- Community-led: communities are the experts in their local area. Our work focuses on building and developing their unique strengths and assets to support resident priorities and initiatives
- Hyper-local: our approach supports and resources areas with high levels of community need in ‘natural neighbourhoods’ identified by residents, as opposed to artificial geographic boundaries
- Data-driven: we use quantitative and qualitative data to map priority areas, diagnose needs, posit prescriptions, support investment, monitoring and evaluation
- Partnership-based: we focus on building local area partnership arrangements, harnessing existing VCSE networks, assets and expertise
- Integrated: we prioritise alignment of local agency strategy and practice because cross-local government and wider public sector collaboration is critical to delivery
- Long-term: improving the local neighbourhood and life outcomes for residents in under-resourced areas requires ongoing support
Our work builds on a growing evidence base, which shows the transformative potential of community-led approaches in terms of both prevention and cure. We were established by Local Trust, a place-based funder set up to support the Big Local programme. Big Local gave 150 communities in England just over £1m each, to be invested by community members over 10-15 years, with support to build confidence and capacity. The pioneering programme demonstrates the transformative potential of community leadership and has cultivated a rich evidence base on the conditions for community-led change.