About the programme

The Neighbourhood Challenge was a programme from Nesta and the Big Lottery Fund. It aimed to support and learn about community-led innovation. It showed how community organisations – when equipped with the right skills, practical tools and small, catalytic amounts of money – can galvanise people to work together to create innovative responses to local priorities, particularly in neighbourhoods with low levels of social capital.

You can read more about what we learned through the programme in the Neighbourhood Challenge reports: Learning from innovative communities, Seventeen stories begin and the Neighbourhood Challenge Learning Paper.



We also produced 17 individual case studies, one for each project. They can be accessed in the right hand menu under each project name.

Each of the 17 chosen groups tested their own approach to stimulating and supporting community led action in a way that suits their particular local circumstances. Some have applied specialist methods of community organising or campaigning, others worked to develop social or community enterprises, or to trial challenge prizes that stimulated and rewarded community-led projects.

Nesta provided practical tools and high-quality training needed for participating organisations to help people to address their passions and priorities. We also provide micro-finance to support the development of local projects and establish local challenge prizes to incentivise community-led innovation.

View all 17 projects on our interactive map

View Neighbourhood Challenge projects in a larger map