The Short Guide to Community Development 9781447360742

Citation preview

pointing you in the right direction

the short guide to

community development 3rd edition

Alison Gilchrist and Marilyn Taylor

The short guide to community development Third edition Alison Gilchrist Marilyn Taylor

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First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2022 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4473-6072-8 paperback ISBN 978-1-4473-6073-5 ePub ISBN 978-1-4473-6074-2 ePdf The right of Alison Gilchrist and Marilyn Taylor to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. The statements and opinions contained within this publication are solely those of the author and not of the University of Bristol or Bristol University Press. The University of Bristol and Bristol University Press disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any material published in this publication. Bristol University Press and Policy Press work to counter discrimination on grounds of gender, race, disability, age and sexuality. Cover design: Qube Design Front cover image: Qube Design Bristol University Press and Policy Press use environmentally responsible print partners. Printed in Great Britain by CMP, Poole

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Contents List of tables and boxes vi Acknowledgements vii 1 Introduction A brief history Recent changes Defining community development? Overview of the book Some thoughts on terminology

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What is community development? 13 Unpacking the role 16 Practices and processes 16 Community development’s core values 19 Underpinning strategies 21 Providing help, strengthening resourcefulness 24 Models and approaches 25 Community practice 31 Conclusion 32

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The changing policy context 35 Origins and early applications 35 The renaissance of community 37 A new direction? 38 International perspectives 40 Recent developments 41 Continuing themes in community policy 42 Conclusion 49 iii

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Theoretical concepts 53 What theory offers 53 Theories of community 54 Psychosocial concepts and theories 57 Theories of the state, democracy and the process 63 of government Theories of power: structure or agency? 68 Organisations, institutions and systems: how agency 73 is organised Social movement theory 75 Conclusion 77

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Effective and ethical community development 81 Understanding the community 83 Working with people individually and in groups 85 Dealing with differences and difficulties 86 Establishing formal organisations 87 Networking and engagement 89 Resources and support 91 Opportunities to learn 93 Working with volunteers and activists 95 Communication and knowledge management 97 Using and influencing policies 98 Evaluation: capturing learning and measuring change 99 Integrity and accountability 101 Conclusion 103

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Community development in action 107 Housing 109 Economic responses to poverty and social exclusion 113 Environmental action and sustainable development 118 Health, well-being and social care 122 Tackling inequalities 127 Conclusion 132

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Challenges for practice 137 Coherence and infrastructure 137 Role boundaries and power dynamics 138 Community allegiance: place and identity 139 Equality and diversity 141 Leadership and representation 143 Multifaceted expectations and accountabilities 145 Balancing formal and informal ways of working 148 Resourcing, recognition and professional status 150 Demonstrating impact: identifying outcomes and 153 social return Scale and sustainability 155 Dealing with uncertainty and disruption 156 Conclusion 157

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Future prospects 161 Developments since previous editions 161 Changing politics 162 Poverty and the economy 164 Navigating the digital universe 165 Redefining community: migration, identity and the 168 significance of place The public sphere and public space 169 The climate and sustainable development 172 Conclusion 173

References 177 Index 201

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List of tables and boxes Table 2.1 The 7 Es: essential community development processes

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Boxes 1.1 IACD’s understanding of community development 2.1 IACD’s eight common themes and areas of practice for community development 2.2 ECDN’s Statement on Community Development

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Acknowledgements Many colleagues and friends have contributed to our knowledge and learning about community development over the years – far too many to list here. But we would like to acknowledge our debt to them and to those who have funded our work. More specifically, thanks are due to Kevin Harris for his help in editing our draft presubmission and, as always, to the excellent staff at Policy Press for their encouragement and support.

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1 Introduction ‘Community’ is a concept that seems always to be in fashion with policy makers. In some quarters, the existence of community is seen as a natural and enduring facet of society; others lament its decline. One of the primary purposes of community development is to boost the effectiveness of community action and build grassroots capacity. As such it has been repeatedly ‘discovered’ by governments worldwide as offering ways to ‘restore’ community, to enhance democratic participation and to tackle poverty, alongside other seemingly intractable social problems. Not everyone sees the necessity of strategic interventions to promote community development. Indeed, the term itself is problematic, with the approach also being called social development, popular education, critical pedagogy, community organising, community engagement, neighbourhood renewal and community education, for example. In the UK some prefer the term ‘critical community practice’ (Butcher et al, 2007), which describes a broader approach to working with communities. Nonetheless, internationally, community development is commonly adopted as a means of developing infrastructure, local economic initiatives and good governance. But governments have also been confronted by communities who have decided to mobilise for themselves, organising services, protest actions and self-help movements to improve living standards and claim important civil and human rights. This is also a form of community development. In the 1950s the United Nations defined community development as ‘a process designed to create conditions of economic and social progress for the whole community with its active participation’ 1

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(United Nations, 1955, p  6). The International Association for Community Development (IACD) has adopted the following guiding principles for working with communities.

Box 1.1: IACD’s understanding of community development “Community development is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes participative democracy, sustainable development, rights, economic opportunity, equality and social justice, through the organisation, education and empowerment of people within their communities, whether these be of locality, identity or interest, in urban and rural settings.” iacdglobal.org/about

This emphasis on professional status is contentious (Kenny, 2018) and IACD’s (2018) standards document qualifies this stance by stating that it sees community development as being ‘carried out by people in different roles and contexts who seek to apply community development values and adopt community development methods: by people called professional community workers (and people taking on the same role but with a different job title); by professionals in other occupations; … and by people active in their own communities’. However, there is still some debate over whether community development represents a process, a set of practices, an approach, an occupation, a movement or even an academic discipline (Kenny, 2018; Banks, 2019). Is it a profession pursued by specialist workers or does it simply indicate a particular way of working in or with communities? Is it about the creation of resources, capacity, infrastructure and leadership for communities to use in whichever ways they choose? Or is it a set of techniques that can be used to accomplish externally defined objectives? Is it a movement for social change? Or maybe community development is simply about the development of ‘community’ itself?

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This guide acknowledges that the term ‘community development’ is contested and compatible with a range of political ideologies (Meade et al, 2016a). In this edition we use the term ‘community worker’ to cover everyone working to co-ordinate and facilitate the contributions of community members, whether they are in paid roles, resident activists, leaders, active citizens or community-oriented volunteers. As we shall consider more closely in Chapter 4, for some people, a sense of community supplies both the focus and the motivation to take action and press for change. The function that community plays in people’s lives and in policy will be a theme that we return to throughout the book, examining how community development skills and support are understood and applied by activists, professionals, policy makers and philanthropists to tackle the many challenges that face so many post-industrial societies.

A brief history In the UK the fortunes and status of community development have waxed and waned. As an external intervention, it was initially used by philanthropic bodies (for example, the university settlements) to bring adult education and capacity building to disadvantaged neighbourhoods, such as the London Docklands. Local authorities and housing trusts later employed officers in new towns and estates to encourage residents to set up groups and associations for various leisure and civic purposes in order to generate ‘community spirit’ and promote self-help. For a long time, community development raised for policy makers the spectre of the Community Development Projects of the 1970s (Loney, 1983), a government-sponsored programme whose Marxist critique of capitalism – despite striking a chord with many practitioners – was not quite what the politicians had in mind when they allocated funding to its 12 ‘deprived’ areas. Official thinking at the time imagined that community development could be used to address ‘deficits’ through targeted interventions that focused on externally defined problems rather than community-determined priorities. Since then, a more anodyne version of community development has been

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adopted by successive governments, designed to build ‘community capacity’, ‘active citizenship’ and ‘collective resilience’, as well as to support ‘community engagement’ or ‘social enterprise/investment’ for addressing persistent local problems.

