Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities:

Insights from place-led funding Insights Report 9 Nov 2021

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 2

Contents

Introduction 3 Reflections from our Funding Team

16

Why place-led funding

3

What did it take for Esmée to work in this way

16

Who this report is for

3

How do we know it’s making a difference

18

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

4 What next for Esmée support

19

Testing out large scale, place-led funding

4 Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

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Barking and Dagenham: Every One, Every Day

6

Plymouth: Plymouth Octopus Project 9 Sandwell: Building Resilience in Communities 12 Insights

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Contents

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Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 3

Introduction

Who this report is for

Why place-led funding In 2020 Esmée Fairbairn Foundation launched a new strategy with three aims: to protect and restore ‘Our Natural World’, create ‘A Fairer Future’ and help enable ‘Creative, Confident Communities’. This report shares learning from the place-led funding we’ve done over the past five years which

has informed and shaped our strategy in Creative, Confident Communities.

We are a UK-wide funder, but we have learned that local, community-led funding remains vital to our mission. Place-led funding can reach people and tackle challenges in uniquely innovative ways. By connecting

Aim

Impact goals by 2030

Creative, Confident Communities

Communities use their power to make change happen Local economies work better for the people who live there Culture and creativity build thriving communities

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Contents

Introduction

with a place, we can see life as it really is – complex and intersectional. And by working in a collaborative way, with a shared goal, we and our partners can overcome some of the traditional challenges of our sector: silos; competition; and power.

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Learn more about our work in Creative, Confident Communities.

If you are looking to apply for a grant or social investment please see our guidance for support.

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

The aim of this report is to help bring our new strategy for Creative, Confident, Communities to life, and to share insights from what we have learned from our three ‘place pilots’, and what we want to do next. We hope it will be useful for current and future partners, as well as for other funders in considering their role in place-led funding.

In the first section, we share specific learning from our three ‘place pilot’ funding areas, alongside our main insights into what enabled progress, and the challenges. We share more examples of our place-led funding in an interactive map at the end of this report.

In the second section, our Funding Team share their reflections on the place pilots and other place-led funding: on what’s needed for Esmée and others interested in place-led funding to work in this way, along with insights on the role of infrastructure organisations and working in collaboration. We also consider how we can know that it’s making a difference.

Finally, we share what’s next for Esmée support for place-led funding.

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 4

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale Testing out large scale, place-led funding

The three place pilots

In 2016 Esmée set out to test large scale, place-led, funding with three ‘place pilots’.

The circumstances in each area of our place pilots – for people and for voluntary sector organisations – are very different, as are the models for supporting community action. But in each place, we supported an infrastructure organisation

We believed that working at scale would be a more effective way of supporting communities. We expected that each local initiative would be time-intensive and require a more proactive and differentiated approach than we had been used to.

By helping organisations coordinate expertise and activities locally, spending at scale in line with priorities they help identify, and being more involved from the outset, the impact of our funding could be deeper than a series of one-off grants in an area.

We agreed to:

In all three place pilots, we have seen:

Work in three locations:

Increased collaboration and connection between local organisations

• Barking and Dagenham • Plymouth • Sandwell

Treat each new ‘place-led’ proposition on its individual merits, with each having its own set of objectives and evaluation

Contents

Introduction

The local community taking increased control of where funding is directed and how

Take what we learned across the various locations to inform and more precisely define our ‘Place’ strategy

Focus not only on areas with high levels of deprivation but those where there was evidence of something to build upon

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to use or distribute money to develop work with and for the local community.

We think there are transferable lessons from each, as well as common lessons, on delivering community-led work, at scale.

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Flexible funding providing space to experiment, be creative, test, learn and review Local knowledge being used, reducing duplication or unnecessary time being spent reinventing the wheel

Funding models developed that are more appropriate and accessible to local groups, organisations and people

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 5

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

The three place pilots Looking at each area, we have seen different ways of working which are tailored to the place:

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Every One, Every Day, Participatory City Foundation’s research-based, participatory model hired a new team to work directly with local people to create resident-led projects.

