The Short Guide to Community Development

pointing you in the right direction

the short guide to

community development 3rd edition

Alison Gilchrist and Marilyn Taylor

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The short guide to community development Third edition Alison Gilchrist Marilyn Taylor

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First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: bup-info@bristol.ac.uk Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4473-6072-8 paperback ISBN 978-1-4473-6073-5 ePub ISBN 978-1-4473-6074-2 ePdf The right of Alison Gilchrist and Marilyn Taylor to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents List of tables and boxes Acknowledgements

vi vii

1

Introduction A brief history Recent changes Defining community development?

Overview of the book Some thoughts on terminology

2

What is community development?

Unpacking the role Practices and processes Community development’s core values Underpinning strategies Providing help, strengthening resourcefulness Models and approaches Community practice Conclusion

13 16 16 19 21 24 25 31 32

3

The changing policy context Origins and early applications The renaissance of community A new direction?

International perspectives Recent developments Continuing themes in community policy Conclusion

35 35 37 38 40 41 42 49

iii

1 3 4 6 7 8

iv

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THE SHORT GUIDE TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Theoretical concepts What theory offers Theories of community Psychosocial concepts and theories Theories of the state, democracy and the process of government Theories of power: structure or agency?

Organisations, institutions and systems: how agency is organised Social movement theory Conclusion

53 53 54 57 63 68 73 75 77

5

Effective and ethical community development Understanding the community Working with people individually and in groups Dealing with differences and difficulties Establishing formal organisations Networking and engagement Resources and support Opportunities to learn Working with volunteers and activists Communication and knowledge management Using and influencing policies Evaluation: capturing learning and measuring change Integrity and accountability Conclusion

81 83 85 86 87 89 91 93 95 97 98 99 101 103

6

Community development in action Housing Economic responses to poverty and social exclusion Environmental action and sustainable development Health, well-being and social care Tackling inequalities Conclusion

107 109 113 118 122 127 132

Contents

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8

v

Challenges for practice Coherence and infrastructure Role boundaries and power dynamics Community allegiance: place and identity Equality and diversity Leadership and representation Multifaceted expectations and accountabilities Balancing formal and informal ways of working Resourcing, recognition and professional status Demonstrating impact: identifying outcomes and social return Scale and sustainability Dealing with uncertainty and disruption Conclusion

137 137 138 139 141 143 145 148 150 153

Future prospects Developments since previous editions Changing politics Poverty and the economy Navigating the digital universe Redefining community: migration, identity and the significance of place The public sphere and public space The climate and sustainable development Conclusion

161 161 162 164 165 168

References Index

155 156 157

169 172 173 177 201

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List of tables and boxes Table 2.1

The 7 Es: essential community development processes

17

Boxes 1.1 2.1 2.2

IACD’s understanding of community development IACD’s eight common themes and areas of practice for community development ECDN’s Statement on Community Development

vi

2 14 15

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Acknowledgements Many colleagues and friends have contributed to our knowledge and learning about community development over the years – far too many to list here. But we would like to acknowledge our debt to them and to those who have funded our work. More specifically, thanks are due to Kevin Harris for his help in editing our draft presubmission and, as always, to the excellent staff at Policy Press for their encouragement and support.

vii

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1 Introduction ‘Community’ is a concept that seems always to be in fashion with policy makers. In some quarters, the existence of community is seen as a natural and enduring facet of society; others lament its decline.

One of the primary purposes of community development is to boost the effectiveness of community action and build grassroots capacity.

As such it has been repeatedly ‘discovered’ by governments worldwide as offering ways to ‘restore’ community, to enhance democratic participation and to tackle poverty, alongside other seemingly intractable social problems.

Not everyone sees the necessity of strategic interventions to promote community development. Indeed, the term itself is problematic, with the approach also being called social development, popular education, critical pedagogy, community organising, community engagement, neighbourhood renewal and community education, for example. In the UK some prefer the term ‘critical community practice’ (Butcher et al, 2007), which describes a broader approach to working with communities. Nonetheless, internationally, community development is commonly adopted as a means of developing infrastructure, local economic initiatives and good governance. But governments have also been confronted by communities who have decided to mobilise for themselves, organising services, protest actions and self-help movements to improve living standards and claim important civil and human rights. This is also a form of community development.

In the 1950s the United Nations defined community development as ‘a process designed to create conditions of economic and social progress for the whole community with its active participation’ 1

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THE SHORT GUIDE TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

(United Nations, 1955, p 6). The International Association for Community Development (IACD) has adopted the following guiding principles for working with communities.

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Box 1.1: IACD’s understanding of community development “Community development is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes participative democracy, sustainable development, rights, economic opportunity, equality and social justice, through the organisation, education and empowerment of people within their communities, whether these be of locality, identity or interest, in urban and rural settings.” iacdglobal.org/about

This emphasis on professional status is contentious (Kenny, 2018) and IACD’s (2018) standards document qualifies this stance by stating that it sees community development as being ‘carried out by people in different roles and contexts who seek to apply community development values and adopt community development methods: by people called professional community workers (and people taking on the same role but with a different job title); by professionals in other occupations; … and by people active in their own communities’.

However, there is still some debate over whether community development represents a process, a set of practices, an approach, an occupation, a movement or even an academic discipline (Kenny, 2018; Banks, 2019). Is it a profession pursued by specialist workers or does it simply indicate a particular way of working in or with communities? Is it about the creation of resources, capacity, infrastructure and leadership for communities to use in whichever ways they choose? Or is it a set of techniques that can be used to accomplish externally defined objectives? Is it a movement for social change? Or maybe community development is simply about the development of ‘community’ itself?

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Introduction

3

This guide acknowledges that the term ‘community development’ is contested and compatible with a range of political ideologies (Meade et al, 2016a). In this edition we use the term ‘community worker’ to cover everyone working to co-ordinate and facilitate the contributions of community members, whether they are in paid roles, resident activists, leaders, active citizens or community-oriented volunteers.

As we shall consider more closely in Chapter 4, for some people, a sense of community supplies both the focus and the motivation to take action and press for change. The function that community plays in people’s lives and in policy will be a theme that we return to throughout the book, examining how community development skills and support are understood and applied by activists, professionals, policy makers and philanthropists to tackle the many challenges that face so many post-industrial societies.

A brief history In the UK the fortunes and status of community development have waxed and waned. As an external intervention, it was initially used by philanthropic bodies (for example, the university settlements) to bring adult education and capacity building to disadvantaged neighbourhoods, such as the London Docklands. Local authorities and housing trusts later employed officers in new towns and estates to encourage residents to set up groups and associations for various leisure and civic purposes in order to generate ‘community spirit’ and promote self-help.

For a long time, community development raised for policy makers the spectre of the Community Development Projects of the 1970s (Loney, 1983), a government-sponsored programme whose Marxist critique of capitalism – despite striking a chord with many practitioners – was not quite what the politicians had in mind when they allocated funding to its 12 ‘deprived’ areas. Official thinking at the time imagined that community development could be used to address ‘deficits’ through targeted interventions that focused on externally defined problems rather than community-determined priorities. Since then, a more anodyne version of community development has been

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THE SHORT GUIDE TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

adopted by successive governments, designed to build ‘community capacity’, ‘active citizenship’ and ‘collective resilience’, as well as to support ‘community engagement’ or ‘social enterprise/investment’ for addressing persistent local problems.

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Recent changes Global inequalities continue to rise, and progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals has stalled. Action is certainly much needed after a tumultuous period of increased destitution, polarisation and most recently the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic that has convulsed lives and livelihoods on an unprecedented scale. The negative effects of the pandemic, and consequent economic recession, have fallen disproportionately on women, Black and minority ethnic communities, young people and disabled people. Widespread hardship and uncertainty have generated stress and fuelled social tensions.

Successive clampdowns on social interactions have had drastic effects for millions of people, causing unwanted social isolation and stifling many aspects of community life. But we have adapted to online networking, using different technologies to stay in touch, organise meetings and social activities to maintain groups, make decisions and access learning. The internet has enabled rapid access to reputable sources of knowledge and increased global solidarity and co-operation, potentially widening the scope of community development to combat the spread of misinformation and divisive conspiracy theories.

Awareness of the impact of globalisation is also reflected in widespread recognition that climate catastrophe could be imminent. Communities across the world are responding with innovative schemes to generate renewable energy, cut down waste and pollution, protect the habitats of endangered species and combat the complacency of politicians.

Ingrained inequalities have widened over recent years (Dorling, 2018) due to the long-term impact of austerity, and have been further exacerbated by the economic downturn induced by the pandemic and the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. Notwithstanding the stark realities of income differentials and the seeming impregnability of super-rich elites, advances have been made on other fronts. Recent

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Introduction

5

years have witnessed a growing acceptance of diversity and more nuanced debates about the mutability of identity politics, particularly with regard to intersectionality and transgender issues (Morgan et al, 2020). We have been learning from much-needed discussion about the complicated nature of ‘race’ and the cumulative effect of unacknowledged privilege in people’s lives (Bhopal, 2018). Public conversations are more relaxed and better informed, with ideas from queer theory and anti-colonialist struggles infiltrating mainstream discourses. There is greater recognition of the systemic interplay between structural disparities, institutional discrimination and the unconscious stereotypes that are woven into the fabric of everyday life (Eddo-Lodge, 2017).