Recent changes Global inequalities continue to rise, and progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals has stalled. Action is certainly much needed after a tumultuous period of increased destitution, polarisation and most recently the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic that has convulsed lives and livelihoods on an unprecedented scale. The negative effects of the pandemic, and consequent economic recession, have fallen disproportionately on women, Black and minority ethnic communities, young people and disabled people. Widespread hardship and uncertainty have generated stress and fuelled social tensions. Successive clampdowns on social interactions have had drastic effects for millions of people, causing unwanted social isolation and stifling many aspects of community life. But we have adapted to online networking, using different technologies to stay in touch, organise meetings and social activities to maintain groups, make decisions and access learning. The internet has enabled rapid access to reputable sources of knowledge and increased global solidarity and co-operation, potentially widening the scope of community development to combat the spread of misinformation and divisive conspiracy theories. Awareness of the impact of globalisation is also reflected in widespread recognition that climate catastrophe could be imminent. Communities across the world are responding with innovative schemes to generate renewable energy, cut down waste and pollution, protect the habitats of endangered species and combat the complacency of politicians. Ingrained inequalities have widened over recent years (Dorling, 2018) due to the long-term impact of austerity, and have been further exacerbated by the economic downturn induced by the pandemic and the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. Notwithstanding the stark realities of income differentials and the seeming impregnability of super-rich elites, advances have been made on other fronts. Recent

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years have witnessed a growing acceptance of diversity and more nuanced debates about the mutability of identity politics, particularly with regard to intersectionality and transgender issues (Morgan et al, 2020). We have been learning from much-needed discussion about the complicated nature of ‘race’ and the cumulative effect of unacknowledged privilege in people’s lives (Bhopal, 2018). Public conversations are more relaxed and better informed, with ideas from queer theory and anti-colonialist struggles infiltrating mainstream discourses. There is greater recognition of the systemic interplay between structural disparities, institutional discrimination and the unconscious stereotypes that are woven into the fabric of everyday life (Eddo-Lodge, 2017). Nonetheless, the upheavals of recent years have left many people feeling insecure. While some embrace the cosmopolitan tide of different ethnicities, aspiring to notions of global citizenship and universal solidarity, others yearn for the ‘good old days’ of traditional communities and a stable, homogenous society. Generalised discontent, floating anxieties and resentments in significant parts of the population have focused on the establishment in the guise of elected politicians, elites and experts. In the UK discord lingers between ‘remainers’ and ‘leavers’ in the aftermath of Brexit, fuelled by xenophobia and the incitement of so-called ‘culture wars’ that distort debate and ferment mutual suspicion. Disgruntlement has festered over how the different parts of the UK have fared with respect both to Brexit and the pandemic. Populism and corruption are advancing in several countries, undermining democratic governance and posing a threat to governing structures and social stability (Kenny et al, 2021). Luckily, these tendencies to blame and shame (O’Hara, 2020), to ‘divide and rule’ and to condemn outsiders are countered by currents flowing in the opposite direction. An epidemic of loneliness is being met with a surge in kindness, with assorted lockdown ‘bubbles’ forcing an acknowledgement of non-nuclear, non-traditional families. Awful as the coronavirus emergency has been (and we shouldn’t downplay some of the social schisms that appeared), many of us have been stirred to think beyond our immediate household to express collective responsibility and heed public health guidance. As we will

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examine in Chapter 3, there were many silver linings, including the spontaneous appearance of mutual aid groups and a heightened sense of neighbourliness. Many discerned a renewed sense of community and increased voluntary action, which reinforced people’s appreciation of local spaces and networks (Wyler, 2020). This has highlighted the importance of community-led infrastructure to co-ordinate people’s efforts and maintain links with local statutory services and voluntary sector agencies (Wilson et al, 2020). All these changes and achievements make community development as important as ever, as a means to protect what has been gained but also to tackle continuing injustice, protect local services and improve local conditions. Many definitions stress the need to work with the assets, strengths, knowledge, resourcefulness and experience that communities already have, rather than starting from the deficit model that policy makers tend to assume. At the same time, we should not underestimate the struggles facing people, especially in ‘left-behind’ areas, and their ongoing need for practical support and solidarity.

Defining community development? Community development is not a phrase that necessarily travels well. A mapping study by the IACD (2015) found a plethora of terms that seemed to cover a core understanding and noted significant differences in practice between countries on different continents. In the global South, community development retains its colonial associations, often devoid of the political content that characterises popular education movements there, for example, in Latin America (Pearce et al, 2010). However, the term maintains its currency in the US and in a number of other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, such as Australia and Canada. A quick review of definitions developed over the years by scholars, practitioners and institutions concerned with community development yields a number of common themes around social change, social justice, collective action, equality, mutual respect, enabling participation and changing power relationships. One US text echoes the analysis of the Community Development Projects

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in the UK, arguing that: ‘Community development occurs when the conditions of surviving and thriving in a place are not being supplied by capital.’ This highlights the need to connect geographical communities to the ‘far greater resources, opportunities and power that lie outside [them]’ (DeFilippis and Saegert, 2012, p 6). Descriptions from elsewhere in the world emphasise the need to develop political awareness alongside skills, confidence and resources developed through popular education and social movements (see Ledwith, 2020). Readers may find it a useful exercise to come up with a definition that reflects their own experience and circumstances, and to compare this with other descriptions.

Overview of the book This Short Guide starts in Chapter  2 by reviewing a range of understandings of community development, describing different models and how they compare with related approaches and concepts. The next two chapters look at context and theory. Chapter 3 lays out the policies and other factors that have shaped community development over the years, and the policy themes that it is expected to address. In Chapter 4 we review some of the theories that can help inform community development practice, focusing particularly on theories of community, identity, the state, collective organisation and power. Chapters 5 and 6 come back to the practice of community development. Chapter 5 considers the skills, values and techniques that constitute ‘good’ community development practice: how to do it, why certain principles work best and what kind of infrastructure is needed to support it. Chapter 6 describes how it can be applied in different policy fields, including a commitment to incorporating equality into all aspects of the work. The final two chapters explore the challenges that face community development. Chapter 7 examines various issues and dilemmas that are inherent within the practice and politics of community development, while Chapter 8 looks at external trends that are likely to affect its future prospects. The Guide is written from a UK perspective. However, we have referred to experience and debates elsewhere in the world, particularly

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in the US, and we believe that many of the issues raised have a wider relevance. We end by welcoming the increasing willingness of community workers in the global North – and policy makers too – to learn from practice in the global South.