Plymouth Octopus Project’s model of a new, lean, ‘CVS (Council for Voluntary Service) for the 21st century’ enabled it to play a key connecting role in the city, growing its network to include and support hyper-local grassroots community groups.

Sandwell Council of Voluntary Organisations’s core services are those of a traditional CVS, but it has approached the delegated funding programme in a participatory, innovative way.

Working closely with the council and other funders, it opened up spaces and possibilities as well as working to transfer this model elsewhere, and continues to involve thousands of residents, as well as gathering data and build evidence on what is making a difference for the community.

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Its open and collaborative approach to delegated funding made for a slow start, but also helped break down barriers caused by power and mistrust.

A genuine commitment to learning meant that the funding has adapted to changing needs and new ideas.

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

Working extensively with local groups, they co-designed grant funding and support programmes which build on local assets and encourage ‘happiness’ and a positive sense of wellbeing, supporting work the community wants which Esmée is unlikely to have funded without this programme.

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 6

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Barking and Dagenham: Every One, Every Day (Participatory City Foundation)

The Funding

The model

Esmée funding: £1m over five years, plus £70,000 in development funding prior to full award, agreed in April 2017. The current phase of this work is scheduled to finish at the end of 2022.

The ‘Participatory City’ neighbourhood model was planned, researched, and prototyped by Tessy Britton. Her research confirmed that important outcomes can be achieved through small-scale participation, but only when multiple actions, by many people, add up over time.

Total funding at outset: £7m over five years from Esmée, Barking and Dagenham local authority, National Lottery Community Fund and City Bridge Trust.

Every One, Every Day works directly with residents, and built a new infrastructure and team to enable local people to generate and run projects and ideas.

I never felt this sense of community engagement, or the warmth, or the sharing of food and knowledge and recipes.

I’ve seen kids that had never played with each other before had already taken ownership of what they were doing, and play with each other.

And their parents were meeting each other and talking and it was just really nice – I’ve never felt it before.

Every One, Every Day does not replicate existing charity infrastructure. It works directly with residents and enables them to generate ideas and work.

Barking and Dagenham Resident

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 7

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Barking and Dagenham: Every One, Every Day (Participatory City Foundation) What happened?

Every One, Every Day is on track to scale its participatory work across the whole borough. Over five years it will support over 300 neighbourhood projects with 27,000 people involved regularly.

Approximately 70 opportunities per week will be available within a five-to-fifteenminute walk of any resident’s home, to achieve a minimum of 20% of local residents participating regularly in low commitment, imaginative, creative, and socially beneficial activities.

At the point COVID struck, Every One, Every Day was on track to scale its participatory work across the whole borough with over 300 neighbourhood projects and 27,000 people involved regularly. While this scale has certainly been impacted by the social restrictions of the past 18 months, the project continues to support residents to create dozens of participation opportunities within a five-to-fifteen-minute walk of any resident’s home.

They are also seeking to support neighbourhood based recovery from COVID through thousands of local residents participating regularly in low commitment, imaginative, creative, and socially beneficial activities.

They also run a successful business incubator programme and expanding this will be the focus for the next phase of work.

It’s about how they valued each and every person – it gives you that confidence that you’re being listened to, you’re being valued.

Barking and Dagenham Resident

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 8

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Barking and Dagenham: Every One, Every Day (Participatory City Foundation) What difference did it make to the place and the community?

How involved is Esmée and what difference has our support and involvement made?

Evidence from 160 in-depth interviews with individuals participating reveals ‘as many individual effects as people participating’, but outcomes have been bundled into a set of ‘gateway’ outcomes, which Participatory City believe will enable wider change. These are: feeling welcome, feeling included and accepted, making friends, building trust, being active, learning and feeling excited, being creative, growing in confidence and capability, and feeling happy and optimistic.