Nonetheless, the upheavals of recent years have left many people feeling insecure. While some embrace the cosmopolitan tide of different ethnicities, aspiring to notions of global citizenship and universal solidarity, others yearn for the ‘good old days’ of traditional communities and a stable, homogenous society. Generalised discontent, floating anxieties and resentments in significant parts of the population have focused on the establishment in the guise of elected politicians, elites and experts. In the UK discord lingers between ‘remainers’ and ‘leavers’ in the aftermath of Brexit, fuelled by xenophobia and the incitement of so-called ‘culture wars’ that distort debate and ferment mutual suspicion. Disgruntlement has festered over how the different parts of the UK have fared with respect both to Brexit and the pandemic. Populism and corruption are advancing in several countries, undermining democratic governance and posing a threat to governing structures and social stability (Kenny et al, 2021).

Luckily, these tendencies to blame and shame (O’Hara, 2020), to ‘divide and rule’ and to condemn outsiders are countered by currents flowing in the opposite direction. An epidemic of loneliness is being met with a surge in kindness, with assorted lockdown ‘bubbles’ forcing an acknowledgement of non-nuclear, non-traditional families.

Awful as the coronavirus emergency has been (and we shouldn’t downplay some of the social schisms that appeared), many of us have been stirred to think beyond our immediate household to express collective responsibility and heed public health guidance. As we will

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THE SHORT GUIDE TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

examine in Chapter 3, there were many silver linings, including the spontaneous appearance of mutual aid groups and a heightened sense of neighbourliness. Many discerned a renewed sense of community and increased voluntary action, which reinforced people’s appreciation of local spaces and networks (Wyler, 2020). This has highlighted the importance of community-led infrastructure to co-ordinate people’s efforts and maintain links with local statutory services and voluntary sector agencies (Wilson et al, 2020).

All these changes and achievements make community development as important as ever, as a means to protect what has been gained but also to tackle continuing injustice, protect local services and improve local conditions. Many definitions stress the need to work with the assets, strengths, knowledge, resourcefulness and experience that communities already have, rather than starting from the deficit model that policy makers tend to assume. At the same time, we should not underestimate the struggles facing people, especially in ‘left-behind’ areas, and their ongoing need for practical support and solidarity.

Defining community development?

Community development is not a phrase that necessarily travels well.

A mapping study by the IACD (2015) found a plethora of terms that seemed to cover a core understanding and noted significant differences in practice between countries on different continents. In the global South, community development retains its colonial associations, often devoid of the political content that characterises popular education movements there, for example, in Latin America (Pearce et al, 2010).

However, the term maintains its currency in the US and in a number of other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, such as Australia and Canada.

A quick review of definitions developed over the years by scholars, practitioners and institutions concerned with community development yields a number of common themes around social change, social justice, collective action, equality, mutual respect, enabling participation and changing power relationships. One US text echoes the analysis of the Community Development Projects

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Introduction

7

in the UK, arguing that: ‘Community development occurs when the conditions of surviving and thriving in a place are not being supplied by capital.’ This highlights the need to connect geographical communities to the ‘far greater resources, opportunities and power that lie outside [them]’ (DeFilippis and Saegert, 2012, p 6). Descriptions from elsewhere in the world emphasise the need to develop political awareness alongside skills, confidence and resources developed through popular education and social movements (see Ledwith, 2020). Readers may find it a useful exercise to come up with a definition that reflects their own experience and circumstances, and to compare this with other descriptions.

Overview of the book This Short Guide starts in Chapter 2 by reviewing a range of understandings of community development, describing different models and how they compare with related approaches and concepts.

The next two chapters look at context and theory. Chapter 3 lays out the policies and other factors that have shaped community development over the years, and the policy themes that it is expected to address. In Chapter 4 we review some of the theories that can help inform community development practice, focusing particularly on theories of community, identity, the state, collective organisation and power. Chapters 5 and 6 come back to the practice of community development. Chapter 5 considers the skills, values and techniques that constitute ‘good’ community development practice: how to do it, why certain principles work best and what kind of infrastructure is needed to support it. Chapter 6 describes how it can be applied in different policy fields, including a commitment to incorporating equality into all aspects of the work. The final two chapters explore the challenges that face community development. Chapter 7 examines various issues and dilemmas that are inherent within the practice and politics of community development, while Chapter 8 looks at external trends that are likely to affect its future prospects.

The Guide is written from a UK perspective. However, we have referred to experience and debates elsewhere in the world, particularly

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THE SHORT GUIDE TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

in the US, and we believe that many of the issues raised have a wider relevance. We end by welcoming the increasing willingness of community workers in the global North – and policy makers too – to learn from practice in the global South.

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Some thoughts on terminology This last comment raises some language issues. Most of the terminology that distinguishes between different regions of the world is problematic: how do we describe the distinction that used to be made between the developed and developing worlds? With apologies to Australasia, we have chosen to use the terms ‘global South’ and ‘global North’ to refer to countries with emerging economies that tend to be in the southern hemisphere, compared to the politically dominant nations of the north. We recognise that these terms are awkward but acknowledge that community development is a global movement with plenty of scope for cross-border exchanges, co‑operation and comparisons, as captured in several international readers and the work of the IACD network.

The terms used for different identity groups are subject to constant debate and so acceptable labels are constantly changing. In particular, the word ‘Black’ was preferred in anti-racist networks as a common reference point for everyone experiencing racism on the basis of skin colour, including those of Asian origin. But this inadvertently excluded other minoritised groups, such as Gypsies, Romanies and Jews, who also suffer ethnicity-related discrimination. Discussion has shifted more recently to distinguish between ‘Black’ – meaning to have African and Caribbean roots – and ‘Asian’, which has become its own distinct label.

The clumsy acronym ‘BAME’ now makes a common appearance but masks the contrasting experiences within this category, for example between Syrian refugees and long-settled Gujarati communities.

And increasingly, we have imported from the US the more anodyne description ‘people of colour’, serving a similar, but less political, purpose to the earlier use of the term ‘Black’. Parallel debates continue in relation to disability, mirroring the social model versus the medical approach. Meanwhile, discussions around sexual orientation and gender

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Introduction

9

fluidity are expanding to reflect growing insights and choices being explored by the LGBTQI+ movement. We have tried to adopt the most up-to-date and least offensive terms wherever possible but are mindful that these will certainly change over the next few years.

As will become clear, we recognise that community development resources are often funnelled towards those communities that are deemed to face the biggest challenges and that in the UK these allocations are often based on the Index of Multiple Deprivation. This collates data on household income, employment, health, educational attainment, housing conditions, crime levels and so on, officially designating the most ‘deprived’ areas in the country. Unfortunately, this derogatory term has crept into the language of community development. We have tried to avoid using it, preferring the way that ‘disadvantaged’ captures structural causes, and have tended to adopt the modern phrase ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods. This takes into consideration the strengths and aspirations of these communities, but we realise that, despite the recent establishment of a commission and all-party parliamentary group to focus on such areas, the term still carries problematic connotations.

Finally on the subject of terminology, we need to outline how we are using our anchoring concept of ‘community’. By this we mean not the slippery and abstract concept that has vexed sociologists but the sense of belonging and collective efficacy that people sometimes experience as tangible assurances of security, practical help and emotional support from those around them. We know that communities are multifaceted and often fragmented and that talk of ‘community’ or even ‘communities’ implies a unity and homogeneity that cannot be assumed. This suggests, as Banks (2019, p 7) notes, that communities can best be described as ‘collectivities of people with some, but not necessarily all, characteristics in common, who may sometimes come together (perhaps only for a short time) for perceived mutual benefit’. However, in the absence of a clearer term, we have decided to refer to the people that community development works with as communities or community members. This covers communities of place, shared social identity and those with a common interest or culture, as will be explored in more detail in Chapter 4.

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THE SHORT GUIDE TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Our intention with this Short Guide is to demonstrate not only the versatility and value of community development to contemporary society, but also to explore the many ways in which it is contested and challenged by political critiques and practical circumstances. Limited space allows us only to flag up some issues, but we urge the reader to follow up the suggestions for further reading and to reflect on how these might impinge on their own experience and practice. Our broad conclusion is that community development has a great deal to offer communities and professionals working across a whole range of policy goals. For it to be effective and sustainable, however, strategic investment in the capacity and infrastructure are essential to ensure that communities can play their part in building a more equitable and democratic society.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES Several comprehensive guides to community development have been updated in recent years. These include Keith Popple’s Analysing community work (2015) and Beck and Purcell’s Community development for social change (2020). Also strongly recommended is Margaret Ledwith’s latest book, Community development: A critical and radical approach (2020).

For a comprehensive overview of the evolution of community development over time, both in practice and in theory, readers can go to three excellent sources. An international overview is provided

by Gary Craig, Keith Popple and Mae Shaw in Community development in theory and practice (2008), which brings together a collection of articles from the international Community Development Journal. A US perspective is provided by James DeFilippis and Susan Saegert in their Community development reader (2nd edn, 2012). Gary Craig and co‑editors have also produced a UK collection, The community development reader: History, themes and issues (2011), drawing together influential articles and book extracts from a variety of sources from the 1950s to the 2000s.

