Annual Updates

We’ve had a busy 2025 working alongside brilliant partners and communities to facilitate and support individuals and groups to share their lived experience. So much of what we do as Community Development practitioners is driven by understanding how communities’ experiences can influence change. To highlight this underpinning principle of our work, we’ve built this year’s update around the theme of community voices.

Listening to communities to drive change lies at the heart of good community development practice. This approach can, and does, change how services are delivered, while creating positive outcomes for communities.

Everyone involved with WSA values the power of lived experience to demonstrate what matters to people, contribute to change and influence decision makers. While sharing people’s stories often cuts across much of our work, in 2025 this was a central focus in many of our projects – from continuing our work as community engagement partners for the UK Covid-19 Inquiry listening exercise, in partnership with Just Ideas, to recruiting and training community researchers and undertaking a community needs research project alongside them.

We’re passionate about the need for a skilled and supported workforce and want to support others to develop community development skills through training that’s grounded in theory and practice. Alongside one-off programmes designed to address specific needs, we have four popular CPD-accredited courses that we tailor to client’s specifications. We offer one-to-one and small group coaching too, which allows participants to try out ideas in their own context, while engaging in structured reflective practice.