This report shows that communities everywhere have untapped creative potential, and given the right support, can become active sources of innovation.

Key findings:

Community organisations can work in a way that isn’t just about incremental, small improvements, but that can fundamentally change and challenge the way people think about and interact with their own community.

We also learned more about the role of funders as enablers; about how they can create the right conditions for communities themselves to innovate; supporting them to create their own solutions to their own priorities

Neighbourhood Challenge started with the assumption that communities everywhere have untapped creative potential; and that given enabling support and finance, they can become active sources of innovation rather than passive beneficiaries.

We funded and worked with seventeen diverse community organisations across England to explore how this would work on the ground, focusing particularly on areas of low social capital.

Each local project was selected for their approach to catalysing change and releasing untapped potential in their communities.

They did this in different ways, but the common feature was that they tapped into and helped release the creativity, experience, ideas, energy, time and insight of local people themselves.

This paper sums up what we have learnt from the programme so far.

Neighbourhood Challenge is a Nesta and Big Lottery Fund (BLF) programme.

Author

Alice Casey