Our funding was front-loaded to facilitate set-up costs while other funders were more slowly coming on board. Our flexibility and the scale of our grant was particularly valuable as it enabled Participatory City to deal with the conditions of public and lottery funding.

In the final year of the project an assessment of the value created and financial savings delivered for the borough will be published. For this, Participatory City and Barking and Dagenham Council are running a joint large scale data project which aims to understand how the benefits of engagement and participation may help to avoid high cost crisis interventions.

Barking and Dagenham Council have been a committed and supportive partner, with regular involvement of the Chief Executive, and this project would not work without them. Participatory City has been able to open up council owned spaces to the community that were previously tied up in red tape.

We are close to the work – literally and figuratively. We are part of a funders board that meets quarterly (previously at different Every One, Every Day locations across the borough, now online), and being able to physically get together at least once a quarter provides both a better connection to what is going on in the borough and stronger working relationships with Participatory City and funder colleagues, allowing for both support and challenge.

My best memory is the arm that is open for me just to come in, bring your ideas, show us what you want to do, and we will support you – it makes you feel comfortable, accepted.

Barking and Dagenham Resident

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 9

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Plymouth: Plymouth Octopus Project (POP)

The Funding

The model

Esmée funding: £1.3million over five years, with Funding Plus grants (total of £24,319) for consultancy and learning support. Support began in July 2017, and will run to November 2022.

POP was established in 2013 to provide infrastructure support for the voluntary and community sector operating with a small core staff team and minimal overheads – a central organisation that can support and convene, but not drain resource from the sector, using knowledge of specialisms and gaps to help make connections.

At the outset, Esmée was the sole funder of this delegated grant fund, but POP has other funders including Plymouth City Council.

Esmée provided core funding for POP, which enabled them to build relationships across the sector, and to fuel the capacity for collaboration at a city-wide level.

Esmée also funded three participatory grant funds, with initial grant decisions made by a ‘network of networks’ which anyone from any POP network could join.

This group then supported a re-design of the funding, and now all POP members are involved at key decision points.

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 10

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Plymouth: Plymouth Octopus Project (POP) What happened?

The first round of funding was given out in small grants (up to £10k), with 100 organisations taking part in decisionmaking. The process was participatory, however decisions were risk averse and more strategic or innovative requests struggled to get funding. This was likely due to concerns around spending money in the ‘wrong’ way, and the difficulty of setting up effective processes from scratch, which meant that a tried and tested model for small grant funding was selected.

After a review, the funding was channelled in more strategic and innovative ways: • The Community Fund became Street to

Scale – any six people are able to open a ‘bank’ and access £1000 to benefit the community. Spending is transparent.

This has particularly engaged younger people, and those not engaged in traditional VCS activity.

• The Learning and Collaboration fund

has become POP Collectives and, before decisions are made, POP members receive and rate all submissions, with the opportunity to offer advice, join collaborations, and evolve proposals together.

• The Challenge Fund development was

postponed during COVID but aspirations were taken forward in other funding in the interim.

• In Response to the pandemic, POP also

opened £250 a POP, an easy to access fund that members could use to support additional costs caused by the pandemic.

For anyone starting up, or without any background in volunteering and charity work, POP ideas is invaluable Plymouth Resident

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 11

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Plymouth: Plymouth Octopus Project (POP) What difference did it make to the place and the community?

How involved is Esmée and what difference has our support and involvement made?

Through their delegated funding programmes POP increased support for grassroots and community organisations, contributed to young peoples’ confidence, promoted collaboration, and increased participation in decision making.

The flexibility of our core funding gave POP the space to learn how best to support Plymouth VCS sector. Having few restrictions on how the grant was to be used was key, as well as having the time to experiment, test, learn and review.

Since April 2018, POP has worked as an independent bid facilitator, and has helped secure £2.5m in grant funding for Plymouth community groups through their range of support.

