Towards a Community of Practice in Regeneration and Social Integration

Dr. Alex prior and Prof. Diana Stirbu

On 14 April 2021 the Social Integration and Regeneration Learning Network (Learning Network) held a showcase event to share lessons from network activity so far. We were also keen to gather ideas for continuing to support regeneration and local recovery processes.

Background

The Social Integration and Regeneration Learning Network is an initiative supported by the Mayor of London that took place between March 2020 and March 2021. The Learning Network aims to bring together social integration, regeneration, community engagement professionals from London’s local authorities together with urban designers, experts, community groups and academics to share learning about how the design of the built environment can contribute to achieving positive social integration outcomes across our capital. Katherine Radlett — Policy & Projects Officer (Social Integration) at the GLA — highlighted the role of the Learning Network within the GLA’s Good Growth by Design programme, emphasising importance of the built environment in supporting social integration. This spans across three main dimensions:

* Offering the opportunity and infrastructure to connect with people positively and meaningfully

* Offering place based opportunities for people to play an active part in the community and collective decision making

* Reducing place based barriers and inequalities, so people can relate to each other as equals.

A failure to plan, design and manage public spaces can isolate individuals and groups, deepening already-existing inequalities in the capital.

Looking back: what have we done and what have we learnt?

Over the past year, the Learning Network has reached over 220 individual participants, drawn from:

· Local authority officers from 27 London boroughs

· The Greater London Authority family (13 participants)

· 46 organisations from a variety of sectors, including: arts and culture, community led regeneration organisations, architecture firms, charities, think tanks, academic institutions.

In total we held 7 events, bringing together 23 Speakers, from 16 organisations (local authorities, the GLA, Mayor’s Design Advocates). Our co-lead and urban consultant — Sally Kneeshaw — drew several key lessons emerging from our activity over the past 6 months, including:

· The value of structured peer exchange, with time and space to connect, reflect and share best practice as well as challenges encountered in embedding social integration in regeneration practice;

· The value of deepening the understanding of concepts such social integration, social value, community engagement.This is important for further operationalising these concepts and measuring them in practice;

· Finding new tools to measure impact;

· Acknowledging and addressing the inherent challenges of balancing social and economic imperatives in any regeneration project;

· Covid-19 as a crucial time for engagement, presenting challenges and opportunities to building back better.

We received very constructive feedback from participants in terms of what worked well during the programme of events. Connecting regeneration and social integration in small group discussions and exchanges, bringing in case studies as well as wider perspectives in a programme that featured a rhythm of regular engagement and invited thinking and reflection has definitely been seen as a plus.

*A more detailed assessment and evaluation of our activity will be presented in our forthcoming evaluation report.

We have also tried to crowd-source themes for future events. Participants suggested the following:

• objective assessment of results in regeneration projects;
• bringing in perspectives from residents and business;
• learning by (virtual) study visits of regeneration assess or areas;
• exploring situated creative practices;
• getting senior management buy-in;
• a local commons platform.

Other recommended future work included the development of common principles and standards (testing ideas in practice) and speaking in more depth about the practical application of theoretical concepts. The network was described as an ideal site for curating available tools and resources, and for signposting network members to the most interesting developments.

Participants’ own experience of regeneration programmes revealed how important it is that communities are seen as an asset to the development of projects, rather than an impediment. This provides an impetus for community engagement to be authentic and empowering, rather than ‘tokenistic’. Engagement must therefore go beyond ‘question and answer’ problem-solving, and instead be pursued as a meaningful and impactful outcomes based partnership.

Next Steps

Prof. Diana Stirbu announced that the Learning Network had secured strategic transformation funding from London Metropolitan University to continue supporting the work connecting social integration, regeneration and communities for London’s recovery. This will help to broaden the Learning Network’s work in tackling common challenges in community engagement and adopting a more proactive approach to addressing them. The future programme of support for London boroughs includes research, which aims to understand the needs, barriers, and enablers that local authorities face in meaningful community engagement, as well as a series of knowledge exchange activities.

The project — Connected Communities — Supporting inclusive recovery in London, will be led by Prof. Diana Stirbu and Dr. Natasha Choudary. A further clarification on the project’s research approach will be followed by a call for interview and focus group participants. Some of this research is intended to highlight barriers to effective engagement and could therefore in some cases be sensitive. It is therefore important to clarify that participants’ input will be confidential.

The community groups and organisations that have taken part in the network have already provided invaluable input in the events we organised. As a network, we are committed — through our current work, and our proposed research — to answer the questions that matter to you as regeneration professionals. We are keen to support knowledge exchange and dissemination of good (and bad) practice across local authorities.

Please sign up for the network here, and tell us about your work at socialintegration.learning@londonmet.ac.uk.