Finally, two journals provide a valuable source: Community Development Journal and Community Development, the journal of the

Introduction

11

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US-based Community Development Society. The CDJ Plus website (cdjc.blog.oxfordjournals.org) carries news and publications which can be downloaded free of charge. Readers will also find valuable material in development studies journals: Development Studies itself and the IDS Bulletin, published by the Institute of Development Studies. Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory is another useful source.

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2 What is community development?

This chapter focuses on different understandings of community development. As indicated in Chapter 1, we use ‘community development’ as an umbrella term to cover a range of different methods for working with communities: • • • •

to open up opportunities for collective action; to improve living conditions and services; to uphold and extend rights; and to support individual advancement.

We set out the core principles and processes that characterise community development and distinguish it from related approaches and concepts. We review different models for working with communities, as well as exploring the relationship between community development and similar strategies for achieving change.

Internationally, community development encompasses many approaches, contributing in different ways within a set of core principles or expectations (see Boxes 2.1 and 2.2).

13

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Box 2.1: IACD’s eight common themes and areas of practice for community development Themes

Area of practice

Values into practice

Understand the values, processes and outcomes of community development, and apply these to practice in all the other key areas.

Engaging with communities

Understand and engage with communities, building and maintaining relationships with individuals and groups.

Participatory planning

Develop and support collaborative working and community participation.

Organising for change

Enable communities to take collective action, increase their influence and if appropriate their ability to access, manage and control resources and services.

Learning for change

Support people and organisations to learn together and to raise understanding, confidence and the skills needed for social change.

Diversity and inclusion

Design and deliver practices, policies, structures and programmes that recognise and respect diversity and promote inclusion.

Leadership and infrastructure

Facilitate and support organisational development and infrastructure for community development, promoting and providing empowering leadership.

Developing and improving policy and practice

Develop, evaluate and inform practice and policy for community development, using participatory evaluation to inform and improve strategic and operational practice.

IACD (2018, p 17, Table 1: Themes and Key Areas). See IACDStandards-Guidance-May-2018_Web.pdf (iacdglobal.org).

What is community development?

15

The European Community Development Network (ECDN, 2014) has adopted a similar common framework that brings together the values and principles shared by its members.

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Box 2.2: ECDN’s Statement on Community Development Core principles • • • • •

Collective action; Equality, Diversity, Tolerance; Partnership, Solidarity and Co-operation; Participation; Creative and Innovative organisation.

Some shared concepts • • • • • • •

Delivers interdisciplinary, professional and independent support to groups of people; Identifies, together with local people, community problems; Increases the empowerment of local people so that they can organise themselves in order to solve problems; Turns its attention primarily to people struggling with social deprivation, poverty, inequality and exclusion; Contributes to a sustainable community based on mutual respect and social justice; Challenges power structures which hinder people’s participation; Contributes to the socio-cultural development of the neighbourhood through local people.

http://eucdn.net/statement

Many people and agencies contribute to community development.

This chapter will focus primarily on the role of the community

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THE SHORT GUIDE TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

worker or organiser, who is often an outsider, usually in a paid job that involves working with residents or community members to support leaders, activists and volunteers to come together, co-ordinate their efforts and achieve the change they desire.

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Unpacking the role As we will see in Chapter 5, community work is skilled and strategic, but its starting point always involves learning to understand the community from the inside, listening to people’s experiences, identifying priority concerns and long-term goals. Arising from these conversations, the worker will help groups to form or engage with existing networks, agreeing broad aims and establishing how they want to run themselves. This stage may involve hours of door knocking, street surveys, small informal meetings, building up relationships with relevant organisations and growing connections that will encourage mutual trust and respect. Workers are not ‘in charge’ of these activities but play an important facilitating role, making sure that those involved feel included and empowered.

The worker’s contact with groups may wax and wane over time as these become stronger and more self-reliant. Initial levels of intense support and guidance will reduce as group dynamics settle down and members become adept at running meetings, carrying out decisions and resolving conflicts for themselves. But when tensions arise or organisational change is needed, then the worker should still be in a position to help without fostering dependency. The degree of engagement will shift as the group evolves, going through cycles of activity and changing memberships, even eventually dissolving when it is no longer needed or viable. A community worker can help at each phase of development but must be careful not to take over and should constantly manage expectations about their role.

Practices and processes Community development represents a broad set of practices for working with people in communities to achieve sustainable

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What is community development?

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improvements. These can be characterised by the ‘7 Es’ set out in Table 2.1.

The unpaid efforts and expertise of members of the community are paramount. These are so-called ‘ordinary’ residents who take on roles as leaders, volunteers, committee members and so on in order to set up, run and participate in community-based activities and campaigns.

Working alongside them, especially in the most rundown areas, might be paid community development workers, who have demonstrated their competence and understanding, sometimes attaining a professional qualification. These workers could be employed by the local authority, a voluntary organisation, a public health body, a partnership or even the community itself, perhaps under the auspices of a tenant-owned housing co-op or residents’ association. Although posts have been drastically reduced in recent years, a survey carried out in 2016 revealed a ‘highly skilled and resilient workforce which has Table 2.1: The 7 Es: essential community development processes Enabling

Set up groups and opportunities for people to become involved.

Remove practical barriers to their participation.

Encouraging

Facilitate individuals to contribute to activities and participate in decision-making. Persuade them to keep going when things get difficult.

Empowering

Strengthen community members’ confidence and ability to work together and take responsibility for their own actions. Create conditions and open up opportunities for people to influence decisions affecting their lives.

Engaging

Make contact and work with individuals, groups and organisations to improve community participation in partnerships and other forms of public decision-making.

Educating

Help people to reflect on their own experience, to learn from others and through discussion.

Equalising

Adjust or challenge practices and attitudes so that everyone has equivalent access to opportunities, resources and facilities within communities and mainstream services.

Evaluating

Identify the positive changes that result from collective actions.

Learn lessons from interventions about what is effective as well as what can be done differently.

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THE SHORT GUIDE TO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

developed new ways to fund the work through enterprise and effective deployment of resources’, operating under a range of job titles and in diverse settings (ESB, 2016). Many local authority posts have been lost to austerity and there has been an apparent increase in positions created through national funding programmes, such as Community Organisers or Big Local. Many of these are located in target areas, while others support communities on a less intensive basis, or around specific themes such as mental health or sport.

In the main, the focus is on groups and networks that want to or need to co‑operate in order to achieve change at community level. That change might be driven by an external threat to people’s quality of life, for example plans to build on cherished green space, or rising crime. It could be shaped by a general desire to increase community ‘togetherness’, addressing issues of social isolation and fragmentation between people of differing backgrounds through local events or befriending and support schemes. Equally, communities organise to improve services for a particular section of the community, such as providing facilities and support for young people. Adopting a community development approach means ensuring that the issues and priorities are identified and agreed by communities themselves and that people are encouraged to work together towards a collective solution to shared concerns and aspirations.

Community development is sometimes criticised as focusing too much on deprivation and deficiencies. There has been a tendency among policy makers and professionals to assume that communities lack capacity, resources or leadership, and that these need to be either imported from experts or nurtured through ‘hand-holding’ and training. This undervalues the wealth of energy, skills and local insights that community members pour into their activities and campaigns. Shifting attention away from so-called community deficits means acknowledging local assets, expertise, talents and ambitions as the foundation on which to build shared visions and action.

There is a Māori saying ‘Highlight my strengths and my weaknesses will disappear’, so it is important to begin by assessing community strengths. This will include existing groups, facilities, traditions, tacit knowledge, informal networks and the range of agencies already

What is community development?

19

offering services. This approach is embodied in the strengths-based model of community development, sometimes known as ‘asset-based community development’, or ‘ABCD’ (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993; Russell, 2015).1

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Community development’s core values Community development is commonly described as a long-term value-based process. Its overarching purpose is to promote social justice and it is therefore essentially political (albeit with a small ‘p’).

However, social justice is a tricky term to define, tending to mean whatever its proponents want. Within community development, it is usually understood as the development of a fair and inclusive society, with wealth, opportunities and power more equitably distributed across the population.

Equality Equality is a core value for community development, and practitioners are expected to demonstrate an awareness of structural inequalities and incorporate anti-discriminatory measures into all aspects of their work – the most prevalent dimensions of discrimination being generally associated with class, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and age. Addressing these means tackling barriers, promoting opportunities and adapting arrangements to take into account the needs and preferences of diverse participants or target communities.

Empowerment Community development places great emphasis on collective leadership, inclusive participation and empowerment, so that community members can contribute directly to decision-making about what happens in their areas or spheres of interest. The term ‘empowerment’ can be problematic for community development.

There is a persuasive argument that people can only empower

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themselves rather than be empowered by others. However, community development practices are often concerned with creating the conditions for people to have a greater say over decisions that affect their lives and to challenge unfair power dynamics. Processes of empowerment are experienced individually and collectively. They therefore have psychological, practical and political dimensions that need to be actively addressed by community workers. Developing community leadership and people’s capacity to influence and implement decisions (thereby empowering them) is crucial for opening up democratic processes, often using participatory methods of engagement.

Co-operation As indicated earlier, collective working and co-operation are also key principles of community development so, wherever possible, community workers encourage individuals, groups and organisations to work together as partners and allies, informally or through formal arrangements. They will often act as brokers between different agencies or parts of the community, identifying potential synergies and mediating latent rivalries or tensions.