Some thoughts on terminology This last comment raises some language issues. Most of the terminology that distinguishes between different regions of the world is problematic: how do we describe the distinction that used to be made between the developed and developing worlds? With apologies to Australasia, we have chosen to use the terms ‘global South’ and ‘global North’ to refer to countries with emerging economies that tend to be in the southern hemisphere, compared to the politically dominant nations of the north. We recognise that these terms are awkward but acknowledge that community development is a global movement with plenty of scope for cross-border exchanges, co‑operation and comparisons, as captured in several international readers and the work of the IACD network. The terms used for different identity groups are subject to constant debate and so acceptable labels are constantly changing. In particular, the word ‘Black’ was preferred in anti-racist networks as a common reference point for everyone experiencing racism on the basis of skin colour, including those of Asian origin. But this inadvertently excluded other minoritised groups, such as Gypsies, Romanies and Jews, who also suffer ethnicity-related discrimination. Discussion has shifted more recently to distinguish between ‘Black’ – meaning to have African and Caribbean roots – and ‘Asian’, which has become its own distinct label. The clumsy acronym ‘BAME’ now makes a common appearance but masks the contrasting experiences within this category, for example between Syrian refugees and long-settled Gujarati communities. And increasingly, we have imported from the US the more anodyne description ‘people of colour’, serving a similar, but less political, purpose to the earlier use of the term ‘Black’. Parallel debates continue in relation to disability, mirroring the social model versus the medical approach. Meanwhile, discussions around sexual orientation and gender

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fluidity are expanding to reflect growing insights and choices being explored by the LGBTQI+ movement. We have tried to adopt the most up-to-date and least offensive terms wherever possible but are mindful that these will certainly change over the next few years. As will become clear, we recognise that community development resources are often funnelled towards those communities that are deemed to face the biggest challenges and that in the UK these allocations are often based on the Index of Multiple Deprivation. This collates data on household income, employment, health, educational attainment, housing conditions, crime levels and so on, officially designating the most ‘deprived’ areas in the country. Unfortunately, this derogatory term has crept into the language of community development. We have tried to avoid using it, preferring the way that ‘disadvantaged’ captures structural causes, and have tended to adopt the modern phrase ‘left-behind’ neighbourhoods. This takes into consideration the strengths and aspirations of these communities, but we realise that, despite the recent establishment of a commission and all-party parliamentary group to focus on such areas, the term still carries problematic connotations. Finally on the subject of terminology, we need to outline how we are using our anchoring concept of ‘community’. By this we mean not the slippery and abstract concept that has vexed sociologists but the sense of belonging and collective efficacy that people sometimes experience as tangible assurances of security, practical help and emotional support from those around them. We know that communities are multifaceted and often fragmented and that talk of ‘community’ or even ‘communities’ implies a unity and homogeneity that cannot be assumed. This suggests, as Banks (2019, p 7) notes, that communities can best be described as ‘collectivities of people with some, but not necessarily all, characteristics in common, who may sometimes come together (perhaps only for a short time) for perceived mutual benefit’. However, in the absence of a clearer term, we have decided to refer to the people that community development works with as communities or community members. This covers communities of place, shared social identity and those with a common interest or culture, as will be explored in more detail in Chapter 4.

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Our intention with this Short Guide is to demonstrate not only the versatility and value of community development to contemporary society, but also to explore the many ways in which it is contested and challenged by political critiques and practical circumstances. Limited space allows us only to flag up some issues, but we urge the reader to follow up the suggestions for further reading and to reflect on how these might impinge on their own experience and practice. Our broad conclusion is that community development has a great deal to offer communities and professionals working across a whole range of policy goals. For it to be effective and sustainable, however, strategic investment in the capacity and infrastructure are essential to ensure that communities can play their part in building a more equitable and democratic society.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES Several comprehensive guides to community development have been updated in recent years. These include Keith Popple’s Analysing community work (2015) and Beck and Purcell’s Community development for social change (2020). Also strongly recommended is Margaret Ledwith’s latest book, Community development: A critical and radical approach (2020). For a comprehensive overview of the evolution of community development over time, both in practice and in theory, readers can go to three excellent sources. An international overview is provided by Gary Craig, Keith Popple and Mae Shaw in Community development in theory and practice (2008), which brings together a collection of articles from the international Community Development Journal. A US perspective is provided by James DeFilippis and Susan Saegert in their Community development reader (2nd edn, 2012). Gary Craig and co‑editors have also produced a UK collection, The community development reader: History, themes and issues (2011), drawing together influential articles and book extracts from a variety of sources from the 1950s to the 2000s. Finally, two journals provide a valuable source: Community Development Journal and Community Development, the journal of the

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US-based Community Development Society. The CDJ Plus website (cdjc.blog.oxfordjournals.org) carries news and publications which can be downloaded free of charge. Readers will also find valuable material in development studies journals: Development Studies itself and the IDS Bulletin, published by the Institute of Development Studies. Concept: The Journal of Contemporary Community Education Practice Theory is another useful source.

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2 What is community development? This chapter focuses on different understandings of community development. As indicated in Chapter  1, we use ‘community development’ as an umbrella term to cover a range of different methods for working with communities: • • • •

to open up opportunities for collective action; to improve living conditions and services; to uphold and extend rights; and to support individual advancement.

We set out the core principles and processes that characterise community development and distinguish it from related approaches and concepts. We review different models for working with communities, as well as exploring the relationship between community development and similar strategies for achieving change. Internationally, community development encompasses many approaches, contributing in different ways within a set of core principles or expectations (see Boxes 2.1 and 2.2).

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Box 2.1: IACD’s eight common themes and areas of practice for community development Themes

Area of practice

Values into practice

Understand the values, processes and outcomes of community development, and apply these to practice in all the other key areas.

Engaging with communities

Understand and engage with communities, building and maintaining relationships with individuals and groups.

Participatory planning

Develop and support collaborative working and community participation.

Organising for change

Enable communities to take collective action, increase their influence and if appropriate their ability to access, manage and control resources and services.

Learning for change

Support people and organisations to learn together and to raise understanding, confidence and the skills needed for social change.

Diversity and inclusion

Design and deliver practices, policies, structures and programmes that recognise and respect diversity and promote inclusion.

Leadership and infrastructure

Facilitate and support organisational development and infrastructure for community development, promoting and providing empowering leadership.

Developing and improving policy and practice

Develop, evaluate and inform practice and policy for community development, using participatory evaluation to inform and improve strategic and operational practice.

IACD (2018, p 17, Table 1: Themes and Key Areas). See IACDStandards-Guidance-May-2018_Web.pdf (iacdglobal.org).

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The European Community Development Network (ECDN, 2014) has adopted a similar common framework that brings together the values and principles shared by its members.

Box 2.2: ECDN’s Statement on Community Development Core principles • • • • •

Collective action; Equality, Diversity, Tolerance; Partnership, Solidarity and Co-operation; Participation; Creative and Innovative organisation.

Some shared concepts • • • • • • •

Delivers interdisciplinary, professional and independent support to groups of people; Identifies, together with local people, community problems; Increases the empowerment of local people so that they can organise themselves in order to solve problems; Turns its attention primarily to people struggling with social deprivation, poverty, inequality and exclusion; Contributes to a sustainable community based on mutual respect and social justice; Challenges power structures which hinder people’s participation; Contributes to the socio-cultural development of the neighbourhood through local people.

http://eucdn.net/statement

Many people and agencies contribute to community development. This chapter will focus primarily on the role of the community

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worker or organiser, who is often an outsider, usually in a paid job that involves working with residents or community members to support leaders, activists and volunteers to come together, co-ordinate their efforts and achieve the change they desire.

Unpacking the role As we will see in Chapter  5, community work is skilled and strategic, but its starting point always involves learning to understand the community from the inside, listening to people’s experiences, identifying priority concerns and long-term goals. Arising from these conversations, the worker will help groups to form or engage with existing networks, agreeing broad aims and establishing how they want to run themselves. This stage may involve hours of door knocking, street surveys, small informal meetings, building up relationships with relevant organisations and growing connections that will encourage mutual trust and respect. Workers are not ‘in charge’ of these activities but play an important facilitating role, making sure that those involved feel included and empowered. The worker’s contact with groups may wax and wane over time as these become stronger and more self-reliant. Initial levels of intense support and guidance will reduce as group dynamics settle down and members become adept at running meetings, carrying out decisions and resolving conflicts for themselves. But when tensions arise or organisational change is needed, then the worker should still be in a position to help without fostering dependency. The degree of engagement will shift as the group evolves, going through cycles of activity and changing memberships, even eventually dissolving when it is no longer needed or viable. A community worker can help at each phase of development but must be careful not to take over and should constantly manage expectations about their role.