Having a shared goal has helped to overcome the competitive elements, process, and structural challenges of collaborating and to bring organisations together. Core funding enabled POP to be brave and consistent in driving forward the need for collaborations, and the delegated funding gave them an additional tool to make it happen.

POP initially wanted more time and leadership from Esmée, whilst we wanted the organisations/area to take ownership.

As we built a trusting relationship, confidence grew that Esmée genuinely wanted them to make their own decisions and to learn as they went.

Our lack of geographical closeness or staff on the ground in Plymouth has been unhelpful at times. The initiative would have benefitted from us being in the city more and developing more closely some of our relationships outside of POP. We ended up funding a consultant to provide mentoring and learning support which has been invaluable, but we could have learned more from the partnership if we had been physically present more.

The workshops were absolutely brilliant and provided me with the confidence to start putting an impact report together Plymouth Resident Home

Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 12

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Sandwell: Building Resilience in Sandwell Communities

The Funding

The model

Esmée funding: £1.4million over five years, with £12,500 for the research and design of the programme beforehand.

Work began in June 2018 and will run to December 2022.

In 2018, SCVO ran a thorough set of community consultation/focus groups to work out how best the delegated funding should work. The idea of a two-stage process (a written expression of interest, followed by a presentation) came from the local community organisations. The whole programme, including the asset-based approach, was co-produced by SCVO and organisations in the consultations.

Esmée is the sole funder of this delegated grant fund, but Sandwell Council of Voluntary Organisations (SCVO) has other funders including Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council.

Three strands of delegated grants to support the voluntary sector in Sandwell: • Building Ownership, Unlocking Networks,

Creating Empowerment (BOUNCE) – Community Anchor Organisations funding.

• Empowering People in Communities

(EPIC) – community asset work

• Leadership Development Support.

Friends and Neighbours CIC Home

Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 13

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Sandwell: Building Resilience in Sandwell Communities What happened?

27 different organisations have been funded in total so far with grants ranging from £10,000 to £40,000 for sole organisations.

SCVO have also worked on three partnership projects where funding was up to £80,000

• EPIC: grant making programme to

• BOUNCE: 4 Community Anchor

Organisations funded to support local communities design and deliver their own asset-based activities or initiatives, and support them to prepare funding applications.

23 local organisations for community asset work: working to improve the wellbeing of communities and tackling isolation and loneliness by building stronger relationships, and building on what exists within communities.

This could include making the most of community spaces, improving access to transport and using people’s skills, talents and experience.

• Leadership Development Support: an

initial cohort of around 20 individuals was established. Five workshops were delivered to support their personal or professional development, and how those feed into organisational development.

The evaluation of this programme has been delayed due to the pandemic.

The pandemic caused a hiatus to their work, however groups managed to refocus their ideas and delivery mechanisms quickly while talking to communities. The main impact was the delay of the ‘Emerging Leaders’ programme.

It has enabled women to come together to learn, develop and share skills and ambitions, form friendships and support networks Sandwell Resident Home

Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 14

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Sandwell: Building Resilience in Sandwell Communities What difference has it made (so far) to the place and the community

How involved is Esmée and what difference has our support and involvement made?

Work is still in progress, with an interim evaluation on the way. Reflecting on the progress with the work so far, SCVO said that this fund has cemented their position in the community and boosted both the Community Anchor Organisations and the wider sector in Sandwell. They received a lot of good press when the project started and really felt that Sandwell gained recognition: a national funder saw potential in Sandwell, was committed to supporting the community, and trusted SCVO to lead this.

Esmée has one Funding Manager on the grant panel, which are made up of people from SCVO staff and other organisations in the sector including frontline workers.

Sandwell is made up of six independent, unique towns. Whilst the unique nature of the towns can foster creativity and a desire to do something, there is also lots of duplication, silos, and services slightly tweaked for specific communities.

