Building Connection: The Promise of a Strategy for Community Spaces and Relationships
Posted by The Cares Family on 6th February 2023
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The government’s Levelling Up agenda, as set out in its February 2021 White Paper, featured a welcome focus on the social infrastructure of our places – the local spaces, facilities and organisations in which we meet, mix and build community bonds.
Just as an effective strategy to improve the physical infrastructure of a place will invariably set out specific measures concerning roads, bridges and tunnels, however, a plan to build up our social infrastructure should distinguish between the different ways in which members of local communities can connect with one another.
After all, people engage with one another differently in ‘bumping places’ like parks and post offices than they do through structured activities run by community organisations and projects – and the social ties which result from these encounters vary both in their strength and in their impact on levels of cross-community trust, empathy and togetherness.
In this new policy report, we explore how Ministers and officials could shape policy and funding frameworks to support community builders to construct the forms of social infrastructure their places need most.
We also argue that the government should establish a new capacity-building institution for community action charged with providing advice, training and resources to civic organisations. And we propose that this body should be invested with a specific mandate to fuel the development of connecting institutions – or community initiatives which foster positive and meaningful connections between people from different backgrounds and generations.
Organisations and projects of this sort are few and far in between. It follows that, through supporting civic leaders to adopt and adapt models that have worked elsewhere, policymakers could maximise the community-strengthening bang on their capacity-building buck.
Ultimately, the social fabric of our places won’t be be restitched in one fell swoop, but by weaving together a rich tapestry of shared community institutions and associations. We believe that, whether through the mooted Strategy for Community Spaces and Relationships or through a future policy initiative, the government has an important role to play in galvanising civil society activity and supporting community builders to carry out their vital work.