Practices and processes Community development represents a broad set of practices for working with people in communities to achieve sustainable

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improvements. These can be characterised by the ‘7 Es’ set out in Table 2.1. The unpaid efforts and expertise of members of the community are paramount. These are so-called ‘ordinary’ residents who take on roles as leaders, volunteers, committee members and so on in order to set up, run and participate in community-based activities and campaigns. Working alongside them, especially in the most rundown areas, might be paid community development workers, who have demonstrated their competence and understanding, sometimes attaining a professional qualification. These workers could be employed by the local authority, a voluntary organisation, a public health body, a partnership or even the community itself, perhaps under the auspices of a tenant-owned housing co-op or residents’ association. Although posts have been drastically reduced in recent years, a survey carried out in 2016 revealed a ‘highly skilled and resilient workforce which has Table 2.1: The 7 Es: essential community development processes Enabling

Set up groups and opportunities for people to become involved. Remove practical barriers to their participation.

Encouraging

Facilitate individuals to contribute to activities and participate in decision-making. Persuade them to keep going when things get difficult.

Empowering

Strengthen community members’ confidence and ability to work together and take responsibility for their own actions. Create conditions and open up opportunities for people to influence decisions affecting their lives.

Engaging

Make contact and work with individuals, groups and organisations to improve community participation in partnerships and other forms of public decision-making.

Educating

Help people to reflect on their own experience, to learn from others and through discussion.

Equalising

Adjust or challenge practices and attitudes so that everyone has equivalent access to opportunities, resources and facilities within communities and mainstream services.

Evaluating

Identify the positive changes that result from collective actions. Learn lessons from interventions about what is effective as well as what can be done differently.

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developed new ways to fund the work through enterprise and effective deployment of resources’, operating under a range of job titles and in diverse settings (ESB, 2016). Many local authority posts have been lost to austerity and there has been an apparent increase in positions created through national funding programmes, such as Community Organisers or Big Local. Many of these are located in target areas, while others support communities on a less intensive basis, or around specific themes such as mental health or sport. In the main, the focus is on groups and networks that want to or need to co‑operate in order to achieve change at community level. That change might be driven by an external threat to people’s quality of life, for example plans to build on cherished green space, or rising crime. It could be shaped by a general desire to increase community ‘togetherness’, addressing issues of social isolation and fragmentation between people of differing backgrounds through local events or befriending and support schemes. Equally, communities organise to improve services for a particular section of the community, such as providing facilities and support for young people. Adopting a community development approach means ensuring that the issues and priorities are identified and agreed by communities themselves and that people are encouraged to work together towards a collective solution to shared concerns and aspirations. Community development is sometimes criticised as focusing too much on deprivation and deficiencies. There has been a tendency among policy makers and professionals to assume that communities lack capacity, resources or leadership, and that these need to be either imported from experts or nurtured through ‘hand-holding’ and training. This undervalues the wealth of energy, skills and local insights that community members pour into their activities and campaigns. Shifting attention away from so-called community deficits means acknowledging local assets, expertise, talents and ambitions as the foundation on which to build shared visions and action. There is a Māori saying ‘Highlight my strengths and my weaknesses will disappear’, so it is important to begin by assessing community strengths. This will include existing groups, facilities, traditions, tacit knowledge, informal networks and the range of agencies already

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offering services. This approach is embodied in the strengths-based model of community development, sometimes known as ‘asset-based community development’, or ‘ABCD’ (Kretzmann and McKnight, 1993; Russell, 2015).1

Community development’s core values Community development is commonly described as a long-term value-based process. Its overarching purpose is to promote social justice and it is therefore essentially political (albeit with a small ‘p’). However, social justice is a tricky term to define, tending to mean whatever its proponents want. Within community development, it is usually understood as the development of a fair and inclusive society, with wealth, opportunities and power more equitably distributed across the population. Equality Equality is a core value for community development, and practitioners are expected to demonstrate an awareness of structural inequalities and incorporate anti-discriminatory measures into all aspects of their work – the most prevalent dimensions of discrimination being generally associated with class, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and age. Addressing these means tackling barriers, promoting opportunities and adapting arrangements to take into account the needs and preferences of diverse participants or target communities. Empowerment Community development places great emphasis on collective leadership, inclusive participation and empowerment, so that community members can contribute directly to decision-making about what happens in their areas or spheres of interest. The term ‘empowerment’ can be problematic for community development. There is a persuasive argument that people can only empower

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themselves rather than be empowered by others. However, community development practices are often concerned with creating the conditions for people to have a greater say over decisions that affect their lives and to challenge unfair power dynamics. Processes of empowerment are experienced individually and collectively. They therefore have psychological, practical and political dimensions that need to be actively addressed by community workers. Developing community leadership and people’s capacity to influence and implement decisions (thereby empowering them) is crucial for opening up democratic processes, often using participatory methods of engagement. Co-operation As indicated earlier, collective working and co-operation are also key principles of community development so, wherever possible, community workers encourage individuals, groups and organisations to work together as partners and allies, informally or through formal arrangements. They will often act as brokers between different agencies or parts of the community, identifying potential synergies and mediating latent rivalries or tensions. Natural networks of relationships and contacts connecting many people within communities form a firm foundation for teamwork and sharing. However, this ‘community capital’ can be eroded through neglect or antagonisms. Coalitions may need constant tending and occasional mending if they are to provide a robust and inclusive foundation for collaboration. Learning together Community development recognises the value of reflection and dialogue in its commitment to shared learning and capacity building. Through informal conversations, workshops and group discussions, community members develop their ideas of what’s happening in their lives or their part of the world. Only by understanding how things are now is it possible to change them for the better (Mayo, 2020a).

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Underpinning strategies In addition to its fundamental values, community development rests on four vital pillars or strategies: • • • •

Networking Collective action Organisation development Informal education

Networking In order for people to collaborate and achieve meaningful change, they need to be connected with those who share their concerns, to find potential allies and partners, and to have links with decision makers or service providers who hold power and resources. Communities have natural attachments through families, neighbours, friendships and familiar faces seen out and about. But these networks tend to be exclusive and might not give access to the most useful ideas or assets. Most communities comprise patterns of biases and barriers that distort or prevent people relating to one another. A good networker who knows the community well can set up introductions, liaise across sectoral or area boundaries and facilitate networking opportunities so that community members can extend their own networks and reach into less familiar territory, thereby addressing social exclusion and power differentials (Gilchrist, 2019). Collective action A central tenet of community development is that it enables people to take collective action to tackle shared issues or to pursue a common cause. Community development works with people to identify goals and supports them to accomplish these. By coming together, comparing experiences and understanding the root causes of problems, people realise that their combined efforts can change situations, improve conditions and potentially challenge structural

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disadvantage, for example in employment choices or accessing health services. This type of campaigning or self-help activism does not necessarily require setting up a formal organisation. Much can be achieved through informal arrangements using the ‘social power’ of civil society, such as local self-help networks, pressure groups or broader social movements (Sheila McKechnie Foundation, 2018). The important point is that people are not left to fend for themselves in making complaints or putting forward suggestions as isolated residents. Community development often provides the impetus for community members to decide what needs to be done to make the changes they want and then mobilise around a joint plan of action. It is about channelling the power of combined voices and determination: the strength of many people acting for themselves or in solidarity with others who find it more difficult to speak up and be heard. Organisation development Initial success sometimes reveals new possibilities and loose groupings of campaigners may need to develop an organisation in order to meet the changing demands of members as well as the expectations of other stakeholders, notably funders. In community development, this means helping a group to find a form that matches its current aims and functions while allowing for potential growth. It is best to strike a balance between meeting formal requirements and the flexibility and fun allowed by informal processes. Organisational structures and procedures should enable members to achieve their goals, to act legally and to be accountable to the membership and wider community. Community organisations sometimes reach a crisis point when members realise that their existing format simply doesn’t work any more or constrains them from partnering with other agencies. In many cases, a group may evolve to become more ‘hardshelled’, while retaining many of its informal aspects because these keep people feeling motivated and involved. Community development helps transitions like this, supporting members to reflect on what’s going wrong or discuss what could be done differently.