Natural networks of relationships and contacts connecting many people within communities form a firm foundation for teamwork and sharing. However, this ‘community capital’ can be eroded through neglect or antagonisms. Coalitions may need constant tending and occasional mending if they are to provide a robust and inclusive foundation for collaboration.

Learning together Community development recognises the value of reflection and dialogue in its commitment to shared learning and capacity building.

Through informal conversations, workshops and group discussions, community members develop their ideas of what’s happening in their lives or their part of the world. Only by understanding how things are now is it possible to change them for the better (Mayo, 2020a).

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Underpinning strategies

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In addition to its fundamental values, community development rests on four vital pillars or strategies: • • • •

Networking Collective action Organisation development Informal education

Networking In order for people to collaborate and achieve meaningful change, they need to be connected with those who share their concerns, to find potential allies and partners, and to have links with decision makers or service providers who hold power and resources. Communities have natural attachments through families, neighbours, friendships and familiar faces seen out and about. But these networks tend to be exclusive and might not give access to the most useful ideas or assets.

Most communities comprise patterns of biases and barriers that distort or prevent people relating to one another. A good networker who knows the community well can set up introductions, liaise across sectoral or area boundaries and facilitate networking opportunities so that community members can extend their own networks and reach into less familiar territory, thereby addressing social exclusion and power differentials (Gilchrist, 2019).

Collective action A central tenet of community development is that it enables people to take collective action to tackle shared issues or to pursue a common cause. Community development works with people to identify goals and supports them to accomplish these. By coming together, comparing experiences and understanding the root causes of problems, people realise that their combined efforts can change situations, improve conditions and potentially challenge structural

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disadvantage, for example in employment choices or accessing health services. This type of campaigning or self-help activism does not necessarily require setting up a formal organisation. Much can be achieved through informal arrangements using the ‘social power’ of civil society, such as local self-help networks, pressure groups or broader social movements (Sheila McKechnie Foundation, 2018). The important point is that people are not left to fend for themselves in making complaints or putting forward suggestions as isolated residents.

Community development often provides the impetus for community members to decide what needs to be done to make the changes they want and then mobilise around a joint plan of action. It is about channelling the power of combined voices and determination: the strength of many people acting for themselves or in solidarity with others who find it more difficult to speak up and be heard.

Organisation development Initial success sometimes reveals new possibilities and loose groupings of campaigners may need to develop an organisation in order to meet the changing demands of members as well as the expectations of other stakeholders, notably funders. In community development, this means helping a group to find a form that matches its current aims and functions while allowing for potential growth. It is best to strike a balance between meeting formal requirements and the flexibility and fun allowed by informal processes. Organisational structures and procedures should enable members to achieve their goals, to act legally and to be accountable to the membership and wider community. Community organisations sometimes reach a crisis point when members realise that their existing format simply doesn’t work any more or constrains them from partnering with other agencies. In many cases, a group may evolve to become more ‘hardshelled’, while retaining many of its informal aspects because these keep people feeling motivated and involved. Community development helps transitions like this, supporting members to reflect on what’s going wrong or discuss what could be done differently.

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Informal education Alongside developing organisational capacity, community development stimulates the acquisition and sharing of skills and knowledge, as well as fostering mutual understanding. Informal, popular or community education describes the learning that takes place mainly through people’s involvement in community activities and so it is sometimes described as experiential. Individuals improve their confidence and capabilities through taking on tasks, observing others, ‘having a go’ and receiving feedback. Opportunities for discussion ensure that useful experience and opinions are shared through listening, explanation and critical debate. Information, ideas and insights can also be gleaned from relevant materials and official publications as well as informal conversations. As Kahneman (2011) has suggested in a thorough analysis of cognitive failures and ingrained biases, ‘slow thinking’ is vital to avoid snap judgements or herd mentalities. This kind of analytic and reflective thinking helps to refute fallacies and to counter prejudices and conspiracy theories, for example in relation to climate denial or vaccine hesitancy. Positive informal learning increases people’s personal resilience, their openness to new ideas and their ability to take on unfamiliar roles and responsibilities.

Encouraging people to reflect on their experiences can be a useful stimulus to further learning and builds confidence in new roles. For many people, participation in community development activities represents an important step along the journey towards active citizenship, a career goal or a sense of self-worth. Most of us need feedback and encouragement from others, especially our peers. Rigorous scepticism is a prerequisite for evidence-based social advance, in science and elsewhere (McIntyre, 2018) including community development. Group debates and critical dialogue expose comfortable, but false, myths and can be used to create alternative and more balanced narratives. These discussions are also about learning to question received wisdom and to challenge authority. By actively supporting people to try out new skills, question assumptions and explore new ways of seeing the world, workers and leaders are using

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informal education and reflective practice to challenge the status quo and promote transformative change (Ledwith, 2020).

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Providing help, strengthening resourcefulness Each of these four strands (networking, collective action, organisation development and informal education) involves building the skills, knowledge and confidence of individuals as well as developing the social infrastructure to support community organising and engagement. For many communities, these can be organic processes occurring normally through regular interactions and shared learning.

But sometimes they need a boost to overcome flagging spirits or apparent blocks to progress. There are specific areas of expertise and technical advice that professional community workers might provide or refer people to, for example, on charity law, planning regulations or fundraising, perhaps by signposting them to intermediary bodies, such as councils for voluntary service. In addition, paid community workers may have time for tasks that community members are too busy to do, or they can offer an external perspective on disputes or difficulties. They might make suggestions on group roles and interactions, the style and format of meetings, the various functions of organisations and the complex dynamics of communities. Their training and accumulated experience can be seen as a resource which is ‘on tap’ but not ‘on top’.

Historically, there was a vigorous debate in community development over how ‘directive’ workers should be, with some arguing that they should be completely neutral, responding entirely to the communities’ expressed needs and aspirations in the ultimate non-directive role (see Batten and Batten, 1967). Some regard this as the highest form of empowerment, leaving communities completely in control, moving in a direction and at a pace they set themselves. However, community development agencies are not always as empowering as they would like to be, and the provision of guidance or advice can be interpreted as overly influential, especially given the relative status and perceived expertise of paid workers. As Kenny (2018) among others has observed, community development does not just take place through

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the efforts of professional practitioners. Professionals can sometimes be disingenuous about the degree of covert power they hold or the underlying purpose of community engagement strategies. As a result, people may feel manipulated and disempowered by the paid workers or they may become dependent on their support and input.

We acknowledge that community workers usually do have an agenda: sometimes driven by their own concerns, often by employers’ policies and funding priorities. Some will abide by occupational standards and be guided by formal principles of professional accreditation. Nevertheless, their work will be shaped by their own values, capabilities, preferences and ‘theories of change’, which may in turn be informed by politics, faith or personal interests. It is therefore important that community workers are constantly reflexive about their motivation and how this affects their interactions with others (Beck and Purcell, 2020). Honesty and mutual respect should be key values for community development regardless of context or financial arrangements, so all stakeholders should be as ‘up front’ about their aims as possible.

Models and approaches Various models of community development have found favour in the UK over the past several decades. While some may be branded as an authentic or universal approach, in practice they all overlap, sharing common goals, underpinning values and processes. In this Short Guide, we have focused on the roles and contributions offered by paid workers, acting in a quasi-professional capacity, who may or may not be members of the communities they are serving. Several authors have developed useful typologies or frameworks to describe these (Rothman with Tropman, 1970; Smock, 2004; Popple, 2015).

Broadly speaking, these reflect different analyses of society and different overall goals, with some being more radical than others.

The different approaches can be seen as: (a) Radical – fundamentally transforming the way society operates by challenging dominant power structures;

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(b) Pluralist – rebalancing the system to be fairer and more democratic; or (c) Communitarian – maintaining, but improving, existing structures and services through shared ownership and user participation.

These three models provide a simple framework for thinking about how community development is practised in different settings. They are informed by different political ideologies and shaped by some of the theoretical concepts outlined in Chapter 4.

Radical models Radical models are concerned with the root causes of poverty, injustice and inequality. They aim to fundamentally change the system rather than just deal with symptoms. Transformational approaches argue that community development must move from change at community level, scaling up interventions by connecting local initiatives to social movements and national campaigns. They claim to be emancipatory: informed by an explanation of power that places it in the hands of elites or those with vested interests, resulting in structural inequalities and systematic discrimination (Lopes de Souza, 2020). Perhaps the most well-known is the Alinsky model of community organising, which asserts itself as broadly oppositional: mobilising communities to confront the ‘power holders’ in an attempt to negotiate change from a position of collective strength and solidarity (Alinsky, 1972).

Alinsky and his adherents operated by building relationships at the grassroots, identifying issues causing common concern or resentment, recruiting and training indigenous leaders to act as organisers and uniting different groups in alliance around a shared vision or solution (Szynka, 2021). For community organisers, the baseline is always the practical problems, grievances and aspirations expressed by communities themselves. But the goal may be to redistribute power in favour of disadvantaged people in low-income communities, using a pragmatic assessment of ends and means. A frequently adopted radicalisation tactic is to express dissent through protest, often focused on a single person (such as the head of a major polluting industry or

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a police commissioner) using imaginative direct actions that expose injustices and demand change. This means tactical engagement with the ‘system’ from the outside, using mass campaigns and media pressure, as well as working within its organisations and structures to challenge how things are done.

