“Neighbourhood Challenge has allowed people to step into the community and have a voice. It has provided a way for people to do things they wanted but didn’t think were possible. It’s made people enthusiastic about being involved.”(Project workshop participant)
“The Neighbourhood Challenge project has shown that local people are interested in improving things for themselves and will get involved if given encouragement and support to make things happen.”(Project workshop participant)
Lower Green is a small community of just over 600 households on the edge of well to do Esher in Surrey. It is physically cut off from the surrounding area by the railway line, river and sewage treatment works. There are stark contrasts between Lower Green and its affluent neighbours in the rest of Esher, with lower incomes and higher rates of child poverty and unemployment.
Neighbourhood Challenge gave the opportunity to raise aspirations and encourage active participation by local people in making changes in their own community and to their own lives. The partnership between the Community Foundation for Surrey and Lower Green Community Association meant there was the funding expertise to create an Endowment Fund to support local action into the future, and the scope to make use of the Association’s local knowledge to engage widely across the community.
All the Neighbourhood Challenge projects offered rich opportunities for learning. We have picked out just a few specific insights from this project below.
To achieve change that is led by the community itself, it’s important to focus on assets (What skills do we have? How can we make things happen?) , rather than starting with the problems and needs because this is less empowering.
Those involved in the project came to realise that community involvement and community led change has to be based on a foundation of good community connections, created through repeated 1:1 contacts that built relationships and trust. This was particularly important for Lower Green, which began with little in the way of existing networks.
Ideas for new activities have come about by providing the opportunity for people to share their ideas, and by supporting those people who are prepared to take a lead.
They have shown that seed funding is a simple, flexible way to give projects the chance to test out their ideas.
The more substantial Challenge Prize fund, made available to seed funded projects, helped motivate some to develop their ideas but the idea of a competition was hard to explain.
Neigbourhood Challenge in Lower Green was led by a new partnership. This took a lot of time and energy to develop into a productive relationship. This was difficult to do at the same time as supporting local activities on the ground.
Neighbourhood Challenge in Lower Green was about finding local people with the ideas and the energy to take an active part in community life, to help change things for the better in the local area. Support and seed funding were on offer to develop their ideas. There was also an opportunity for them to enter into a Challenge Prize award which would provide further support and funding for the development of the most effective projects. This approach is described below and is split into the four main stages of the project’s work 1) finding new ideas; 2) developing ideas; 3) turning ideas into action and 4) sustainability.
1. Finding new ideas
“The Lower Green Neighbourhood Challenge is all about local people coming up with ideas to solve local problems and turning ideas and dreams into reality.”(Project blog)
There was an open invitation to everyone in Lower Green to attend the launch event at the community centre which kicked off the Neighbourhood Challenge project. By posing questions such as “what’s the issue?” and “what’s the idea?” 42 people generated 127 ideas for enabling change in the community. What this process didn’t do was give an indication of how many people supported each idea, nor did it sufficiently emphasise that this was about local people making changes for themselves. There was still a sense of ‘someone else will sort this out’. With no real tradition within the community of people taking action on local issues, there was little history to draw on and to show that people could act collectively to tackle difficult problems in their neighbourhood. This was an attitude that proved difficult to overcome across the lifetime of Neigbourhood Challenge.
It fell to the Community Facilitator – a full time post paid for by Neighbourhood Challenge – to sort and theme these ideas, and to find support for them from residents. Seven themes were identified, including training and skills, young people, clean ups, transport and food / healthy living. Individual meetings were held for each one to try and establish small project teams. Attendance was unfortunately low and it was challenging to build enthusiasm and confidence among residents to ‘own’ and take responsibility for themes or project ideas. It was not something people were used to doing.
2. Developing ideas
“Fantastic ideas have come from the local community.”(Project blog)
“The process generated ideas that people would not have thought about otherwise: I would never have thought about setting up an art group until this came along.”(Resident, Steering Group member and art group leader)
Over time some project ideas began to evolve, others were helped along with significant levels of support from the paid staff, and some faltered due to a lack of support or a lack of interest. This was a kind of funnel approach or natural selection; a large number of ideas were gradually reduced to fewer and fewer proposals.
Considering the challenges of motivating and engaging the wider community, it was a major achievement that seed funding was awarded to a total of 25 projects. Not all went on to be implemented, but the funding did enable some projects to make a start and to test out the level of support for their idea from within the community – they included an art group, youth activities, cookery group, Zumba classes, gardening club, “knit and natter” and the popular children’s play activity, Playball. Groups were led by a range of people, some had previously been active in the community while others had not; leadership was a big commitment for those not used to leading and was too big a step for some people. However what the projects did do was begin the process of enabling new people to take part in their activities and in building new connections across the community.
