Community Development and Engagement Projects

We worked in partnership with Birmingham-based Merida Associates on a community-engagement project for Birmingham Museums Trust .The aim was to engage Birmingham based community groups in sharing their own experiences and the things that were important to them about Birmingham. This would be through working to make some short films that would then be available as digital content on the new Birmingham Museums Trust website.  Overall the project hoped to  explore ways in which Birmingham Museum’s Trust could extend and strengthen its ties to local communities, both in general and specifically in the wake of Covid-19.

The project was a positive opportunity for the community creation of digital stories to go on to the Birmingham Museums website. Thanks to all the community groups involved! We worked with a Birmingham based film maker to help capture the stories of some local community groups.  The project showcased Birmingham’s rich culture in such a positive light and engaging way.  Some examples of the work are here:

https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/stories/the-304th-birmingham-mab-scouts

https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/stories/the-battle-of-saltley-gate

https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/stories/our-green-city

We  worked to support Wargrave Big Local, in the North West, to build a community engagement strategy to support them going forward. We also supported them to write a policy around building volunteering. In early 2023, we conducted a scoping exercise that highlighted the following needs:

• Recruitment of more volunteers
• Establishment of connections with new community groups
• Strengthening partnerships with existing organisations involved in the initiative
• Establishing stronger ties with other service providers in the locality

We worked to co-create action plans and a community engagement strategy to support their new Big Local Plan with the Big Local Partnership members. This work also included facilitated discussions with existing community organisations and assembling resources to support volunteer recruitment.

Thanks to Jeanette from Continuum CIC who were our partners in this work with Wargrave Big Local. This work was part of the Local Trust Make it Happen support partner work we have delivered.

The Grenfell Projects Fund (GPF), part of the Grenfell Recovery Programme, seeks to support community-led recovery in North Kensington.

We worked with the Resident Led Panel and Grenfell Projects Team in supporting the community panel to assess and roll out the Grenfell Projects Fund round 2 grants. Funding was allocated to around 40 community groups that support community projects in North Kensington. We also helped all involved reflect on learning and evaluated the process. We wanted everyone involved to learn and grow – and we hope our evaluation report assisted with this. We know the resident panel appreciated external facilitation and we in turn greatly appreciated working with such an amazing, passionate and committed group who volunteered for many hours to support their community.

During the pandemic we worked with the Francis Crick Institute to understand the impact of Covid on individuals’ personal and professional experiences of life during this time through a series of workshops. This was particularly relevant during the first lock down in people processing how the change to their lives and the feelings and understanding of being in a global pandemic were affecting them and giving them space to discuss this.

Invitations to the workshops were extended to several local organisations as well as staff working at the Crick. The sessions were then animated by Jenny Leonard, who translated people’s thoughts and reflections into wonderful postcard images for each group such as the one at the end of this page.

As part of the Local Trust, Make it Happen support, we supported the Grange BL Partnership to re-engage partners and community members to feed into the current plan review and the new Big Local Plan. This support included interviews with a wide range of  community stakeholders in relation to the previous plan and what they want going forward. These were analysed and collated into a report.

We then facilitated a  workshop to reflect on the learning from the interviews and from this looked at how it informed the new plan. After this we supported the Grange Big Local new staff particularly around  community engagement and settling into their roles by providing advice, shadowing and mentoring. This included consulting the community wider on the priorities for the new plan.

We wish the Grange Big Local Partnership all the best in delivering their final plan!