"We've taken a chance on people who others wouldn't have taken a chance on. We've taken away the bureaucracy as some people can have great ideas and be great assets in the community, but not be good at filling out forms. " (Bolton Interfaith Council trustee, Panel member)
The Bolton Neighbourhood Challenge set out to identify and invest in individuals with an enterprising spirit and a commitment to social change in three Bolton communities: Great Lever, Halliwell and Rumworth. Believing in the potential of local people to create local solutions, the project harnessed energy, commitment and ideas to create a collection of community enterprises focused on improving the lives of local people. The three communities involved in the project are neighbours to the south and east of the town centre with high South Asian populations and terraced, densely populated housing (Rumworth is 17 times more densely occupied than the national average).
Bolton Interfaith Council (BIC), a voluntary organisation which develops trust and understanding between communities, particularly with regard to issues of faith and belief, led the Neighbourhood Challenge. BIC was joined in the Neighbourhood Challenge by UnLtd, a national charity which supports and develops social entrepreneurs. The result was a complementary set of skills and experience, blending BIC's local knowledge and UnLtd's social enterprise expertise.
All the Neighbourhood Challenge projects offered rich opportunities for learning. We have picked out just a few specific insights from this project below:
The project set out to find local social entrepreneurs - people with the ideas and energy to begin to transform the lives of other people in the places where they lived. To do this, BIC and UnLtd worked together to deliver three main strands of activity: getting the message out into the community, making choices about which people and ideas had the highest potential to create change, and supporting the Award Winners through advice, guidance, mentoring and networking. This approach enabled the project to do two crucial things: 1) find people and ideas that could kickstart change and 2) support those people to turn those ideas into action.
1. Finding people and ideas that could kickstart change
"We distributed almost 3000 leaflets across the areas. I was talking to a local resident at one of the centres where the leaflets and posters were on display. She told me that she had never heard of the Neighbourhood Challenge! I've learnt that word of mouth is our main route of information. " (BIC Blog post, November 2011)
BIC needed to work hard to promote the Neighbourhood Challenge, as nothing of this kind had been done before in the three communities and there was a strong history in Bolton of providing grants to groups rather than investing in individuals' ideas. BIC spent a great deal of time in the three communities, and discovered how valuable direct contact with people was to promote the project and explain how it would work. Although BIC produced a large amount of paper and electronic publicity, the large majority of Award applicants came from face to face contact.
The personal approach was continued in developing people's ideas. All potential applicants for an Award spent time with the project worker, testing their ideas. Not all moved forward: some ideas, whilst delivering social benefit, were unsustainable; others were approaches for groups, but routed through an individual. Paperwork was kept simple and brief so applicants could instead focus on their ideas and the potential to bring about change for local people while at the same time providing information that the judging panel could use to make fair decisions.
Making choices about which people and ideas would receive an Award was a task undertaken by a panel of local volunteers and people from key partners such as the Local Authority, and a worker from UnLtd. There was a focus on potential - of the individual, of the social enterprise they proposed, and of the change it could potentially bring about for local people. The panel developed a strong understanding and trust between each other, which allowed them to think carefully, and positively, about risks and about the kind of support which needed to go to each Award Winner. The main awards process did not attract many applications from younger people. BIC had planned a separate set of awards for young people, using a 'Dragon's Den' style event, which was felt to be a recognisable format to young people and conveyed the enterprising spirit which the Bolton Interfaith Council wished to encourage.
2. Supporting people to turn their ideas into action
"It is really important to recognise the amount of time invested by each community entrepreneur to establish and deliver their project. Several of the Award Winners have negotiated free venues for delivery of their work or negotiated a trade in services at those venues." (BIC Blog post, December 2011)
The Award Winners' ideas started to come to life with ongoing support from BIC and UnLtd. BIC were aware that, for most of those who received an Award, starting a community enterprise was a new experience and that without the right support the potential of the ideas could be lost and the aspiration for change diminished.
Support was available in the form of a mentor, plus one to one sessions with the Neighbourhood Challenge worker at BIC, and access to UnLtd's knowledge and networks. BIC felt it was important that support was personal and tailor made, meeting the needs of each Award Winner. A training programme was designed to develop skills and encourage connections across the Award Winners.
A strong strand of the support offered to the Award Winners involved helping them to make connections and build networks. BIC created a number of events, including a 'Swap Shop', designed to link Award Winners with each other and with those who could add value to their work. BIC discovered the benefits of such events were significant, enabling mutual interest and sparking connections between Award Winners.
BIC's willingness to invest in individuals created 15 community enterprises, bringing new people into community action who in turn have connected with others in the community through their enterprises. BIC have found that effective interpersonal skills, communication and marketing abilities, good local knowledge, assertiveness and persistence have all been critical skills in delivering the work, along with an attitude which was optimistic and based in a belief in potential. The project has begun to create a collection of people who are seeing the benefits of community enterprise and who promote it as an effective method of enabling local change.
BIC entered the programme without a history of delivering community enterprise, and without a paid worker to deliver the project. In addition, the Bolton Neighbourhood Challenge was the last of the 17 projects nationally to begin. As a consequence, the Neighbourhood Challenge worker appointed became very busy, very quickly, and needed to work at a fast pace throughout the life of the project.
It was not initially easy for Bolton Interfaith Council to convey the key elements of the opportunity they were offering to local people - community entrepreneurship and investment in individuals was quite different from a small grants format common in the town in the past. The solution that emerged was to emphasise that ideas had to be both beneficial within the community and enterprising. BIC found that this challenge was eased once the first Awards were made (there were four award panels) and it was possible to use these as examples of what social enterprise looked like. The concept of funding individuals, as opposed to groups or organisations, was also then better understood and the quality and quantity of later applications improved. BIC came to realise that the absence of any obvious 'circuit' or network for social enterprise led them to use routes linked to organised community groups and organisations, which possibly gave out mixed messages about who could access the Awards.
Engaging black and minority ethnic communities proved challenging for the project. This was disappointing for Bolton Interfaith Council as the Challenge was promoted through contacts within the ethnically diverse faith networks. A further group that did not readily connect with the offer was young people and BIC addressed this through the successful 'Dragon's Den' style event which offered awards specifically to enterprising young people.
Local assets have been unlocked
Creation of new networks, connections and collaborations
Abilities and ambitions have grown
"The process has a multiplier effect - BIC invested in ideas, and made good use of people's skills, now those people are connecting with others in the community and involving them in their projects. These benefits will grow as the projects develop, generate income and become more sustainable. This is an important distinction - the money could have been spent on the direct alleviation of need, but once spent, it would be gone. In this way, resources continue to be used to benefit local people." (Panel member, mentor)
Bolton Neighbourhood Challenge was about finding people with the ideas and energy to begin to transform the lives of other people where they lived. BIC believe strongly in the approach they developed and the base which now exists in Bolton on which community enterprise can be enabled to flourish. There is a desire to continue the support to the Neighbourhood Challenge Award Winners and a wish to expand the model of work across the town through stronger links with the private sector. The process has grown a level of confidence and belief locally, and created the connections and networks of information, knowledge and support on which both individual entrepreneurs and BIC can build. Monitoring from UnLtd within their wider work indicates that around 7 out of 10 social entrepreneurs continue to deliver one year after commencing their initiative. This would suggest this model of investing in people and potential could generate ongoing change in Bolton.
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