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Informal education Alongside developing organisational capacity, community development stimulates the acquisition and sharing of skills and knowledge, as well as fostering mutual understanding. Informal, popular or community education describes the learning that takes place mainly through people’s involvement in community activities and so it is sometimes described as experiential. Individuals improve their confidence and capabilities through taking on tasks, observing others, ‘having a go’ and receiving feedback. Opportunities for discussion ensure that useful experience and opinions are shared through listening, explanation and critical debate. Information, ideas and insights can also be gleaned from relevant materials and official publications as well as informal conversations. As Kahneman (2011) has suggested in a thorough analysis of cognitive failures and ingrained biases, ‘slow thinking’ is vital to avoid snap judgements or herd mentalities. This kind of analytic and reflective thinking helps to refute fallacies and to counter prejudices and conspiracy theories, for example in relation to climate denial or vaccine hesitancy. Positive informal learning increases people’s personal resilience, their openness to new ideas and their ability to take on unfamiliar roles and responsibilities. Encouraging people to reflect on their experiences can be a useful stimulus to further learning and builds confidence in new roles. For many people, participation in community development activities represents an important step along the journey towards active citizenship, a career goal or a sense of self-worth. Most of us need feedback and encouragement from others, especially our peers. Rigorous scepticism is a prerequisite for evidence-based social advance, in science and elsewhere (McIntyre, 2018) including community development. Group debates and critical dialogue expose comfortable, but false, myths and can be used to create alternative and more balanced narratives. These discussions are also about learning to question received wisdom and to challenge authority. By actively supporting people to try out new skills, question assumptions and explore new ways of seeing the world, workers and leaders are using

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informal education and reflective practice to challenge the status quo and promote transformative change (Ledwith, 2020).

Providing help, strengthening resourcefulness Each of these four strands (networking, collective action, organisation development and informal education) involves building the skills, knowledge and confidence of individuals as well as developing the social infrastructure to support community organising and engagement. For many communities, these can be organic processes occurring normally through regular interactions and shared learning. But sometimes they need a boost to overcome flagging spirits or apparent blocks to progress. There are specific areas of expertise and technical advice that professional community workers might provide or refer people to, for example, on charity law, planning regulations or fundraising, perhaps by signposting them to intermediary bodies, such as councils for voluntary service. In addition, paid community workers may have time for tasks that community members are too busy to do, or they can offer an external perspective on disputes or difficulties. They might make suggestions on group roles and interactions, the style and format of meetings, the various functions of organisations and the complex dynamics of communities. Their training and accumulated experience can be seen as a resource which is ‘on tap’ but not ‘on top’. Historically, there was a vigorous debate in community development over how ‘directive’ workers should be, with some arguing that they should be completely neutral, responding entirely to the communities’ expressed needs and aspirations in the ultimate non-directive role (see Batten and Batten, 1967). Some regard this as the highest form of empowerment, leaving communities completely in control, moving in a direction and at a pace they set themselves. However, community development agencies are not always as empowering as they would like to be, and the provision of guidance or advice can be interpreted as overly influential, especially given the relative status and perceived expertise of paid workers. As Kenny (2018) among others has observed, community development does not just take place through

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the efforts of professional practitioners. Professionals can sometimes be disingenuous about the degree of covert power they hold or the underlying purpose of community engagement strategies. As a result, people may feel manipulated and disempowered by the paid workers or they may become dependent on their support and input. We acknowledge that community workers usually do have an agenda: sometimes driven by their own concerns, often by employers’ policies and funding priorities. Some will abide by occupational standards and be guided by formal principles of professional accreditation. Nevertheless, their work will be shaped by their own values, capabilities, preferences and ‘theories of change’, which may in turn be informed by politics, faith or personal interests. It is therefore important that community workers are constantly reflexive about their motivation and how this affects their interactions with others (Beck and Purcell, 2020). Honesty and mutual respect should be key values for community development regardless of context or financial arrangements, so all stakeholders should be as ‘up front’ about their aims as possible.

Models and approaches Various models of community development have found favour in the UK over the past several decades. While some may be branded as an authentic or universal approach, in practice they all overlap, sharing common goals, underpinning values and processes. In this Short Guide, we have focused on the roles and contributions offered by paid workers, acting in a quasi-professional capacity, who may or may not be members of the communities they are serving. Several authors have developed useful typologies or frameworks to describe these (Rothman with Tropman, 1970; Smock, 2004; Popple, 2015). Broadly speaking, these reflect different analyses of society and different overall goals, with some being more radical than others. The different approaches can be seen as: (a) Radical – fundamentally transforming the way society operates by challenging dominant power structures;

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(b) Pluralist – rebalancing the system to be fairer and more democratic; or (c) Communitarian – maintaining, but improving, existing structures and services through shared ownership and user participation. These three models provide a simple framework for thinking about how community development is practised in different settings. They are informed by different political ideologies and shaped by some of the theoretical concepts outlined in Chapter 4. Radical models Radical models are concerned with the root causes of poverty, injustice and inequality. They aim to fundamentally change the system rather than just deal with symptoms. Transformational approaches argue that community development must move from change at community level, scaling up interventions by connecting local initiatives to social movements and national campaigns. They claim to be emancipatory: informed by an explanation of power that places it in the hands of elites or those with vested interests, resulting in structural inequalities and systematic discrimination (Lopes de Souza, 2020). Perhaps the most well-known is the Alinsky model of community organising, which asserts itself as broadly oppositional: mobilising communities to confront the ‘power holders’ in an attempt to negotiate change from a position of collective strength and solidarity (Alinsky, 1972). Alinsky and his adherents operated by building relationships at the grassroots, identifying issues causing common concern or resentment, recruiting and training indigenous leaders to act as organisers and uniting different groups in alliance around a shared vision or solution (Szynka, 2021). For community organisers, the baseline is always the practical problems, grievances and aspirations expressed by communities themselves. But the goal may be to redistribute power in favour of disadvantaged people in low-income communities, using a pragmatic assessment of ends and means. A frequently adopted radicalisation tactic is to express dissent through protest, often focused on a single person (such as the head of a major polluting industry or

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a police commissioner) using imaginative direct actions that expose injustices and demand change. This means tactical engagement with the ‘system’ from the outside, using mass campaigns and media pressure, as well as working within its organisations and structures to challenge how things are done. Over recent years, a number of different models of radical community development have appeared in the UK and elsewhere (Beck and Purcell, 2013). Some see these as distinct from, and more assertive than, traditional community development because they emphasise strategic, often confrontational, public action, human rights, empowering leadership and informal methods of mobilising. Citizen organising draws directly on Alinsky’s model and is used by the Industrial Areas Foundation network in the US to build broad-based alliances to tackle issues such as low pay or the treatment of asylum seekers. Citizens UK adopts a similar approach and has successfully established ‘chapters’ in several of England’s bigger cities. The organisation works through civil society networks and faith bodies to enable ‘communities to act together for power, social justice and the common good’. Citizens UK prides itself on training individuals to take on leadership positions and on manoeuvring its members into positions for confronting power and resisting injustices (Bolton, 2017). The Community Organisers Programme, initially funded by government, emphasises the importance of independent initiatives. Their approach claims to be transformational in that it aims to create systemic change by challenging prevailing ideologies and leading to an alternative vision for society. Community Organisers, the national body, has devised a framework that underscores the work involved in bringing people together to take action on common concerns in ways that challenge social injustices. This starts by listening to residents, reaching out to activists and allies, building relationships and networks, engaging with power-holders and mobilising people to take collective action, including community-led events and activities in order to mobilise collective power. Community Organisers is a membership body that supports practitioners through a network of social action centres. Training and accreditation is provided via the network of hubs known as the National Academy of Community