Over recent years, a number of different models of radical community development have appeared in the UK and elsewhere (Beck and Purcell, 2013). Some see these as distinct from, and more assertive than, traditional community development because they emphasise strategic, often confrontational, public action, human rights, empowering leadership and informal methods of mobilising.

Citizen organising draws directly on Alinsky’s model and is used by the Industrial Areas Foundation network in the US to build broad-based alliances to tackle issues such as low pay or the treatment of asylum seekers. Citizens UK adopts a similar approach and has successfully established ‘chapters’ in several of England’s bigger cities. The organisation works through civil society networks and faith bodies to enable ‘communities to act together for power, social justice and the common good’. Citizens UK prides itself on training individuals to take on leadership positions and on manoeuvring its members into positions for confronting power and resisting injustices (Bolton, 2017).

The Community Organisers Programme, initially funded by government, emphasises the importance of independent initiatives.

Their approach claims to be transformational in that it aims to create systemic change by challenging prevailing ideologies and leading to an alternative vision for society. Community Organisers, the national body, has devised a framework that underscores the work involved in bringing people together to take action on common concerns in ways that challenge social injustices. This starts by listening to residents, reaching out to activists and allies, building relationships and networks, engaging with power-holders and mobilising people to take collective action, including community-led events and activities in order to mobilise collective power. Community Organisers is a membership body that supports practitioners through a network of social action centres. Training and accreditation is provided via the network of hubs known as the National Academy of Community

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Organising. A significant and radical offshoot of the Community Organisers Programme is ACORN, a membership organisation that describes itself as a community-based union, representing lowincome people.

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Pluralist models Despite widespread claims to radicalism, in reality community development strategies are often more pragmatic and pluralist, based on liberal thinking, which sees society as comprising an array of interest groups competing for attention, influence and resources.

This approach is concerned with making the system work better for everyone. It ensures that a full range of experiences and perspectives are taken into consideration when making decisions about how resources are allocated or services designed. It recognises that groups do not have equal access to power and that disadvantaged sections of society need additional support and resources in order for their voices and their views to be heard. In this respect, a key role for community development is to address discrimination and prejudice in order to create a more level playing field for those who are oppressed or marginalised. The state is seen as a neutral body, overseeing negotiations between different interests, with decisions made in accordance with a rational appraisal of the evidence, based on arguments put forward by diverse stakeholders. The pluralist model of community development aims for a fairer distribution of power in society generally, as well as at the grassroots. In some respects, strategies for community engagement and ‘customer’ participation fall into this model, whereby service commissioners and providers involve residents in consultative planning exercises.

Similarly, user empowerment seeks to increase users’ level of choice, influence and control in how services are designed. Health services, alongside social care, have shown particular interest in such patient/ public involvement approaches. This is examined in more detail in Chapter 6, but it is worth noting that health services across the UK have taken a growing interest in a shared, or co-productive, approach to the promotion of health and wellbeing (NICE, 2016).

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Community engagement represents a parallel model that is open to wider participation and generally not focused on specific services.

It is a stronger version of consultation, by which public authorities seek to involve citizens in planning improvements and addressing longstanding problems.

Effective and inclusive public engagement practices require changes in the culture and procedures of institutions such as local councils or health authorities to render them more ‘community friendly’ and accessible (Beresford, 2021). Community engagement strategies should result in community and user empowerment, especially if they make use of community development values and expertise. The pluralist approach is largely incremental, seeking social reform while preferring negotiation and compromise to conflict. The role of the community worker, sometimes called a participation or engagement officer, is to support community members or service users to develop a collective voice and articulate a persuasive case for change.

Communitarian models The third approach to community development relies on a conservative model of society. Communitarianism aims to maintain the overall status quo while working within the existing ‘rules’ to improve the functioning and cohesion of communities. There is an emphasis on enabling people to exercise agreed rights while assuming personal or social responsibilities, but without upsetting the general order. The aim is to strengthen community spirit and build the capacity of local groups and mutual aid networks either to contribute independently to civil society or to work in partnership with state or voluntary agencies. It highlights the positive features of communities rather than their failings, but draws attention to what might happen if mutual responsibilities are neglected. Communitarian approaches are designed to mobilise the resources, enthusiasm and efforts of ‘ordinary’ residents, with one well-known version describing itself as asset-based community development (ABCD) because it focuses on the strengths rather than the weaknesses of communities (Mathie and Cunningham, 2008; Green and Haines, 2015). It represents a

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generic strategy for community building and is based on the belief that the role of community development is to assist communities to become self-reliant, participating in civil society as a unified body of active citizens. ABCD identifies an important role for ‘community connectors’ in establishing an inventory of individual or household skills, interests and experience. This foundation is then used to gauge the combined potential capacity of the community, in the belief that: Each time a person uses his or her capacity, the community is stronger and the person more powerful. That is why strong communities are basically places where the capacities of local residents are identified, valued and used. Weak communities are places that fail, for whatever reason, to mobilize the skills, capacities and talents of their residents or members. (Kretzmann and McKnight, 2003, p 1) Appreciative enquiry offers another set of methods for identifying the positives in community life. Developed as an alternative to deficit strategies that focus on ‘problem solving’, it aims to promote creative thinking, stimulating people to identify all that is good about their communities and encouraging them to imagine how things could be ‘even better’ (Whitney and Trosten-Bloom, 2010; Stavros and Torres, 2018).

Appreciative enquiry and the ABCD model are both about identifying assets rather than needs: as a consequence, they have been criticised for underestimating the obstacles facing many communities, such as long-term industrial decline, poor public services, low levels of hope, endemic discrimination and political barriers encountered in decision-making arenas. In this respect, they bear a strong resemblance to programmes for promoting active citizenship (Mayo and Annette, 2010) or the civic model proposed by Smock (2004), which she identifies as promoting informal mechanisms for maintaining social order within neglected or diverse neighbourhoods.

The communitarian approach attempts to avoid disturbances and to ‘bridge’ divisions between different sections of the community in the name of stability and consensus.

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Community practice As indicated earlier, community development can be pursued in many ways: through paid and unpaid roles, including local leaders or a highly motivated band of volunteer activists, or by communityoriented workers from other professional fields, such as youth work or social care. The term ‘community practice’, introduced by Butcher et al (1993), covers ways of working that seek to empower communities and develop better relations between the state and the public. It recognises that services are delivered most effectively if they are tailored to the conditions and cultures of specific communities and may use a form of outreach or detached service delivery that aims to be more responsive than mainstream services to community needs and preferences. Community practitioners encourage people to share responsibility for their environment, raising issues of concern and working in partnership to create solutions that work for local communities. They include frontline staff delivering public services such as, for example, police officers, street cleaners, housing officials, health visitors or school caretakers, a wide-ranging and valuable, if often fragmented and unco-ordinated, resource (Banks et al, 2013).

Thus, different sectors use community development methods and might be informed to some extent by its values. However, most community practitioners have their goals and targets set externally by employers or funders, rather than by the communities themselves.

Some critics level the same argument at community development itself, an issue this Guide will return to later when we examine challenges around accountability and leadership.

But community development need not rely on the input of dedicated and qualified workers. The growth of ‘community’, whether it is labelled community spirit, a sense of shared belonging, solidarity or social identity, can be the outcome of organic, self-organised action and spontaneous mutual aid. We saw this during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic as neighbours looked out for one another and informal groups sprang up, apparently spontaneously, to organise food drops, collect medicines, set up community kitchens and keep in touch with isolated or vulnerable people who were ‘shielding’

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(Tiratelli and Kaye, 2020). In addition, many communities, especially those that are rurally remote or have struggled to access resources, such as Black and minority ethnic groups, have long-standing traditions of independent self-help, relying on their own resources rather than funded interventions from outsiders.

The decline in local and national government funding has meant that local teams have been disbanded, with community development posts tending to be more specialist in order to deliver specific policy objectives or support target groups. Grant programmes generally create short-term or part-time positions, or support is offered over a wider area on a ‘light-touch’ basis, offering expert advice and encouragement as needed in response to the changing needs of communities.

As we shall see in Chapter 6, the skills and strategies used for community development can be applied in various situations and for different purposes.

Conclusion Community development is sometimes described as a broad movement for social change. In practice it takes many forms and is shaped by different ideologies. What these models have in common is a commitment to supporting people who want to work together to improve lives and remedy situations that are causing injustice, discontent, ill health or impoverishment. Over the years, and despite its rather amorphous nature, community development as an approach is regularly rediscovered and adapted by policy makers and governments seeking to achieve long-term improvements in the living conditions of communities that find themselves on the margins of civil society.

SUMMARY • Community development is primarily concerned with enabling communities to organise around issues that they identify for themselves.

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• It is also used by public, and sometimes private, bodies to enhance community engagement and improve services.

• It involves networking, collective action, organisation development and informal learning.

• Community development is aligned with principles of social justice and works within a framework of core values: equality, empowerment, co-operation and shared learning.

• It is useful to consider three different models of community development: radical, pluralist and communitarian.

