Pride of Place Summit

So last week we attended Business in the Community’s Place Summit at the inspiring Aviva Studios in Manchester - and we were genuinely inspired.

This initiative is all about community-led change in 'places' – which couldn’t be a better fit for the work we’re doing. Huge thanks to our contacts at Aviva and BiTC for the invitation, welcome and conversations. They are as focused as we are on connecting sectors and people to work collaboratively for environmental resilience in our places and are the founding Place Partner.

We came away inspired by conversations including those with contacts at Skipton Group , SADACCA (Sheffield & District African Carribean Community Association) and BitC in Sheffield and Blackpool. And we were absolutely enthused by the activity in Blackpool - justifiably used as a case study of multi-sector and community collaboration to build solutions.

Fittingly whilst some of our team were in Manchester, others were in Sheffield running a workshop on systems thinking and collaborative people-driven change as part of the Festival of Debate with our collaborators Centre for Thriving Places.

What’s key is collaboration and action. We can talk about the problems til the cows come home (see our upcoming Open farm event for more talk about cows) but it’s time for action.

And this space is full of energy and real potential for impact. If you're working on place-based change or community-driven regeneration, let’s talk.