Changemakers Greater Manchester

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About the approach

The central approach is ChangeMakers' Alinsky-based community organising, with an additional participatory budgeting (PB) element. In each area, local people will be recruited and supported to run a deliberative event which will give all residents an opportunity to identify local issues and vote in a PB process to allocate money to projects.

A wider listening exercise will then be carried out in each area, which will involve one-to-one interviews with a large number of local people and organisations to find out more about the issues identified at the events. Key people will then be invited to receive training in community organising, before they form research-action teams to plan public action on the prioritised issues. A public assembly will celebrate the changes made through PB funding, build engagement with power-holders and carry forward public actions.

The PB process will mean that at least £15,000 is distributed in each area in order to fund 10-12 local projects, selected through the PB process.

Participatory budgeting has the potential to engage people who have not previously taken part in community initiatives and offer them an immediate sense of meaningful participation. This will generate a significant number of new contacts early in the process and it will start to shift people's focus from personal interest towards more of a community interest. Community organising will enable community issues to be explored more deeply and, combined with training, should create the conditions for new local leaders to emerge.

About the organisations

The lead: Church Action on Poverty

Church Action on Poverty is a Christian social justice charity, committed to tackling poverty in the UK. They run national advocacy campaigns and deliver grassroots projects that develop innovative ways for people and communities to tackle poverty together. Church Action on Poverty believes that communities can tackle their own issues, given the right opportunities, training, tools and challenge.

Church Action on Poverty also has an expertise in participatory budgeting (PB) and has recently established the first PB Unit in the UK. They have enabled PB within 120 local authorities and are now keen to understand the benefits that might be associated with combining PB with their community organising approach.

Local partner: Changemakers Greater Manchester

Changemakers Greater Manchester represents a coalition of local organisations, almost exclusively based in disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Greater Manchester. The coalition, which began life as a Church Action on Poverty project, provides high quality community organising training to develop leadership potential in member groups. Changemakers provides the grassroots network of contacts and in-depth knowledge of local communities that the project requires.

The group's work is based on the theories of Saul Alinsky, a pioneer of community organising, which they believe overcome many of the barriers to participation, by creating a culture of listening and fostering a sense of shared purpose and mutual support.

About the neighbourhood

The project will work with three neighbourhoods in Greater Manchester. Old Trafford, with a population of 13,000, sits within the relatively wealthy borough of Trafford. It is culturally diverse and has significant South Asian and Somalian communities. This diversity, combined with poverty and the transient nature of some of the local communities, has made it difficult to build social capital and a culture of active participation. The area has a small number of community groups which, if developed, could benefit the area enormously.

Moss Side has had a disproportionate amount of negative publicity because of gun crime. It is a hugely diverse area racially and although the area has a sense of vibrancy, there are considerable underlying racial and social tensions. The area has attracted regeneration funds which have provided community buildings, though there is still a sense that people rarely come together across the things that divide them.

Collyhurst is a small predominantly white working-class neighbourhood just to the north of Manchester City with a population of around 2000. Unlike other local areas in which there is a thriving voluntary sector, Collyhurst is very short of leadership and community based groups.