Cambridgeshire Rural Challenge

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• Headlines from the project
• About their approach
• Challenges
• What's changed?
• What's next?

“A ‘one size fits all’ approach really doesn’t work well in rural communities… Flexibility needs to be inherent in any plan for working with a community and systems need to be in place to allow this.” (Project blog)

“Neighbourhood Challenge has stirred things up. People have come forward and offered to help. The Parish Council did not know such a percentage of the population were wishing to see things happen.” (Pidley Parish Councillor)

There was a simple goal for this Neighbourhood Challenge project; to develop new approaches to community led planning for rural areas that both broadened the range of people who got involved, and resulted in community action projects led by local people. It was also the intention to explore how this linked to the Localism agenda. The two partners brought complementary expertise to the project; the rural community development expertise of the established county wide organisation, Cambridgeshire ACRE, combined with the skills of a specialist youth work agency, Young Lives.

Four very different rural communities across Cambridgeshire took part in Neighbourhood Challenge, with populations ranging from 300 to 4,000 – Somersham, Pidley, Prickwillow and Tydd St Giles. Each one followed roughly the same process which identified local issues, sought solutions to those problems and presented the findings in the form of a film.

Some headline messages from the project

All the Neighbourhood Challenge projects offered rich opportunities for learning. We have picked out just a few specific insights from this project here below:

• New approaches to community led planning, such as photography and film, can attract a broader range of people to the process.
• They have been particularly appealing to young people and their families. They have shown that while engaging new people generates new kinds of ideas and brings new skills into community life, it can also create a new interest in local decision making processes.
• Films are a good medium for attracting interest in local issues but they are time consuming to make and are not ideal as a consultation tool in villages because they raise the profile of individuals with specific and possibly contentious views.
• There is not a one size fits all approach for rural areas; different sizes and types of communities require different processes.

About their approach

The main feature of the approach in Cambridgeshire Rural Challenge was the use of visual and interactive methods; the goal was to engage a wider group of people than is usually seen in community led planning and young people particularly. In two of the communities funding was made available in the form of a Challenge Prize to take forward ideas generated by the community planning process. Together these elements helped the communities do three things:

1) start conversations and prompt new ideas; 2) sort and test ideas and 3) help them turn their ideas into action. It was also the case that the project aimed to link into the Localism agenda, and to demonstrate what co-production might look like in rural communities.

1. Starting conversations: prompting new ideas

“Neighbourhood Challenge focused community attention on a range of specific issues.” (Pidley Parish Councillor)

“Revitalisation and empowerment – new people bring new ideas.” (Workshop participant)

Cambridgeshire ACRE chose communities where they had not worked before, and where they could see little in the way of community activity. It was their view that it was critical that the Parish Council (or Village Council in the case of Prickwillow) was happy for the community planning process to proceed. Without Council support their experience told them that it would have been difficult to reach out into the communities; their authority would have been under-mined; and there would be little scope for ideas generated by the process to be taken forward.

After the issue of Council ‘buy in’ was addressed, the starting point in each of the four communities was to hold a Photography Day. With prompts like “Please take a picture of your favourite place in your village “ and “Can you get to the places you need to get to? Please take a picture which shows your feelings about transport in your village”, residents were invited to pick up a camera, go out and take photographs that reflected how they felt about the questions posed. There were some very creative responses! These days were usually well attended and worked well as a way of attracting children and young people, who in turn also brought their parents along.

The next step was to sort the results into a series of themes, and that was a job that Cambridgeshire ACRE did on the communities’ behalf and in consultation with the Council. Action Days followed where the themes were taken back to the community and displayed to prompt further debate around solutions for the problems that had been highlighted. Residents were invited to respond to the ideas already posed, and to add further suggestions where they could.

2. Sort and test ideas

“This project gave people with grumbles they usually shared within families the opportunities to come together and realise others feel the same.” (Pidley Parish Councillor)

“The different methods used created interest.” (Prickwillow Village Council member)

Ideas for action were crystallised following the Action Days. This stage was co-ordinated by Cambridgeshire ACRE but included the Councils’ views about the ideas that should go forward. Once agreed, these were used to construct the films, featuring local residents. In Somersham, the largest community taking part, the decision was taken to focus the film on the needs of older people only.

When the final films were shown in each community they attracted good audiences; they brought the issues alive and created an interest around the actions that had been highlighted. More people attended than would be the case for a traditional kind of public meeting. Importantly, they also enabled a sense of ownership across each community of what their next steps should be to improve life for local people.

3. Turning ideas into action

“Overall the new methods of consultation, the filming and the competitions do seem to have generated more interest and participation in community issues.” (Project blog)

The purpose of Cambridgeshire Rural Challenge was to test new approaches to community led planning. But this should just be the start of things and the success of community led planning would usually be judged by the extent to which it creates local action on issues that matter to local people.

In Somersham:

• The Challenge Prize attracted three applicants and the prize was split between the Town Band and the Nature Reserve, both of which wanted to increase community involvement and develop their activities with and for local people.
• A Service Challenge Day brought local people together with agencies to investigate the potential for co-production of services for older people in the community. A Working Party consisting of community and statutory authority representatives was established to take this work forward.