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Organising. A significant and radical offshoot of the Community Organisers Programme is ACORN, a membership organisation that describes itself as a community-based union, representing lowincome people. Pluralist models Despite widespread claims to radicalism, in reality community development strategies are often more pragmatic and pluralist, based on liberal thinking, which sees society as comprising an array of interest groups competing for attention, influence and resources. This approach is concerned with making the system work better for everyone. It ensures that a full range of experiences and perspectives are taken into consideration when making decisions about how resources are allocated or services designed. It recognises that groups do not have equal access to power and that disadvantaged sections of society need additional support and resources in order for their voices and their views to be heard. In this respect, a key role for community development is to address discrimination and prejudice in order to create a more level playing field for those who are oppressed or marginalised. The state is seen as a neutral body, overseeing negotiations between different interests, with decisions made in accordance with a rational appraisal of the evidence, based on arguments put forward by diverse stakeholders. The pluralist model of community development aims for a fairer distribution of power in society generally, as well as at the grassroots. In some respects, strategies for community engagement and ‘customer’ participation fall into this model, whereby service commissioners and providers involve residents in consultative planning exercises. Similarly, user empowerment seeks to increase users’ level of choice, influence and control in how services are designed. Health services, alongside social care, have shown particular interest in such patient/ public involvement approaches. This is examined in more detail in Chapter 6, but it is worth noting that health services across the UK have taken a growing interest in a shared, or co-productive, approach to the promotion of health and wellbeing (NICE, 2016).

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Community engagement represents a parallel model that is open to wider participation and generally not focused on specific services. It is a stronger version of consultation, by which public authorities seek to involve citizens in planning improvements and addressing longstanding problems. Effective and inclusive public engagement practices require changes in the culture and procedures of institutions such as local councils or health authorities to render them more ‘community friendly’ and accessible (Beresford, 2021). Community engagement strategies should result in community and user empowerment, especially if they make use of community development values and expertise. The pluralist approach is largely incremental, seeking social reform while preferring negotiation and compromise to conflict. The role of the community worker, sometimes called a participation or engagement officer, is to support community members or service users to develop a collective voice and articulate a persuasive case for change. Communitarian models The third approach to community development relies on a conservative model of society. Communitarianism aims to maintain the overall status quo while working within the existing ‘rules’ to improve the functioning and cohesion of communities. There is an emphasis on enabling people to exercise agreed rights while assuming personal or social responsibilities, but without upsetting the general order. The aim is to strengthen community spirit and build the capacity of local groups and mutual aid networks either to contribute independently to civil society or to work in partnership with state or voluntary agencies. It highlights the positive features of communities rather than their failings, but draws attention to what might happen if mutual responsibilities are neglected. Communitarian approaches are designed to mobilise the resources, enthusiasm and efforts of ‘ordinary’ residents, with one well-known version describing itself as asset-based community development (ABCD) because it focuses on the strengths rather than the weaknesses of communities (Mathie and Cunningham, 2008; Green and Haines, 2015). It represents a

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generic strategy for community building and is based on the belief that the role of community development is to assist communities to become self-reliant, participating in civil society as a unified body of active citizens. ABCD identifies an important role for ‘community connectors’ in establishing an inventory of individual or household skills, interests and experience. This foundation is then used to gauge the combined potential capacity of the community, in the belief that: Each time a person uses his or her capacity, the community is stronger and the person more powerful. That is why strong communities are basically places where the capacities of local residents are identified, valued and used. Weak communities are places that fail, for whatever reason, to mobilize the skills, capacities and talents of their residents or members. (Kretzmann and McKnight, 2003, p 1) Appreciative enquiry offers another set of methods for identifying the positives in community life. Developed as an alternative to deficit strategies that focus on ‘problem solving’, it aims to promote creative thinking, stimulating people to identify all that is good about their communities and encouraging them to imagine how things could be ‘even better’ (Whitney and Trosten-Bloom, 2010; Stavros and Torres, 2018). Appreciative enquiry and the ABCD model are both about identifying assets rather than needs: as a consequence, they have been criticised for underestimating the obstacles facing many communities, such as long-term industrial decline, poor public services, low levels of hope, endemic discrimination and political barriers encountered in decision-making arenas. In this respect, they bear a strong resemblance to programmes for promoting active citizenship (Mayo and Annette, 2010) or the civic model proposed by Smock (2004), which she identifies as promoting informal mechanisms for maintaining social order within neglected or diverse neighbourhoods. The communitarian approach attempts to avoid disturbances and to ‘bridge’ divisions between different sections of the community in the name of stability and consensus.

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Community practice As indicated earlier, community development can be pursued in many ways: through paid and unpaid roles, including local leaders or a highly motivated band of volunteer activists, or by communityoriented workers from other professional fields, such as youth work or social care. The term ‘community practice’, introduced by Butcher et al (1993), covers ways of working that seek to empower communities and develop better relations between the state and the public. It recognises that services are delivered most effectively if they are tailored to the conditions and cultures of specific communities and may use a form of outreach or detached service delivery that aims to be more responsive than mainstream services to community needs and preferences. Community practitioners encourage people to share responsibility for their environment, raising issues of concern and working in partnership to create solutions that work for local communities. They include frontline staff delivering public services such as, for example, police officers, street cleaners, housing officials, health visitors or school caretakers, a wide-ranging and valuable, if often fragmented and unco-ordinated, resource (Banks et al, 2013). Thus, different sectors use community development methods and might be informed to some extent by its values. However, most community practitioners have their goals and targets set externally by employers or funders, rather than by the communities themselves. Some critics level the same argument at community development itself, an issue this Guide will return to later when we examine challenges around accountability and leadership. But community development need not rely on the input of dedicated and qualified workers. The growth of ‘community’, whether it is labelled community spirit, a sense of shared belonging, solidarity or social identity, can be the outcome of organic, self-organised action and spontaneous mutual aid. We saw this during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic as neighbours looked out for one another and informal groups sprang up, apparently spontaneously, to organise food drops, collect medicines, set up community kitchens and keep in touch with isolated or vulnerable people who were ‘shielding’

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(Tiratelli and Kaye, 2020). In addition, many communities, especially those that are rurally remote or have struggled to access resources, such as Black and minority ethnic groups, have long-standing traditions of independent self-help, relying on their own resources rather than funded interventions from outsiders. The decline in local and national government funding has meant that local teams have been disbanded, with community development posts tending to be more specialist in order to deliver specific policy objectives or support target groups. Grant programmes generally create short-term or part-time positions, or support is offered over a wider area on a ‘light-touch’ basis, offering expert advice and encouragement as needed in response to the changing needs of communities. As we shall see in Chapter  6, the skills and strategies used for community development can be applied in various situations and for different purposes.

Conclusion Community development is sometimes described as a broad movement for social change. In practice it takes many forms and is shaped by different ideologies. What these models have in common is a commitment to supporting people who want to work together to improve lives and remedy situations that are causing injustice, discontent, ill health or impoverishment. Over the years, and despite its rather amorphous nature, community development as an approach is regularly rediscovered and adapted by policy makers and governments seeking to achieve long-term improvements in the living conditions of communities that find themselves on the margins of civil society.