Seed funding would ideally have been distributed earlier but the fact it was tied to the Challenge Prize created some delays that had not been anticipated – it took longer than expected to compile the criteria and make decisions about how the Prize should progress, and therefore how the seed funding fitted into that picture. The opportunity to get some ‘quick wins’ and ‘lead by example’ was lost; earlier awards would have proven to a wider mix of local people that it was possible to be involved and that support was available to help build confidence and develop projects of benefit to the community.
3. Turning ideas into action
“Neighbourhood Challenge has provided money to make things happen and to hold people’s interest.”(Project workshop participant)
The full £40,000 Challenge Prize was open to all seed funded projects. By this time the paid co-ordinator had left the project and the post had been split between three people, two of whom were local. These paid staff provided as much support as possible to help residents build their project ideas, but it was still the case that some were more developed than others at the time of the awards. To maximise benefit to the community, and to try and spread the Prize funding across all the best projects regardless of their stage of development, the Neighbourhood Challenge Steering Group took a pragmatic decision to create groupings of related projects – for example fitness included Pilates, Zumba and martial arts; creative connections incorporated art and ‘knit and natter’. It was the task of the Challenge Prize judging panel to meet the projects, assess their strength, potential impact and fit with the Prize criteria, and to allocate the Prize money. Of the ten original groupings, nine received awards that ranged from £1,000 to £10,000 per grouping. The Community Association holds these individual pots of money and projects can access them as they need to.
4. Sustainability
The idea of the Endowment Fund was to create a long term source of funding that would continue to support community led activity in Lower Green into the future. This was a hard ‘sell’ to potential donors however and a total of £90,000 was raised which will generate an ongoing source of income for Lower Green, along with matched funding from NESTA. The contacts that were made in wider Esher, through the work in developing the Fund, will help strengthen the Community Association going forward through introducing potential new trustees with new skill sets.
“It feels like things are only just gaining momentum when Neighbourhood Challenge is coming to an end.”(Community facilitator)
One of the biggest challenges faced in Lower Green was its starting point: residents with little or no experience of getting involved and no peer groups to look to for help. There were poor local perceptions of the community centre as parts of the community felt it was ‘not for them’ due to its historical use as a social club and bar. Reaching out into the community proved difficult and the project was not able to engage as many new people as hoped. They learnt a lot through the difficulties they had and, if they were to repeat the process again, they would start with more work out in the community, making 1:1 contact and building relationships with individuals. Without this foundation it was hard to build people’s confidence to come forward to lead and own new project ideas.
Lower Green Community Association became part of Neighbourhood Challenge with a structure which had been effective for the organisation up to that time. It was however a relatively inexperienced organisation and was not well equipped for some of the tasks required.The Community Association was trying to develop its own organisation, and dealing with the complexities of managing a rapidly changing community centre, at the same time as delivering a significant piece of work.
The partnership between the Community Association and the Community Foundation was established specifically for Neighbourhood Challenge. Without a track record of collaboration they experienced some difficulties in agreeing priorities and decision making. This area of work was also new for both parties and so there were gaps in the skills and experience ideally needed to make this an effective process.
The Challenge Prize was in itself challenging. Although the partners had elected to offer the prize, the Community Association was not always clear how it could work in Lower Green. The fact that a competition implies there will be ‘losers’ was very uncomfortable for them; they would have preferred a more conventional grant making process. As a result they tweaked the prize idea to create something they felt would work for this community which involved first stage applicants collaborating at the second stage of the prize process.
Local assets have been unlocked
Abilities and ambitions have grown
Creation of new networks, connections and collaborations
“There is a realisation that it is possible to grow something from a very small base – seeing the potential that exists.” (Community Association and Steering Group member)
There is a real sense that Neighbourhood Challenge was just the start of a process of change in Lower Green, that it has taken a year to understand how that change can happen and to start building the relationships that will enable that process of change to take place. However it is also clear that this is a process that requires facilitation and that there is simply not enough capacity among volunteers to fulfill this role. While the Endowment Fund will be able to make small contributions to fund activities in Lower Green into the future, there is not enough funding to continue employing staff. However, the Community Foundation has secured the support of a donor within the county to provide additional funding to the Community Association to pay for facilitator staff time in the coming months.
There are challenges ahead in terms of maintaining momentum as Neighborhood Challenge comes to an end. Project ideas that are still under development will need continued support whilst it will also be important to ensure the Community Association has the capacity and resources to run the community centre and enable further community involvement.
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This paper presents observations, drawing on evidence from the people that are funding, delivering and supporting the 17 Neighbourhood Challenge projects.
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