public agencies and central government.

Our work focuses on finding ways to promote innovation in these areas, combining action research, practical projects and policy development work to achieve this.

Local Innovation Highlights

The State of Happiness (January 2010)

From Report | 23 February 2010 by Ginny Lee

The State of Happiness is the new report from the Young Foundation and the IDeA.

Going green and beating the blues (December 2009)

From Report | 8 February 2010 by Ginny Lee

Can wellbeing and sustainability agendas be mutually reinforcing? This report looks at how local approaches can improve wellbeing and environmental sustainability.

Local 2.0 Blog

From Local Innovation Project Pages | 27 October 2009 by Ginny Lee

The Local 2.0 project in the Local Innovation team, has created a new blog to highlight how councils can use hyper-local media.

Meet the parents: stories of teenage pregnancy and parenthood in Lewisham (2009)

From Report | 8 February 2010 by Corinne Cordes

Detailed ethnographic research to understand attitudes towards parenthood at a young age and the experience of young mothers and fathers. The findings are captured through  ‘day in the life of’ case studies, quotes and analysis in this report, commissioned by the London Borough of Lewisham.

The Forgotten Parent?

The Forgotten Parent?

From News | 28 October 2009 by Helen Crumley

A new report launched by the Local Wellbeing Project, Parenting and wellbeing: knitting families together argues that parenting support often fails because it ignores the wellbeing of parents themselves.

The capital guide to behavour Change

The Capital Ambition guide to behaviour change

From Project Pages | 19 January 2010 by Admin

Can public agencies influence how people behave to make society greener, healthier, more caring? This guide produced by the London Collaborative rounds up theory, current practice and advice.