What happened?

Together wtih Big Lottery Fund, we worked with 17 different groups to test their own approach to stimulating and supporting community-led action in a way that suited their particular local circumstances.

Some 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 provided micro-finance to support the development of local projects and establish local challenge prizes to incentivise community-led innovation.

What did we learn?

The project 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
• Neighbourhood Challenge Learning Paper