We are delighted to announce that we, alongside People’s Voice Media have recently been awarded funding through The National Lottery Community Fund. This fund gives grants to organisations to help improve their communities and support communities to thrive. We have received funding for a three-year co-production development project which kicks off next month. The project is going to be nationwide, focusing on Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Greater London.

We are chuffed to bits and really excited as it’s going to include co-production workshops, Community Reporting, annual community learning festivals and creating communities of practice who will support one another to develop and learn throughout the project. We cannot wait to get started and work with our current network, meet new people and organisations, and learn lots along the way.

This project is shaped by what we’ve been hearing from the people we have worked with over the last few years – including residents, local organisations, local authorities and community professionals. They have told us they want support and time to hear about co-production and to learn how to make it real on the ground. They want to do more to listen to people’s stories and to celebrate what they do locally.

Through this project we will help make co-production and Community Reporting accessible for smaller community organisations, volunteer-led and formally constituted groups and create a space for them to share and exchange their ways of working, ideas and practice.

We believe we are at a tipping point in the public and voluntary sector. The language of strength-based approaches is visible in national policy, but there is a gap in how it manifests on the ground day to day despite there being an appetite for this way of working. We hope our project will help grow the movement by supporting people to be brave, get alongside one another, connect, build relationships, ask difficult questions, re-write the rules of engagement, stop trying to ‘fix’ problems, build on local strengths and work together to achieve change.

We couldn’t ask for a better partner in People’s Voice Media and we’re also thrilled to be joined on this project by co-production guru, pirate, camerado and all-time expert networker – Cat Duncan-Rees.

We will be sharing regular updates on the project, so watch this space. You can sign up to receive them by email here.