• As an approach, community development techniques can be adopted by other professions using a light touch to work with communities on their issues and aspirations.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES There are a number of useful readers on community development, as well as practical guides on working with community groups and on community engagement strategies. In particular, we recommend the volumes in the series Rethinking Community Development from Policy Press, notably Meade et al (2016a), Shaw and Mayo (2016a) and Banks and Westoby (2019). These are edited collections of essays on themes of power, ethics, populism, democracy, class and inequalities.

They are suggested for those seeking a more academic analysis than we offer in this short guide.

Henderson and Vercseg’s (2010) exploration of how community development relates to civil society uses interesting examples from the UK and Eastern Europe. Margaret Ledwith has authored several thought-provoking books which take a more radical approach, while Akwugo Emejulu (2015) provides a critical comparison of community development in the UK and the US. Dave Beck and Rod Purcell’s (2010) and Carol Packham’s (2008) books explore in greater depth the role of the worker in promoting educational aspects of community development, while Beck and Purcell (2013) offer an overview of models of community organising.

The Community Organisers’ useful framework can be found at:

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https://www.corganisers.org.uk/training/learning-resources/ co_framework/. More information on ACORN’s work is available at: www.acorncommunities.org.uk/ Direct experiences of community organising are described in Naomi Diamond’s book Community organising compared (2020) and Craig (2017), which focuses on anti-racism. For more on ABCD, visit www. nurturedevelopment.org/asset-based-community-development/.

Cormac Russell (2015) provides a historical overview, while Green and Haines (2015) write about US experiences of this approach.

The Routledge handbook of community development (Kenny et al, 2019) brings together theory and examples from around the world.

For an Irish perspective, try Jackson and O’Doherty’s (2012) edited collection of case studies and reflections. Community Development Alliance Scotland (CDAS) publishes excellent briefings about community development, which can be found at: www. communitydevelopmentalliancescotland.org. Jim Ife (2016; and with his colleague Tesoriero, 2006) offers local and global perspectives to Australian community development practices.

Before its demise in 2016, the Community Development Foundation produced a range of publications, some of which are now available from the British Library as hard copies or to download (via http://socialwelfare.bl.uk/).

Note 1

This model should not be confused with the ‘Achieving Better Community Development’ approach to planning and evaluation, which shares the same acronym (Barr and Hashagen, 2000).

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3 The changing policy context This chapter begins by tracking the way in which community development has evolved over the years and the factors that have shaped this evolution. It then identifies some of the recurrent policy themes that have driven interest in community development and describes the contribution that communities can make to these: welfare and service reform, democratic renewal, restoring community, and regenerating places and economies.

Origins and early applications Community development today has many foundations in the past. Some lie in communities themselves: the mutual organisations, co-operatives and friendly societies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, where, as industrialisation gained pace, working-class people banded together to pool their resources, meet common needs and campaign for improved rights and better conditions. Some can be found in external initiatives, such as the university settlements which, from the 1880s onwards, brought students into poor urban areas to live and work with local communities. More recently, after World War Two, the UK government introduced community development in its colonies as a bulwark against communism and to foster economic development in the interests of empire. It was then deployed to prepare indigenous populations for a peaceful transition to independence. Marj Mayo (1975) traces similar ‘colonial’ antecedents in the US, where, she argues, self-help projects were supported in order to stave off 35

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discontent among Black and minority ethnic (BME) populations and ensure a skilled and disciplined labour force.

Community development also has roots in housing and planning.

The origins of the tenants’ movement, for example, lie in the rent strikes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the twentieth century progressed, the growth of new council housing estates led to the formation of tenants’ associations, aiming to develop social activities, to call for more representation for tenants and sometimes to challenge high rents and poor conditions.

The immediate post-war period saw a wave of housing development, with large-scale slum clearance and reconstruction projects. But groundbreaking research contrasted the soullessness of the post-war new towns and council estates with the dense social ties of life in the East London slums from which inhabitants had been moved (Young and Willmott, 1957). Development workers were drafted into these new towns and estates to help build a sense of community (Goetschius, 1969).

At the same time it was becoming clear that, despite the promise of the post-war welfare state, poverty and disadvantage had not been eliminated. The stirrings of a new wave of dissent were being felt, with campaign groups tackling a range of issues from child poverty to racial discrimination, the latter inspired by the US civil rights movement.

Towards the end of the 1960s, concerns about immigration and racial tension triggered government action. Drawing on the experience of the US War on Poverty, the UK government introduced a range of area-based initiatives to promote community and local authority responses to deprivation. These included the Urban Programme, the National Community Development Project, Education Priority Areas and the Comprehensive Community Programme.

This policy commitment to community initiatives faltered as the 1970s progressed (although the Urban Programme survived in various guises into the 1990s). In part, and in common with the War on Poverty in the US, this was because of internal contradictions within the programmes – between the limited aspirations of government and the expectations raised in the target populations (Marris and Rein, 1967). In part, also, it was because these national programmes often

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encountered resistance from local politicians, while the trenchant critique of capitalism and government policy delivered by the National Community Development Project in the UK undoubtedly sealed its fate (Loney, 1983). But most significantly, the oil crisis of the early 1970s signalled the end of the post-war boom, heralding widespread unemployment and industrial unrest. This prepared the ground for the rise of neoliberalism, with its ideology of shrinking the state in favour of the market. In the UK, community campaigns that had criticised public services now found they had to defend them from threatened cuts and then privatisation (Craig et al, 2011). Under Margaret Thatcher’s governments (1979–90), priority was given to local economic and physical regeneration, with the aim of creating jobs and stimulating industrial growth. In some quarters, welfare support for disadvantaged people was seen as encouraging dependency and the emergence of a ‘moral underclass’ – a narrative that has been sustained in the media and by Conservative-led governments since 2010.

Although community development was accorded little place in the advance of neoliberalism during the 1980s, it continued to thrive in some areas. Local authorities opposed to Thatcher’s policies continued to support community development and sought to address the growing criticism of traditional community development from the women’s movement and BME groups. Meanwhile, policy emphasis on the consumer, coupled with the desire to rein in local government, led to a succession of initiatives to engage service users in the design and planning of welfare services.

The renaissance of community By the end of the decade, the community development field in the UK was pessimistic about the prospects for the future (Craig et al, 1990). However, contrary to expectations, the 1990s was to bring a revival. The City Challenge programme introduced in 1991 and the Single Regeneration Budget that followed it in 1995 encouraged the involvement of local communities in both the planning and delivery of regeneration programmes. This new wave of initiatives culminated in the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal

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(NSNR) launched in England by the New Labour government in 2001 and was mirrored in the other UK nations. Across the UK, local cross-sector partnerships developed strategies to tackle social exclusion through new investment and ‘bending’ mainstream funding towards neglected areas.

In England, the National Strategy’s long-term vision was to reduce the gap between the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods and the rest of society, but this faded later in the decade. In response to racial tension across the country, the policy focus moved to social cohesion (Cantle, 2008; Donoghue, 2016). However, the New Labour commitment to active citizenship, community empowerment and public participation deepened, with policies to encourage local government modernisation and localism across the board. As such, community engagement became embedded in national strategies and was no longer simply ‘prescribed for the poor’ (Taylor, 2011).

A new direction?

The later years of the New Labour government were marked by a growing enthusiasm for social enterprise and for transferring the management of local assets and services to communities. These themes also appealed to the Conservative-led Coalition government that took power in 2010. Under the aegis of the ‘Big Society’, a communitarian policy promoted by the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, the Coalition’s Localism Act (2011) introduced new community rights, with programmes to promote asset transfer and build the capacity of communities to manage services previously run by the state. These trends in community policy were again mirrored in the other UK nations, despite their different political complexions.

In other respects, the Coalition government distanced itself from what it saw as New Labour’s ‘top-down approach’, criticising its seeming reluctance, despite the rhetoric of localism and empowerment, to devolve power downwards. Community development in particular was tainted by its perceived co-option into New Labour strategies (Aiken, 2014). Politicians were attracted instead, on the one hand, to asset-based models – particularly ABCD (see Chapter 2) – and,

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on the other, by the success of Citizens UK in mobilising large numbers with its more radical community organising model (see also Chapter 2). The latter interest was reflected in the commitment of the Coalition government to funding a four-year Community Organisers Programme as part of its Big Society drive. This aimed to ‘train a new generation of community organisers and support the creation of neighbourhood groups across the UK, especially in the most deprived areas’ (Cabinet Office, 2010). It was extended in 2017 for another three years. There was also renewed interest from the health sector in community-based solutions, including social prescribing and community link workers (see Chapter 6).

For many critics, however, any positive developments under the Coalition were more than countered by stringent cuts affecting statutory services, voluntary organisations and individuals. Between 2010 and 2018, central government funding to local councils was cut by 50 per cent, with these cuts affecting disadvantaged areas disproportionately (Gray and Barford, 2018; HCLGC, 2019). This was partly because of the uneven way national finances were distributed across authorities, and partly because these areas were more likely to depend on public spending (Kruger, 2020). Communities have also been adversely affected by harsh cuts in welfare benefits, accompanied by rising levels of unemployment and job insecurity. Inevitably, austerity policies have had severe consequences for the voluntary and community sectors, facing greater need but with reduced funding (Clifford, 2017). Much local government spending now takes the form of contracts for services, subject to the vagaries of competition, as opposed to the more flexible grants of the past. At local level, many community worker posts have been lost (see, for example, Jupp, 2021).

