Stand out in Darwen

Read the Stand out in Darwen blog

About the approach

Darwen Aldridge Community Academy (DACA)'s project aims to use a 'Pioneer Fund' to invest in individuals and groups of people who have the ideas and potential to make connections and instigate change in the town. Interest in the Pioneer Fund will be generated by locally recruited Community Champions, who will tour the town with a 'living room', which will be fun and visual to draw people's attention. A 'turning ideas into action' event will take place, through which the community will select ideas to receive funding, taking part in voting and speed networking.

Once the Pioneers are identified, Neighbourhood Challenge funds will support them in making their ideas a reality in the community, coupled with support from DACA staff and students, local business people who already work with the Academy and the Community Champions. Local media channels and social networking will be used to capture and communicate the progress of projects and underline the value of entrepreneurial thinking. The groups who are not chosen to receive funding will also receive support to develop their ideas further.

DACA aims to create an Entrepreneurial Communities Fund (similar to an endowment) through the project, to allow the model to be sustained after Neighbourhood Challenge year has ended. The Aldridge Foundation intends to then adopt this approach to community engagement in the areas around its other academies.

The approach will challenge a social dynamic that is risk-averse by incentivising and developing entrepreneurial behaviours. The project has been designed to be open and enjoyable and the focus will be on 'quick wins' - small, practical attainable goals which will motivate and reassure the community. Sustainability is also a strong feature, as the community needs assurance that this is not another 'flash in the pan'. The establishment of the Entrepreneurial Communities Fund will be vital to this.

About the organisations

The lead: Aldridge Foundation

The Aldridge Foundation is an educational charitable foundation, committed to harnessing entrepreneurship as a catalyst for social change. The foundation sponsors nonselective community Academies in areas of entrenched disadvantage, low aspiration and poor attainment. Entrepreneurship, a lead specialism within each Academy, is integrated into all areas of Academy life and focuses on the development of entrepreneurial attributes as well as enterprise skills. The Foundation and its Academies also work in partnership with local initiatives and organisations to develop each Academy as a civic and community asset.

Local Partner: Darwen Aldridge Community Academy (DACA)

The Darwen Aldridge Community Academy is a school for 12-18 year olds which aims to provide the highest quality of education for its students. It encourages its students, staff and members of the local community to develop a passion for learning as well as an enterprising spirit. It is a centre of excellence for entrepreneurial education and seeks to promote a 'can do' culture which encourages action, solves problems and rejects the status quo. DACA's vision is to instil in people the key entrepreneurial characteristics of passion, creativity, teamwork, risk-taking, determination and problem solving which DACA believes are central to the creation of genuine social change.

About the neighbourhood

The project will be delivered in Darwen, Lancashire in neighbourhoods within the catchment area of the Academy. Darwen is a town characterised by high levels of poverty and low social capital. Recent research has highlighted attitudes and behaviours within the community that may be acting as barriers to aspiration, such as a lack of confidence to 'stand out from the crowd'.

DACA has worked successfully since opening two years ago, to combat local perceptions that it has been imposed on the community. It has earned respect locally by raising standards and developing new and more appealing invitations to participate. It provides office 'pods' to members of the community wishing to run businesses and it has just launched a new adult and family learning programme.