Search Results

‘Good work’ and community business: Identifying pathways to good practice during Covid-19 and beyond

Repository entry 1 June 2021

This report examines what good work means in challenging times, with a focus on how community businesses are able to provide work which is fair, decent and rewarding within diverse and often challenging operational contexts. The research involved a review and further analysis of existing data sources, in-depth interviews with employees, vo…

Bright Ideas, Trade Up, and Community Business Fund: Year 2 Evaluation Report

Repository entry 1 May 2021

This report outlines evaluation findings from Renaisi’s evaluation of Power to Change’s Bright Ideas and Trade Up programmes, and its Community Business Fund. Each of these is different from the others and specifically targets different stages and support needs in the community business life cycle. However, they were all designed to supp…

Discomfort, Dissatisfaction & Disconnect: Exploring local economic perceptions through peer research

Repository entry 1 May 2021

This report by the Institute for Community Studies explores local economies from the perspectives of local communities through over fifty in-depth interviews undertaken using peer research, giving a platform to these all-too-often forgotten voices. The authors explore the priorities for transition and transformation in local economies thro…

Helping ensure survival: Digitally enhanced advanced services in community businesses

Repository entry 1 May 2021

This research explores how community businesses rapidly adapted to deliver important community services through digitalised means in light of the pandemic.

The research was funded by Power to Change and Digitally Enhanced Advanced Services (DEAS) and carried out by researchers from the University of the West of England. The researchers use dig…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #12: Community responses to COVID-19 – Potential and limits of community power in a pandemic

Repository entry 1 May 2021

New concepts of community power have risen up the policy agenda during COVID-19. Communities have widely been seen as integral to meeting local needs and as having the capacity to respond rapidly to the pandemic. The idea of community power is often assumed, in policy terms, to be a universally beneficial force. However, this fails to address i…

Levelling up and achieving an Upswing – Part III

Blog 22 April 2021

Matthew Flinders explains how a journey-based approach to youth engagement can have transformative potential.

Levelling up and achieving an Upswing – Part II

Blog 15 April 2021

Matthew Flinders calls for a ‘civic journey’ that’s focused on nurturing and understanding how and why people move in and out of civic spaces throughout their lives.

How can innovation help us do the best we can for the future of heritage?

News 14 April 2021

The Young Foundation and The National Lottery Heritage Fund are undertaking new research on how we can accelerate ideas to support heritage in the future. We want to hear your insights on innovation opportunities and challenges.

Inspiring local projects in Tower Hamlets receive grants

News 9 April 2021

As a provider of the Tower Hamlets Council ‘Communities Driving Change’ programme, The Young Foundation announces a new grant scheme, supporting local residents to minimise negative health and wellbeing impacts on their communities.

Meet our Inaugural Civic Scholars

Blog 8 April 2021

Meet the Scholars: Alice Lemkes Alice is a PhD student at the University of Leeds and is looking at the powerful role of narratives in regulating the lives and livelihoods of people experiencing ‘severe and multiple disadvantage’. Before starting the

Levelling up and achieving an Upswing – Part I

Blog 8 April 2021

For all its sweeping prose and upbeat analysis, Robert Putnam’s ‘The Upswing’ left Matthew Flinders downbeat. What’s needed, he suggests, is an ambitious vision for a new ‘civic journey’.

The Covid decade: understanding the long-term societal impacts of Covid-19.

Publication 7 April 2021

The Institute of Community Studies is delighted to have contributed to The British Academy’s timely evidence review to understand the long-term societal impacts of COVID-19. It makes sobering reading for any who thought the end of the pandemic would see