Why Are We Talking About Community Power?

Why are we talking about community power?

Well, one of the key shifts in the new Bromford strategy is about focussing on place and place-based working.

Place-based working is a person-centred, bottom-up approach used to meet the unique needs of people in one given location by working together to use the best available resources and collaborate to gain local knowledge and insight.

By working collaboratively with the people who live and work locally, it aims to build a picture of the system from a local perspective, taking an asset-based approach that seeks to highlight the strengths, capacity and knowledge of all those involved.

Community power refers to the collective ability of a community or group of individuals to influence and make decisions regarding matters that affect them. It involves the active participation, collaboration, and engagement of community members in shaping and improving their local environment, addressing common challenges, and promoting their shared interests and well-being.

Put more simply, it’s about recognising there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to community.

So we’ve begun a series of conversations with our communities about what place means and how we could operate differently. It’s part of what we are terming a ‘discovery year’, with the strategy itself acting as a kind of innovation pipeline.

Year One: Discover and Imagine

Year Two: Test

Year Three: Mobilise

Year Four: Embed

You’ll be able to follow the progress here and as part of a series of webinars we’ll be hosting. There will also be a new podcast series and an area specifically for communities to tell their stories.

The words community power don’t actually feature in our strategy, but we think it’s a vital subject area that our organisation and colleagues must learn more about, especially if we wish to share that power.

Here’s an excellent description from our friends at New Local.