SUMMARY • Community development is primarily concerned with enabling communities to organise around issues that they identify for themselves.

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• It is also used by public, and sometimes private, bodies to enhance community engagement and improve services. • It involves networking, collective action, organisation development and informal learning. • Community development is aligned with principles of social justice and works within a framework of core values: equality, empowerment, co-operation and shared learning. • It is useful to consider three different models of community development: radical, pluralist and communitarian. • As an approach, community development techniques can be adopted by other professions using a light touch to work with communities on their issues and aspirations.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES There are a number of useful readers on community development, as well as practical guides on working with community groups and on community engagement strategies. In particular, we recommend the volumes in the series Rethinking Community Development from Policy Press, notably Meade et al (2016a), Shaw and Mayo (2016a) and Banks and Westoby (2019). These are edited collections of essays on themes of power, ethics, populism, democracy, class and inequalities. They are suggested for those seeking a more academic analysis than we offer in this short guide. Henderson and Vercseg’s (2010) exploration of how community development relates to civil society uses interesting examples from the UK and Eastern Europe. Margaret Ledwith has authored several thought-provoking books which take a more radical approach, while Akwugo Emejulu (2015) provides a critical comparison of community development in the UK and the US. Dave Beck and Rod Purcell’s (2010) and Carol Packham’s (2008) books explore in greater depth the role of the worker in promoting educational aspects of community development, while Beck and Purcell (2013) offer an overview of models of community organising. The Community Organisers’ useful framework can be found at:

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https://www.corganisers.org.uk/training/learning-resources/ co_framework/. More information on ACORN’s work is available at: www.acorncommunities.org.uk/ Direct experiences of community organising are described in Naomi Diamond’s book Community organising compared (2020) and Craig (2017), which focuses on anti-racism. For more on ABCD, visit www. nurturedevelopment.org/asset-based-community-development/. Cormac Russell (2015) provides a historical overview, while Green and Haines (2015) write about US experiences of this approach. The Routledge handbook of community development (Kenny et  al, 2019) brings together theory and examples from around the world. For an Irish perspective, try Jackson and O’Doherty’s (2012) edited collection of case studies and reflections. Community Development Alliance Scotland (CDAS) publishes excellent briefings about community development, which can be found at: www. communitydevelopmentalliancescotland.org. Jim Ife (2016; and with his colleague Tesoriero, 2006) offers local and global perspectives to Australian community development practices. Before its demise in 2016, the Community Development Foundation produced a range of publications, some of which are now available from the British Library as hard copies or to download (via http://socialwelfare.bl.uk/). Note 1

This model should not be confused with the ‘Achieving Better Community Development’ approach to planning and evaluation, which shares the same acronym (Barr and Hashagen, 2000).

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3 The changing policy context This chapter begins by tracking the way in which community development has evolved over the years and the factors that have shaped this evolution. It then identifies some of the recurrent policy themes that have driven interest in community development and describes the contribution that communities can make to these: welfare and service reform, democratic renewal, restoring community, and regenerating places and economies.

Origins and early applications Community development today has many foundations in the past. Some lie in communities themselves: the mutual organisations, co-operatives and friendly societies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, where, as industrialisation gained pace, working-class people banded together to pool their resources, meet common needs and campaign for improved rights and better conditions. Some can be found in external initiatives, such as the university settlements which, from the 1880s onwards, brought students into poor urban areas to live and work with local communities. More recently, after World War Two, the UK government introduced community development in its colonies as a bulwark against communism and to foster economic development in the interests of empire. It was then deployed to prepare indigenous populations for a peaceful transition to independence. Marj Mayo (1975) traces similar ‘colonial’ antecedents in the US, where, she argues, self-help projects were supported in order to stave off 35

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discontent among Black and minority ethnic (BME) populations and ensure a skilled and disciplined labour force. Community development also has roots in housing and planning. The origins of the tenants’ movement, for example, lie in the rent strikes of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the twentieth century progressed, the growth of new council housing estates led to the formation of tenants’ associations, aiming to develop social activities, to call for more representation for tenants and sometimes to challenge high rents and poor conditions. The immediate post-war period saw a wave of housing development, with large-scale slum clearance and reconstruction projects. But groundbreaking research contrasted the soullessness of the post-war new towns and council estates with the dense social ties of life in the East London slums from which inhabitants had been moved (Young and Willmott, 1957). Development workers were drafted into these new towns and estates to help build a sense of community (Goetschius, 1969). At the same time it was becoming clear that, despite the promise of the post-war welfare state, poverty and disadvantage had not been eliminated. The stirrings of a new wave of dissent were being felt, with campaign groups tackling a range of issues from child poverty to racial discrimination, the latter inspired by the US civil rights movement. Towards the end of the 1960s, concerns about immigration and racial tension triggered government action. Drawing on the experience of the US War on Poverty, the UK government introduced a range of area-based initiatives to promote community and local authority responses to deprivation. These included the Urban Programme, the National Community Development Project, Education Priority Areas and the Comprehensive Community Programme. This policy commitment to community initiatives faltered as the 1970s progressed (although the Urban Programme survived in various guises into the 1990s). In part, and in common with the War on Poverty in the US, this was because of internal contradictions within the programmes – between the limited aspirations of government and the expectations raised in the target populations (Marris and Rein, 1967). In part, also, it was because these national programmes often

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encountered resistance from local politicians, while the trenchant critique of capitalism and government policy delivered by the National Community Development Project in the UK undoubtedly sealed its fate (Loney, 1983). But most significantly, the oil crisis of the early 1970s signalled the end of the post-war boom, heralding widespread unemployment and industrial unrest. This prepared the ground for the rise of neoliberalism, with its ideology of shrinking the state in favour of the market. In the UK, community campaigns that had criticised public services now found they had to defend them from threatened cuts and then privatisation (Craig et  al, 2011). Under Margaret Thatcher’s governments (1979–90), priority was given to local economic and physical regeneration, with the aim of creating jobs and stimulating industrial growth. In some quarters, welfare support for disadvantaged people was seen as encouraging dependency and the emergence of a ‘moral underclass’ – a narrative that has been sustained in the media and by Conservative-led governments since 2010. Although community development was accorded little place in the advance of neoliberalism during the 1980s, it continued to thrive in some areas. Local authorities opposed to Thatcher’s policies continued to support community development and sought to address the growing criticism of traditional community development from the women’s movement and BME groups. Meanwhile, policy emphasis on the consumer, coupled with the desire to rein in local government, led to a succession of initiatives to engage service users in the design and planning of welfare services.

The renaissance of community By the end of the decade, the community development field in the UK was pessimistic about the prospects for the future (Craig et al, 1990). However, contrary to expectations, the 1990s was to bring a revival. The City Challenge programme introduced in 1991 and the Single Regeneration Budget that followed it in 1995 encouraged the involvement of local communities in both the planning and delivery of regeneration programmes. This new wave of initiatives culminated in the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal

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(NSNR) launched in England by the New Labour government in 2001 and was mirrored in the other UK nations. Across the UK, local cross-sector partnerships developed strategies to tackle social exclusion through new investment and ‘bending’ mainstream funding towards neglected areas. In England, the National Strategy’s long-term vision was to reduce the gap between the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods and the rest of society, but this faded later in the decade. In response to racial tension across the country, the policy focus moved to social cohesion (Cantle, 2008; Donoghue, 2016). However, the New Labour commitment to active citizenship, community empowerment and public participation deepened, with policies to encourage local government modernisation and localism across the board. As such, community engagement became embedded in national strategies and was no longer simply ‘prescribed for the poor’ (Taylor, 2011).