SCVO are aiming to reduce these silos, and are starting to see more crossreferring between the towns.

SCVO have given support to the groups that applied to them who were not quite ‘there yet’ with their ideas at the presentation stage. This, along with the local knowledge, means Esmée has funded work that the community wanted, which would likely have been turned down had they applied directly to Esmée.

For me it was wonderful to meet new people and to learn new skills, having a chat and feel free to express myself as well Sandwell Resident

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 15

Esmée’s model: community-led work, at scale

Insights from the pilots What enabled progress

What were the challenges?

These are the main lessons we learned from our three place pilot projects and other place-led funding on what enabled progress:

• Funder participation: Esmée’s contribution was different in each case, but had an impact beyond money in each.

• Flexibility: with flexible funding and attitudes to delivery, organisations can take the time needed to understand what model will work in their area.

• Public commitment: a large funding commitment to support a place can itself increase confidence and inspire communities who feel their potential has been seen.

• Relationship building: taking time to grow a relationship between the organisation managing the grant and Esmée staff built trust and understanding, and minimised risk.

• Community involvement: from the start, co-production between organisations managing the funding and local groups or individuals made the funding fit for purpose.

• Continuing learning and adaptation: evaluation and learning are built in to all three pieces of work, and in two areas this has resulted in big changes to delivery each year.

Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

• Power imbalances in delegated funding programmes: Esmée set out to delegate funding and decision making to the organisations with local knowledge and expertise but learned that we cannot expect the funder/funded power imbalance to disappear just because we want it to.

Organisations want and need different levels of involvement and support from Esmée and this needs to be surfaced and discussed at the start.

drawn to funding in Plymouth because Rank Foundation and Power to Change were planning large investments, and there was an opportunity to align our areas of interest.

• Local authority risk: their engagement level can greatly affect the success of place-led work. Support from local authorities is often built on relationships with engaged individuals, who may leave or disengage. Additionally, it can be challenging to get funding commitments for longer than a year due to the budgeting and cuts within local authorities.

• Changes in staff: these are difficult to manage, especially in a small organisation, but can also have positive outcomes. For example, a key staff member retired from POP in 2018, presenting a big risk to • Perceptions of funding risk: when the programme. Fortunately, the new a large funding commitment comes into Chief Executive came with experience an area, there can be a perception that and grasped the initiative and strategic this might prevent access to funding for opportunities it presented. Staffing other organisations in the area. However, changes were not easy, but did allow the opposite can also be true: we were new people and ideas into the mix.

• Local authority engagement: a strong relationship with the local authority can be transformative, and their support and interest has been key to progress.

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• Pressure on infrastructure organisations: the delegated funding pot was, in POP’s words, ‘too hot to handle’ when it was first awarded. They felt a lot of pressure to get the funding out into the sector and not be accused of holding on to it or attempting to control the sector.

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 16

Reflections from our Funding Team What did it take for Esmée to work in this way?

We have learned some practical lessons about funding in this way, that others might find useful:

Alison Holdom Funding Manager – Arts and Heritage Lead

Allow a longer lead-in time: at least a year – for scoping places, getting to know organisations and planning programmes.

Make an effort to build key relationships: this work required higher engagement from Esmée whilst the proposed programmes and funding applications were being developed: lots of conversations, phone calls and meetings/ visits before anything was submitted.

Consider how close you want to be to the work: both literally and figuratively. Geographic proximity was valuable for our relationships in Barking and Dagenham. With Plymouth, we found this was not practically possible, but was still desirable, so we hired a local consultant to offer additional support.

Work to maintain those relationships: general contact and check-ins have been higher post award than with other standard grants; lots of phone calls, emails and one-to-one meetings for all three pilots. Funding managers also took part in quarterly meetings, and for Sandwell they sat on part of the delegated fund decision making panels.

