Understanding vaccine hesitancy through communities of place

Models of Value that Community Organising Generates for its Adopters

Published: 2022

Over recent years, the principles and practice of community organising have proliferated across a range of organisations and sectors. Keen to understand the impact of community organising and its potential as a tool for communities to tackle local issues, Power to Change commissioned a piece of research in 2020 looking in-depth at the experienc…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #16: Community responses to COVID-19 – Connecting communities? How relationships have mattered in community responses to COVID-19

Published: 2022

This briefing, the 16th in a series seeking to understand how communities across England respond to COVID-19 and how they recover, explores the importance of ‘relational working’. It argues that approaches which rely on relationships to work, but also pay attention to the importance of relationships to the people that community groups …

The Power of Community: Learning from Bristol’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Published: 2022

During 2021, Voscur worked with academics and students from the University of Bristol to investigate how the sector had adapted to ensure delivery of vital services during Covid-19.

With many in our sector unable to deliver vital services by established means, we wanted to find out how our colleagues from across the sector had continued to ful…

Civic Universities and Green Spaces: Exploring the current and potential impact on the wellbeing of local communities, staff, and students

Published: 2025

This paper reviews evidence around the relationship between green space, health and wellbeing in the context of universities. It highlights some key mechanisms through which green spaces achieve a positive impact on wellbeing – as spaces for physical activity, as social infrastructures, and as mitigation against the impacts of climate change …

Healthy Universities, People and Places: Exploring institutions’ potential impact on student, staff and community wellbeing

Published: 2024

Covering frameworks for ‘healthy universities’, partnerships with health networks, mental health support, and community health promotion, this review explores how universities can contribute to the health and wellbeing of their students, staff, and local communities.

This is one of four evidence reviews which explore the economic and soci…

Community empowerment and mental wellbeing: longitudinal findings from a survey of people actively involved in the Big Local place-based initiative in England

Published: 2022

Community empowerment initiatives are receiving increased interest as ways of improving health and reducing health inequalities. This research examines longitudinal associations between collective control, social-cohesion and mental wellbeing amongst participants in the Big Local community empowerment initiative across 150 disadvantaged areas o…

One pandemic, many responses

Published: 2022

This is the third report from Local Trust’s research study exploring how 26 communities across England responded to the COVID-19 crisis.

It follows Strong than anyone thought, published in September 2020, which looked at the initial lockdown period and Now they see us, published in August 2021, which saw the communities adapting to a…

Community Power and Health Equity: Closing the Gap between Scholarship and Practice

Published: 2022

This discussion paper draws on learnings from Lead Local: Community-Driven Change and the Power of Collective Action, a collaborative effort funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It shows how the power-building ecosystem works in practice, showcasing examples of state and local power-building organisations and campaigns nationwide and r…

Evaluation of Keighley Community Health

Published: 2022

GiveBradford and Power to Change have come together with the aim of creating a community led health offer in Keighley, a town in Bradford, the Keighley Community Health (KCH) grants programme. This has aimed to improve health outcomes for people in Keighley by supporting both community groups and community businesses to engage with social presc…

Models of Value that Community Organising Generates for its Adopters

Published: 2022

Over recent years, the principles and practice of community organising have proliferated across a range of organisations and sectors. Keen to understand the impact of community organising and its potential as a tool for communities to tackle local issues, Power to Change commissioned a piece of research in 2020 looking in-depth at the experienc…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #16: Community responses to COVID-19 – Connecting communities? How relationships have mattered in community responses to COVID-19

Published: 2022

This briefing, the 16th in a series seeking to understand how communities across England respond to COVID-19 and how they recover, explores the importance of ‘relational working’. It argues that approaches which rely on relationships to work, but also pay attention to the importance of relationships to the people that community groups …

The Power of Community: Learning from Bristol’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Published: 2022

During 2021, Voscur worked with academics and students from the University of Bristol to investigate how the sector had adapted to ensure delivery of vital services during Covid-19.

With many in our sector unable to deliver vital services by established means, we wanted to find out how our colleagues from across the sector had continued to ful…