Learning from EFF: Communities re-imagine their future
The Emerging Futures Fund generated invaluable insights in considering how the Levelling Up agenda - and the significant investment that brings - might interact with local communities’ visions for the future. The government’s ambition of “strengthening community and local leadership, restoring pride in place, and improving quality of life in ways that are not just about the economy” could be met by drawing on community imagination to guide initiatives towards the things that local people value.
The phenomenal community response to the immediate impacts of the Covid pandemic has been well documented. During the first lockdown as many as 3 million people were reported to have participated in over 4,000 mutual aid groups, providing vital assistance to those in their neighbourhoods most affected by coronavirus and the restrictions. But in coming together in the face of this crisis, communities began to ask what future they might build together beyond it.
Community-led foresight and imagination is vital to help communities to voice their ambitions about the future of their communities. However, creating a canvas for collective imagining requires sustained and considered work. Place-based initiatives funded through the programme demonstrated that effective approaches require deep connection among residents to voice their radical ambitions and open-minded bravery among policy makers to deliver.
We want to think more imaginatively about what if this town, this country, this world was as good as it possibly could get? What do we need to think about? What do we need to do differently? And what might we be able to bring to the table to really start to have a different way of thinking about the future? Sherry Clark, Hastings Leisure and Learning
The Bennett Institute at Cambridge University has found that mutual aid groups were most prevalent in areas that had strong social infrastructure. Similarly, Emerging Futures Fund projects situated within communities have found that they require strong levels of local connectedness and trust to come together and create visions for the future.
From the community who engaged with Dreamspace in this first experiment we heard visions/hopes of interconnection, interdependence, inclusiveness, kindness and more in relationship with each other and the living world. Folks wanting to co-create local futures. There’s a real sense that this is hard work and no easy task but there was a real sense of possibility. Dan Burgess, Dreamspace Bath.
This highlights the level of skill and care that is required to design a process for communities to imagine the future. Many projects found that intensely emotional, immersive and creative work - like that undertaken by New Constellation with its small but diverse ‘crew’ in Barrow and Furness - was more successful than attempts at broader community engagement.
When we set off on our journey to discover Barrow’s New Constellation we weren’t sure what to expect, but what we found was extraordinary. When it comes down to it we are looking for a deep sense of connection and belonging to the place we call home. Rekindling those connections and coming together to create a brighter future gives me hope that we can emerge from the last year to build care, compassion and love into the heart of what we do. Sam Plum, Chief Executive, Barrow Borough Council
As Jessica Prendergrast of the Onion Collective in Watchet observes, “communities of place become communities of interest through shared visioning about the futures they want”.
The process therefore, can be valuable in and of itself. But to enact the visions they generate, communities also depend on interacting with others. Barrow New Constellation was remarkable for the full engagement and commitment of the local council: the guiding stars that emerged from that work have been adopted by the council and are being used to prioritise major investments. Likewise, the deeply established Onion Collective now acts as an anchor and finds local government wants to be part of their story.
However, others have found that it can be hard to reconcile the deep, thoughtful futures work they have undertaken with the initiatives available from external partners. While funding is welcome, they fear they could be set up to fail - with not enough time to reflect, think for the long term and put necessary partnerships in place.
Hilary Cottam’s Radical Way project highlighted the dynamics at play in this interaction between community imagination and the state, concluding, “what is required are thick new horizontal systems, binding place, community and the local state together: a shared vision, new forms of practice, a philosophy that guides decision making and money”.
These insights are invaluable in considering how the Levelling Up agenda - and the significant investment that brings - might interact with local communities’ visions for the future. The government’s ambition of “strengthening community and local leadership, restoring pride in place, and improving quality of life in ways that are not just about the economy” could be met by drawing on community imagination to guide initiatives towards the things that local people value.
The Emerging Futures Fund seeded and explored collective imagination and visioning approaches at community level. However, empowering a community to imagine a future is not a consultation exercise. We are in the foothills of understanding what really works methodologically but learning from projects we funded demonstrated that proper resourcing, rigour, care and a slower pace to reflect are the conditions of an effective and generative approach.