The community development infrastructure suffered particularly badly at both national and local level, especially in England. Here, important support networks for practitioners, like the Community Development Exchange (CDX), Urban Forum, Community Matters and the Federation of Community Development Learning, lost their central government funding and most were eventually forced to close, with those that survived more dependent on delivering government programmes. More recent government pronouncements emphasise

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social action, innovation and resilience, with communities expected to take ever more responsibility for their own survival through self-help, civic engagement, volunteering and corporate match-funding (Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector, 2015).

As state investment in communities has decreased, the search has been on for alternative sources of sustainable income. The Big Lottery Foundation in particular has become a significant funder across the UK, not only through its open grants programmes but also through more targeted initiatives like the English Big Local, the Northern Ireland Building Change Trust and Power to Change. These are delivered through national intermediaries, with timescales of 10 years or more and with a strong focus on community control, financial sustainability and long-term transformation. There is currently a strong lobby for a Community Wealth Fund, led by Local Trust (see also Kruger, 2020).

International perspectives Interest in community development has not, of course, been confined to the UK. In the past, the European Union’s anti-poverty and URBAN programmes were an important source of funding for community development, especially in urban and rural areas that had been hit hard by de-industrialisation. Ironically, perhaps, given the criticism that their structural adjustment policies have attracted, community participation has also been a feature of the development agendas of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and various United Nations bodies. Many international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and aid agencies have also supported community development alongside their more immediate disaster relief programmes as a way of creating more sustainable responses to the challenges faced by communities in crisis.

Policy and practice in the global South have influenced community development in many countries. The reasons for this include: the influence of the popular education movement on radical practice, building on the praxis of Paulo Freire (1972); a response to democratic innovations such as participatory budgeting in Brazil; and a reflection

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of the fact that we now live in a globalised world, with significant opportunities for community development to learn across different national and regional contexts. Globalisation is nothing new. Earlier we referred to the roots of community development in colonialism and its role in supporting imperial economies. But with the hollowing out of the nation state and rapid advances in internet-based communication, the implications for community development are now very different.

Information technologies, particularly social media, have given local communities worldwide access to information and contacts, allowing them to compare experience and take collective action on a global scale, for example around climate change (Extinction Rebellion), racism (Black Lives Matter) and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recent developments Any discussion of community development today needs to acknowledge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on local communities.

Research by the Institute for Global Change (2020) reveals an increased sense of neighbourliness in the UK compared with other countries, and communities have been at the forefront of the response here, with neighbours and community groups ready to move quickly, best placed to know what is needed and able to mobilise a wide range of support.

In addition, the pandemic has highlighted the crucial role of the state as necessity has transformed – at least temporarily – the nature and scale of public spending. Government, trusts and foundations acted promptly to release emergency grants to voluntary and community organisations, often with relatively few strings attached. Nonetheless, these organisations were still predicted to take a major financial hit (Wood, 2021), at a time of significantly increased demand.

The pandemic has exposed the devastating impact of austerity and privatisation on the capacity of both the public service infrastructure and of communities to withstand shocks (Standring and Davies, 2020).

Furthermore, both COVID-19 and the measures taken to prevent its spread have had a hugely disproportionate impact on low-income families and BME populations. Isolating, working from home and taking time off work, for example, are described by Robinson (2020)

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as ‘class luxuries’, unrealistic for those in overcrowded accommodation and low-paid insecure employment. And the necessary shift online has excluded the significant proportion of the population without access to digital resources and skills. It has been estimated that, at a time when children are expected to be home-schooled, nine per cent of children do not have access to a laptop, desktop or tablet, and that more than 880,000 live in a household with only a mobile internet connection (Smith, 2021). Many households can afford only limited data allowances and, as Klein (2020) remarks, ‘There is no technical solution to learning in a home environment that is overcrowded or abusive’.

Research has shown that community infrastructure is associated with effective responses to the pandemic (Local Trust, 2021). Indeed, the community response to the pandemic has rightly been celebrated, along with the increased sense of cohesiveness and togetherness this has demonstrated (Together Coalition, 2021). However, some reports suggest that the sense of togetherness has begun to fray over time.

Community development will have an important role in helping to sustain the networks, skills and confidence over the longer term, and a report to the Prime Minister last year recommended investment in both community hubs and community organising (Kruger, 2020).

Will government respond or will community development be increasingly dependent on the charitable sector for its survival?

Continuing themes in community policy This brief history of the policy context for community development demonstrates the durability of notions of ‘community’ and community participation across national boundaries and ideological divisions. In the rest of this chapter, we consider four overlapping policy themes from recent years and their implications for community development: • • • •

health, welfare and public service reform democratic renewal and localism restoring community regenerating places and economies

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Health, welfare and public service reform Since the 1960s, successive UK governments have sought to give communities a greater say in the design and delivery of public services, from schools to policing, environmental services and health.

Increasingly, however, they look to communities to take over services previously run by the state. Initially, this was most prevalent in the housing field – policies to promote tenant management were brought in during the 1990s – but the powers introduced in the 2011 Localism Act have significantly extended the principle of community ownership and management of assets and services.

Critics argue that these powers are a smokescreen for the savage cuts in public expenditure that accompanied austerity. They also maintain that opportunities for communities to take on responsibility for local amenities such as parks and libraries are more likely to appeal to betteroff people than residents of low-income neighbourhoods. Given that markets tend to favour scale, it is in any case the larger private companies and professional voluntary sector organisations that are most likely to benefit from these and other opportunities to take over services previously delivered by the state (Taylor, 2012). Communitybased organisations might find themselves as subcontractors, but procurement practices borrowed from the business world, such as ‘payment by results’, are particularly ill suited to their circumstances and lead to them bearing disproportionate risks (Dayson et al, 2021).

Legislation was introduced in 2011 to encourage consideration of social value in public procurement, but Kruger (2020, p 21) estimates that only eight per cent of public procurement actively encourages socially and environmentally responsible business practice. Guidelines and a new procurement model introduced by government in 2020 (see Cabinet Office, 2020) may improve on this.

It would be a mistake to dismiss government’s interest in community-led provision. Many people in the most disadvantaged communities have suffered over the years from poor facilities and inadequate, stigmatising public services with high staff turnover.

In addition, Kruger argues that the target-driven quasi-markets in which public services now operate have eroded their links to local

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areas. In contrast, there are numerous examples where residents have successfully run their own services and facilities, often in ways that complement or augment mainstream public services. Local responses to the pandemic have also demonstrated the importance of the informal support that neighbours offer each other. With rising levels of need, this will become ever more necessary. However, communities cannot be expected to substitute for mainstream public provision.

There is growing interest from government and communities in forms of co-production, whereby the resources and knowledge of different players can be pooled. This may offer a more effective and affordable model for delivering desired outcomes (Durose and Richardson, 2015).

What are the implications of these trends for community development? It can make a vital contribution in supporting those who want to take advantage of the new opportunities to run services and manage assets and to ensure that they are adequately resourced to do so. However, there are many who simply want ‘decent’ and culturally appropriate services without having to run them themselves.

Community development has a particular role to play, therefore, in helping residents to defend and improve local provision so that, whoever runs them, these services and facilities are accessible, equitable and accountable for all who use them.

Democratic renewal and localism Research published in 2020 found that satisfaction with democracy has eroded in most parts of the world, with a notable drop in the past decade (Foa et al, 2020), especially in high income, developed democracies. In earlier editions of the Short Guide, we suggested a variety of reasons for this: from the changing circumstances of contemporary life to the growing distrust among the electorate of the career politician. In addition, many of the more traditional workingclass organisations, where citizens found a common voice, gained a political education and established their collective strength, have declined or disappeared entirely. Political parties, trade unions, adult education institutes and social clubs, for example, no longer have a

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presence in many local neighbourhoods, nor are they able to inspire participation and solidarity very far beyond their membership.

Since our first edition, the picture has changed. The decline in voting rates over the past two decades has reversed slightly, while the Scottish and Brexit referenda achieved turnouts of more than 80 and 70 per cent respectively, higher than any general election since 1997.

Membership of the UK’s main political parties was at an historic low prior to the 2015 general election (Keen, 2015), but since 2015 the general trend has been upwards. However, recent years have also seen the rise of populism, here and in other parts of the world. In the UK, there seems to be general agreement that Brexit in particular and populism more generally tapped into a well of disillusion in those parts of the population that benefited least from capitalism and who feel they have been ignored by those in power (Flinders, 2020).

Since the 1990s, the official response of many governments to the need for democratic reform has been a well-documented move from ‘government’ to more participative forms of ‘governance’. Various partnership and participatory mechanisms have been introduced over the years, such as neighbourhood forums, Healthwatch groups, participatory budgeting, citizens’ juries, citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative forms. In Scotland, for example, the Community Empowerment Act 2015 put Community Planning Partnerships on a statutory footing as well as requiring Scottish public authorities to involve the public in their decision-making.

However, partnership working has proved a mixed blessing over the years. The ‘invited spaces’ in which communities and citizens have participated have often been shaped and controlled by the power holders rather than communities themselves (Cornwall, 2004; see Chapter 4). They have been criticised for co-opting local representatives and diverting communities from pursuing their own priorities, as well as benefiting the already empowered disproportionately and thus exacerbating inequalities (Hastings and Matthews, 2015). So when, in England, national government moved away from New Labour’s emphasis on partnerships, some saw this as giving community development an opportunity to rediscover its ‘soul’ (Taylor, 2012).