In Pidley:

• The Pidley Challenge Prize winners began to develop a playground for the village.
• The Parish Council implemented a housing needs survey to settle the contentious issue of new housing in the village.
• A new resident stepped forward for consideration at the Parish Council elections in May; this was the first time this had happened for many years. In Tydd St Giles:
• Two funding bids were made to improve the playground.
• The village started to tackle the problem of derelict buildings through the use of a new local web based discussion forum.
• The Parish Council made enquiries about undertaking a housing needs survey in the village to assess the need for affordable housing for local people.

In Prickwillow:

• The Village Council was energised by the interest of residents in the film.
• A number of new activities were proposed.
• Their campaign for getting Broadband into the village was strengthened.

What's been challenging?

“We were pessimistic about anyone in the village wanting to be involved – but they came up trumps. The village was really keen to be involved and some residents put themselves out considerably in order to make it happen.” (Project blog)

The biggest risk in this project was the use of film as a medium for presenting local issues and potential actions. While the films were well received, they were very time consuming to make, local people took some persuading to be featured, and parts of one film had to be removed when a contributor received very negative feedback from others in the community about his contribution. There is no hiding place in small villages particularly and the conclusion was that films are an excellent engagement tool, and work well for generating interest in local issues among residents (including people who do not respond to traditional methods), but are of limited use as a method of consultation. This is because they ‘expose’ the views of individuals and by the nature of consultation differing views will be presented; this can be uncomfortable and contentious in a small community.

It was also the case that one community was not confident that the results of this process were sufficiently robust to act as a mandate for Parish Council action, so they decided to undertake a traditional paper based survey alongside this process. In the end however, they concluded they had made some incorrect assumptions and that in fact that both methods generate useful and usable information.

Cambridgeshire ACRE selected communities where they had not previously worked. As a result they had to ‘sell’ both themselves and the process to the Councils in order to proceed. Councils could be described as gatekeepers and the process worked best when ACRE felt it had ‘free rein’ to run it as they had planned rather than being constrained in any way. The Councils play an influential role in villages and ACRE knows from its experience that it is hard to get community involvement if the Council is not on board with the process.

The size of the community, and the extent of the existing community infrastructure, also impacted on the success of the process. It was also ACRE’s view that it was in the largest village that the process was least successful; resources did not stretch to engaging such a large population and, as a pretty well served community, there were no prominent issues that exercised people’s energy.

The simple idea of trying to engage new people in community activities also created unexpected challenges. There were sensitivities among those who had been active for some time; they felt they were under a degree of attack and were unfairly challenged by those who were taking an interest in community life for the first time. They felt they had put a lot of time into the community, sometimes over many years and it was something of an irritation that people who had never been involved were challenging them on what they had or hadn’t done in the past. They found this unsettling and created a sense of ‘them and us’ rather than the community pulling together on local issues. However in most instances the process did forge new links between community members and the Councils, many community members reported meeting new people from within their villages, and there was an increased interest in improving internal communications within parishes.

What's changed?

Local assets have been unlocked

• Local people across all age ranges were engaged in the community planning process, with particular success in reaching young people and their families who would not usually get involved in more traditional methods. Parish and Village Councils have reported significant increases in the number of people attending their meetings.
• Due to the widening engagement new people with new skills have come forward to help with community matters.
• The Challenge Prizes helped build skills in project development and presentation.
• The Challenge Prize winners all went on to develop their ideas and apply for more funding from other organisations.

Abilities and ambitions have grown

• Parish and Village Councils have been revitalised by the process.
• Community members feel more confident that they know how to make their voice heard.
• New people became involved in community life for the first time, projects are being taken forward and new people are leading them, for example, parents and young people have come together to work with the Parish Council to develop a play area in the village.

Creation of new networks, connections and collaborations

• Very strong links have been made between Prickwillow Village Council and Ely City Council.
• New links have been forged between Parish and Village Councils and their residents.
• People have met new people from within their own communities.
• There is an increased interest in improving internal communications within parishes.
• There is ongoing exploration of co-production between Somersham Parish Council and Cambridgeshire County Council on the question of services for older people.

What next?

“Previously people wanted to have a voice, now we know where to go to have a conversation and a positive dialogue has started.” (Prickwillow Village Council member)

“The last Parish Council meeting had an increased attendance. There has been a greater understanding in the village of the decision making process and an increased understanding of Localism.”(Pidley Parish Councillor)

There are two parts to the question ‘what next?’ with regard to Cambridgeshire Rural Challenge: what next for Cambridgeshire ACRE and also what next for the villages?

Cambridgeshire ACRE will embed what they have learnt through Neighbourhood Challenge into their ongoing community planning work. This learning will also inform their work around the Localism agenda as it continues to build momentum.

All of the villages now have a community led plan in place, and those plans include actions for them to pursue. Projects are already emerging and there is a new enthusiasm to follow these through. However what it is most significant is the degree to which the process has engaged new people and created a new level of interest in the local democracy that is Parish Councils. They in turn have been challenged and revitalised in most cases, and there are no doubt interesting developments on the horizon. The foundations exist for new people to keep attending Council meetings, to take an interest in their affairs, and potentially to go as far as standing for election themselves.

Read the Cambridgeshire Rural Challenge blog

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