Hannah Lim Funding Manager – Social Change Lead

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 17

Reflections from our Funding Team

Working with infrastructure organisations In each of our place-led funding pilots, we have supported existing or new infrastructure organisations.

What we’ve learned about working in collaboration

We picked up concern from organisations who worry that infrastructure, or second tier work, is less desirable to fund, as it is harder for funders to see the direct impact of their money, compared with direct delivery work. For Esmée, funding large scale, place-led work makes us more likely to support an infrastructure organisation. We need to understand local systems and a good infrastructure organisation will be able to see and make connections. e have learned that we need to be W careful and choose the right infrastructure organisations, as their role is key.

We are trying to shift power and agency, supported by the infrastructure organisation. If they aren’t enabling this shift, they could become a competitor to others in the sector, rather than being a supportive infrastructure body.

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

The first thing we should do before funding a place, is to fund the time and resource to build collaborations and relationships.

Setting up a collaboration takes time, is tricky and often needs some kind of external facilitation or mentor.

Existing power dynamics are really difficult to remove. Time taken at the beginning will show how much this is really possible. We want collaboration to be genuinely cross sector, and this is difficult. We are often asking people who live in the same place, but may not otherwise have crossed paths, to work together.

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

We have power as a funder and are really aware of it, but perhaps still don’t acknowledge it enough and can find it awkward. We get worried about accidentally ‘back seat driving’ and one casual comment we make shifting a whole piece of work as it is seen as ‘what the funder wants’. Being more direct and talking about power dynamics openly can help avoid this.

Continuous funding for the enabling conditions for work to be done is key – all the background stuff that enables the partnerships and collaborations to get set up and maintain strong working relationships.

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 18

Reflections from our Funding Team

How do we know our place-led approach is making a difference Funding from independent funders like Esmée will only be a small part of the funding system in a place, and has to be considered alongside the contributions of businesses, local government, public services, and the people who live there. We are unlikely to be able to attribute the impact of our money, so how will we know if this kind of funding is making a difference?

hrough our place pilots, we wanted to find T out how funding an ecosystem of action in a place compared to individual investments into single organisations, but we were not able to make a direct comparison. y funding in a ‘place-led’ way with the pilots, B we have been intentional about our interest in that local area, working with partners to understand, track, and link the work we support. Evidence of impact on ‘intangibles’ like civic pride, community connections, energy and excitement are hard to quantify, but are emerging – with Participatory City in particular working on building evidence on this. s a responsive funder, our funding has A been spread unevenly across the UK. Where we have previously funded a group of organisations in a place, we have not spent time building new connections between them, or funding a network – instead choosing to fund key players who are already working together as with B-Arts in Stoke.

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

E smée’s core funding can often be the catalyst for the further, larger, investment needed in a place. With Onion Collective in Watchet, Esmée provided a base of support with which they brought in further funding – though this can only be attributed to the ideas and hard work of Onion Collective themselves.

For place-led funding, the benefits will often be in avoiding poor outcomes through preventative work. How can we measure something that didn’t happen? With the Early Action Neighbourhood Fund, the aim was to test out reducing future demand for public services by providing intensive preventative support right now.

The complexity of the work meant that causal evaluation focussed on attribution was not possible and it is hard to show a change in money flows as a result. It also couldn’t be detached from the context of reduced public spending across the board.

However, there is evidence that systems shifted as a result of the work, in a range

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

of expected and unexpected ways. The flexible approach allowed for learning about the unexpected too.

We aim to shift power to communities, and help build relationships and partnerships as part of a collaborative movement for change. We can track the impact of each of those things, but if we could directly attribute impact to Esmée, our funding model wouldn’t be working.

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 19

What next for Esmée support?

In November 2021 we re-launched our strategy for Creative, Confident Communities.

We want to be clear about the difference we want to make, and about the kinds of work we will support.

These pilots have informed our way of working and the new Creative Confident Communities Stratergy. However, we recognise that these cannot be absolute as there is no blueprint for working in a place-led way.