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Communities are not confined to the ‘invited’ spaces provided by power holders. Independent community action has a long tradition, with communities running their own campaigns and claiming their own spaces for debate and change. New social movements, like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Extinction Rebellion (XR), have erupted onto the scene in recent years. Social media platforms have provided new spaces for democratic debate, although their darker side has also become more apparent.

What are the implications for community development? This is an approach that has long supported those who want to take collective action around a shared issue and influence policy and practice.

That support is particularly important for communities engaging in partnership working and citizen participation forums. It can help ensure that communities have an effective voice and can hold services and policy makers to account rather than becoming co-opted or embroiled in partnership management issues (Beck and Purcell, 2020).

At the same time, it needs to work with external actors – public and private – to raise their awareness and capacity to engage meaningfully with communities and other stakeholders.

Cornwall (2004) contrasts ‘invited’ with ‘popular’ spaces, created by communities themselves. Community development has a significant role to play in cultivating such spaces to replace – or reinvent – the working-class institutions of the past and create opportunities for the learning, dialogue and debate that is needed to underpin collective action. Meanwhile, more radical approaches, like that of Citizens UK and ACORN, discussed elsewhere in this Guide, can bring communities together, in and across localities and regions, to challenge current trends and policy developments and create the momentum for change.

Restoring community ‘Community lost’ has been a recurring theme in social commentary since the Industrial Revolution. In the 1990s a strong communitarian lobby emerged based in part on a perceived breakdown in moral consensus, social cohesion and civic responsibility. This was attributed to a loss of ‘social capital’, a concept first popularised by Robert

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Putnam (1993) to describe the networks, norms and trust associated with well-functioning communities and civil society. Some blamed this decline on the dependency created by state welfare; others saw the individualism of the market as the villain of the piece, giving rise to increasing fragmentation and eroding the public sphere.

Putnam’s argument about social capital, which resonated strongly with policy makers throughout the world, was that it underpinned democracy and boosted economic development. It has since been linked with a range of other positive outcomes (see Chapter 4).

‘Restoring community’ can thus be seen as the foundation stone to the other policy themes discussed here. Without basic community development at local level, other interventions are unlikely to be adequately rooted or effectively implemented.

Over the years there have been numerous programmes designed to ‘restore community’, encouraging neighbours to look out for one another, promoting resilience and strengthening ‘bonding’ social capital. Meanwhile, ‘community cohesion’ and similar programmes have sought to foster integration and multiculturalism through projects to connect communities and build ‘bridging’ social capital across ethnic groups, faiths, generations and other potential fault lines.

We have already highlighted the negative impact of austerity on such initiatives. But other factors have also played their part in destabilising and fragmenting community life. One is the operation of the housing market and changing patterns of housing tenure. As social housing is replaced by less secure private renting, for example, people move more often and are less able to put down roots (Local Trust, 2018).

It is often multiply disadvantaged areas that are expected to absorb new populations – asylum seekers or families who are displaced from more affluent areas, for example. And yet there is rarely any support or investment to help these areas accommodate changing needs and pressures on services. This may leave previous residents feeling abandoned and fan inter-ethnic tensions, with newcomers blamed for circumstances beyond their control (Taylor and Wilson, 2015).

Another factor affecting community life has been the loss of public spaces where people can congregate or encounter each other spontaneously. This is the result of a cocktail of privatisation, public

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spending cuts, the move online, safety and security measures, and the centralisation or scaling up encouraged by the market – with local post offices, pubs, bank branches and village schools closing down.

Social isolation was already a policy concern before the pandemic (Collins and Wrigley, 2014; Jo Cox Foundation, 2017) but, along with mental health difficulties, loneliness has been exacerbated over the months of restrictions related to COVID-19, and this is likely to leave a lasting legacy.

Recent years have seen a new policy focus on ‘resilience’, borrowing from the environmental and disaster relief fields. However, this rhetoric is increasingly criticised. MacKinnon and Derickson (2013) argue that it normalises turbulence and crisis, placing the onus on individuals, communities and places to adapt to external threats and the ravages of capitalism: ‘setting up communities and places to take … “knock after knock” and keep getting up again’ (p 255). They prefer the term ‘resourcefulness’ which, they argue, focuses attention on the uneven distribution of resources instead, as well as highlighting the differences that exist in the scope for self-determination.

Local responses to the pandemic have demonstrated conclusively that communities are not ‘lost’. The revival of mutual aid has been celebrated far and wide. But this resurgence of grassroots activity cannot be taken for granted. Research has shown that communities in less affluent areas and without a history of community investment have been less able to respond to the crisis (Felici, 2020). COVID-19 has revealed the legacy of austerity in relation to incomes and the loss of support from public and private services. In fractured and neglected neighbourhoods, where social bonds have been frayed by factors far outside the residents’ control, or in communities where everyday survival takes up enormous amounts of energy, resilience is stretched to the limit. These communities cannot be left to respond to personal trauma and the national crisis on their own.

Regenerating places and economies Poverty is not confined to specific localities. However, some areas do have much higher levels of deprivation than others. These

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neighbourhoods – the ones that social and economic changes have left behind – have been the focus of many area-based initiatives over the past 50 years or so. The challenges they face have been compounded over recent years by the wholesale restructuring of the labour market, particularly the use of zero-hours contracts, which remove protections, undermine solidarity and create economic uncertainty. Residents in these localities find themselves on the front line of the economic challenges arising from the pandemic and Brexit.

Community development has had a close relationship with planning and housing policy – in disadvantaged areas and more generally. The Coalition government post 2010 took action to reform the planning system in England in order to give local people more opportunities to shape the places in which they live, but questions remain about the influence communities can have in reality. Too often, the interests of developers trump the needs of citizens. Elsewhere, regeneration schemes replace socially rented accommodation in prime areas at prices the existing tenants could never afford, with legal requirements for affordable housing often reduced or waived.

A feature of early initiatives such as the US War on Poverty and the UK Community Development Projects was their holistic approach.

This was also the case with the various neighbourhood renewal, social inclusion and peace initiatives in the different UK countries in the early 2000s, as well as several EU-funded programmes. But in between times policy has focused mainly on physical regeneration and on reviving local economies, with an emphasis on job creation, employability and community economic development. This economic emphasis is only likely to intensify in the aftermath of the pandemic and we will return to its implications for community development in Chapter 6.

Conclusion Community development has a long history in public policy and practice as part of a wider and longstanding interest in the idea of ‘community’. Successive governments across the world have sought to strengthen community ties, build collective capacity and ‘restore community spirit’. Communities have also been seen as a crucial

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resource in programmes to reform services, to revitalise democracy, to regenerate local environments and economies and, most recently, to respond to the pandemic. But many critics argue that communities are being used to further a neoliberal agenda, which undermines the public sphere and the role of the state (Fraser, 2020). There is an important role for community development, therefore, in working with communities to identify and make full use of new opportunities, while ensuring that these meet real needs, are available to all and cannot be subject to exploitation. Crucially, community development supports communities in building links with policy makers and public service providers to ensure that opportunities and initiatives are developed in dialogue with communities and shaped by policies that address the wider causes of exclusion and inequality.

SUMMARY • Community development has moved in and out of fashion as policies change, but since the beginning of the 1990s, ‘community’ and community participation have been promoted by international institutions as well as national governments of varying political and ideological persuasions.

• Community development has also been influenced by popular movements, from the civil rights struggles of the 1960s to global campaigns in the twenty-first century.

• COVID-19 has demonstrated the potential that exists in many communities but has also exposed and exacerbated inequalities and demonstrated the impact of austerity on the public sector’s capacity to respond.

• Policy interest in community development has in recent years been driven by the desire to reduce the role of the state and to give service users and local people a greater say in welfare provision and local planning.

• Community development has contributed to policies that seek to increase citizen participation through devolved powers from central government as well as responding to concerns over

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the fragmentation of community life and a perceived loss of ‘social capital’.

• Community development has supported regeneration initiatives over the years, working in areas that have suffered from the industrial decline and economic recession.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES Several books on community development provide a historical account. Students will find the community development readers mentioned in previous chapters particularly useful in this respect (see also Taylor, 2011). Those who are interested in learning from history (rather than repeating it) will find much of interest in the classic texts by Peter Marris and Martin Rein (1967) on the US War on Poverty, and Martin Loney (1983) on the National Community Development Project.

Policy Press also publishes The short guide to social policy (Hudson and Kuhner, 2015), which will help to put the developments discussed here into a wider context.

The Local Trust website is an important source providing access to their growing body of topical research, some cited earlier. The Community Development Journal meanwhile provides a window into international research and practice (see in particular Community Development Journal, 2019; Taylor, 2020).

Government programmes often have associated websites, so it is worth visiting the relevant government departments or national organisations that host these. Examples across the UK jurisdictions include: https://www.justact.org.uk/ http://mycommunity.org.uk/ http://www.communityscot.org.uk/ https://www.scdc.org.uk http://gov.wales/topics/people-and-communities/ https://www.communities-ni.gov.uk

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These sites often signpost to current or recent consultations, so they are a good way of staying abreast of political and policy developments in the different countries.