Our lessons for place-led funding: Engage with local authority and voluntary organisations in a place from the outset, spending time in the place and building relationships before the money is committed Support co-production with local people or community groups as a central feature of what’s funded Invest at scale, and be flexible on what’s Allocate enough staff, delivered and when time and money to engage with and learn from the work Be clear about our level of involvement with decisionmaking at the outset

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Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

We are looking to support large scale, place-led, community and arts work where there is the potential to move towards a large investment, existing

community action, and the opportunity for collaboration. This will be a mix of existing partnerships that are seeking funding support and Esmée staff proactively seeking out new ideas.

This doesn’t just mean established connections and plans, it may be also be a handful of people in a place who have a brilliant idea.

Read our strategy

We are looking to support large scale, place-led, community and arts work where there is the potential to move towards a large investment, existing community action, and the opportunity for collaboration Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 20

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding LocalMotion is a joint place-based initiative between six funders.

Pooling resources, knowledge and experience, the initiative will support six local communities to tackle deep-rooted causes of injustice in a more joined up, radical way.

The EANF aims to reduce future demand for public services (e.g. children’s services, mental health budgets and housing support) by providing innovative models of intensive preventative support right now.

Plunkett Foundation helps rural communities around the UK to tackle issues that they face, through promoting and supporting community businesses, enterprises that are run and owned, democratically, by the communities that they serve.

The Civic Innovation Programme used a combination of intensive project design support, expertise on public participation and grant-funding to support the delivery of seven projects around Northern Ireland. These initiatives aimed to deepen local democracy

Since 2013, Sustainable Food Places have worked to help places across the UK to establish a cross-sector food partnership, develop a vision, strategy, and action plan to make health living sustainable.

A pilot programme by Corra Foundation supported residents in nine Scottish communities to devise and implement plans that will increase wellbeing and enhance the local environment.

Civic Square are reimagining and putting into practice the public square, a place where people come together, communities, connect, share, agree and disagree, drawing upon an understanding of how you operate and finance this in the current and future climate.

B-Arts is an arts and educational charity co-creating art with communities, supporting artists in Stoke-on-Trent

Creative Civic Change is a resident-led programme which hands over control of what creativity means to local people. It offers flexible, long-term funding, in-area mentoring and a substantial peer learning programme with residents in the lead every step of the way.

The programme challenge top-down modes of engagement and push artists and arts organisations to work in a new way with communities in which power is shared and everyone’s expertise is highly valued.

Arts Council England’s Creative People and Places report also shares learning related to arts transforming a place.

Working extensively with local groups, SCVO co-designed grant funding and support programmes which build on local assets and encourage ‘happiness’ and a positive sense of wellbeing, supporting work the community wants which Esmée is unlikely to have funded without this programme.

Participatory City Foundation’s research-based, participatory model hired a new team to work directly with local people to create resident-led projects. They opened up spaces and possibilities as well as working to transfer this model elsewhere, and continues to involve thousands of residents, as well as gathering data and build evidence on what is making a difference for the community.

Plymouth Octopus Project’s new, lean, ‘CVS (Council for Voluntary Service) for the 21st century’ enabled it to play a key connecting role in the city, growing its network to include and support hyper-local grassroots community groups.

Learn more about our full portfolio

Home

Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding

Creative, Confident Communities: Insights from place-led funding 21

Authors Gina Crane Director of Communications and Learning Lulu Wright Learning Officer

Kings Place 90 York Way London N1 9AG T 020 7812 3700 communications@esmeefairbairn.org.uk www.esmeefairbairn.org.uk Registered charity 200051 @EsmeeFairbairn Home

Contents

Introduction

Esmée’s model

Barking and Dagenham

Plymouth

Sandwell

Insights from the pilots

Reflections from our Funding Team

What next for Esmée support

Map of Esmée’s place-led funding