A new direction? The later years of the New Labour government were marked by a growing enthusiasm for social enterprise and for transferring the management of local assets and services to communities. These themes also appealed to the Conservative-led Coalition government that took power in 2010. Under the aegis of the ‘Big Society’, a communitarian policy promoted by the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, the Coalition’s Localism Act (2011) introduced new community rights, with programmes to promote asset transfer and build the capacity of communities to manage services previously run by the state. These trends in community policy were again mirrored in the other UK nations, despite their different political complexions. In other respects, the Coalition government distanced itself from what it saw as New Labour’s ‘top-down approach’, criticising its seeming reluctance, despite the rhetoric of localism and empowerment, to devolve power downwards. Community development in particular was tainted by its perceived co-option into New Labour strategies (Aiken, 2014). Politicians were attracted instead, on the one hand, to asset-based models – particularly ABCD (see Chapter 2) – and,

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on the other, by the success of Citizens UK in mobilising large numbers with its more radical community organising model (see also Chapter 2). The latter interest was reflected in the commitment of the Coalition government to funding a four-year Community Organisers Programme as part of its Big Society drive. This aimed to ‘train a new generation of community organisers and support the creation of neighbourhood groups across the UK, especially in the most deprived areas’ (Cabinet Office, 2010). It was extended in 2017 for another three years. There was also renewed interest from the health sector in community-based solutions, including social prescribing and community link workers (see Chapter 6). For many critics, however, any positive developments under the Coalition were more than countered by stringent cuts affecting statutory services, voluntary organisations and individuals. Between 2010 and 2018, central government funding to local councils was cut by 50  per cent, with these cuts affecting disadvantaged areas disproportionately (Gray and Barford, 2018; HCLGC, 2019). This was partly because of the uneven way national finances were distributed across authorities, and partly because these areas were more likely to depend on public spending (Kruger, 2020). Communities have also been adversely affected by harsh cuts in welfare benefits, accompanied by rising levels of unemployment and job insecurity. Inevitably, austerity policies have had severe consequences for the voluntary and community sectors, facing greater need but with reduced funding (Clifford, 2017). Much local government spending now takes the form of contracts for services, subject to the vagaries of competition, as opposed to the more flexible grants of the past. At local level, many community worker posts have been lost (see, for example, Jupp, 2021). The community development infrastructure suffered particularly badly at both national and local level, especially in England. Here, important support networks for practitioners, like the Community Development Exchange (CDX), Urban Forum, Community Matters and the Federation of Community Development Learning, lost their central government funding and most were eventually forced to close, with those that survived more dependent on delivering government programmes. More recent government pronouncements emphasise

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social action, innovation and resilience, with communities expected to take ever more responsibility for their own survival through self-help, civic engagement, volunteering and corporate match-funding (Panel on the Independence of the Voluntary Sector, 2015). As state investment in communities has decreased, the search has been on for alternative sources of sustainable income. The Big Lottery Foundation in particular has become a significant funder across the UK, not only through its open grants programmes but also through more targeted initiatives like the English Big Local, the Northern Ireland Building Change Trust and Power to Change. These are delivered through national intermediaries, with timescales of 10 years or more and with a strong focus on community control, financial sustainability and long-term transformation. There is currently a strong lobby for a Community Wealth Fund, led by Local Trust (see also Kruger, 2020).

International perspectives Interest in community development has not, of course, been confined to the UK. In the past, the European Union’s anti-poverty and URBAN programmes were an important source of funding for community development, especially in urban and rural areas that had been hit hard by de-industrialisation. Ironically, perhaps, given the criticism that their structural adjustment policies have attracted, community participation has also been a feature of the development agendas of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and various United Nations bodies. Many international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and aid agencies have also supported community development alongside their more immediate disaster relief programmes as a way of creating more sustainable responses to the challenges faced by communities in crisis. Policy and practice in the global South have influenced community development in many countries. The reasons for this include: the influence of the popular education movement on radical practice, building on the praxis of Paulo Freire (1972); a response to democratic innovations such as participatory budgeting in Brazil; and a reflection

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of the fact that we now live in a globalised world, with significant opportunities for community development to learn across different national and regional contexts. Globalisation is nothing new. Earlier we referred to the roots of community development in colonialism and its role in supporting imperial economies. But with the hollowing out of the nation state and rapid advances in internet-based communication, the implications for community development are now very different. Information technologies, particularly social media, have given local communities worldwide access to information and contacts, allowing them to compare experience and take collective action on a global scale, for example around climate change (Extinction Rebellion), racism (Black Lives Matter) and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recent developments Any discussion of community development today needs to acknowledge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on local communities. Research by the Institute for Global Change (2020) reveals an increased sense of neighbourliness in the UK compared with other countries, and communities have been at the forefront of the response here, with neighbours and community groups ready to move quickly, best placed to know what is needed and able to mobilise a wide range of support. In addition, the pandemic has highlighted the crucial role of the state as necessity has transformed – at least temporarily – the nature and scale of public spending. Government, trusts and foundations acted promptly to release emergency grants to voluntary and community organisations, often with relatively few strings attached. Nonetheless, these organisations were still predicted to take a major financial hit (Wood, 2021), at a time of significantly increased demand. The pandemic has exposed the devastating impact of austerity and privatisation on the capacity of both the public service infrastructure and of communities to withstand shocks (Standring and Davies, 2020). Furthermore, both COVID-19 and the measures taken to prevent its spread have had a hugely disproportionate impact on low-income families and BME populations. Isolating, working from home and taking time off work, for example, are described by Robinson (2020)

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as ‘class luxuries’, unrealistic for those in overcrowded accommodation and low-paid insecure employment. And the necessary shift online has excluded the significant proportion of the population without access to digital resources and skills. It has been estimated that, at a time when children are expected to be home-schooled, nine per cent of children do not have access to a laptop, desktop or tablet, and that more than 880,000 live in a household with only a mobile internet connection (Smith, 2021). Many households can afford only limited data allowances and, as Klein (2020) remarks, ‘There is no technical solution to learning in a home environment that is overcrowded or abusive’. Research has shown that community infrastructure is associated with effective responses to the pandemic (Local Trust, 2021). Indeed, the community response to the pandemic has rightly been celebrated, along with the increased sense of cohesiveness and togetherness this has demonstrated (Together Coalition, 2021). However, some reports suggest that the sense of togetherness has begun to fray over time. Community development will have an important role in helping to sustain the networks, skills and confidence over the longer term, and a report to the Prime Minister last year recommended investment in both community hubs and community organising (Kruger, 2020). Will government respond or will community development be increasingly dependent on the charitable sector for its survival?

Continuing themes in community policy This brief history of the policy context for community development demonstrates the durability of notions of ‘community’ and community participation across national boundaries and ideological divisions. In the rest of this chapter, we consider four overlapping policy themes from recent years and their implications for community development: • • • •

health, welfare and public service reform democratic renewal and localism restoring community regenerating places and economies

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Health, welfare and public service reform Since the 1960s, successive UK governments have sought to give communities a greater say in the design and delivery of public services, from schools to policing, environmental services and health. Increasingly, however, they look to communities to take over services previously run by the state. Initially, this was most prevalent in the housing field – policies to promote tenant management were brought in during the 1990s – but the powers introduced in the 2011 Localism Act have significantly extended the principle of community ownership and management of assets and services. Critics argue that these powers are a smokescreen for the savage cuts in public expenditure that accompanied austerity. They also maintain that opportunities for communities to take on responsibility for local amenities such as parks and libraries are more likely to appeal to betteroff people than residents of low-income neighbourhoods. Given that markets tend to favour scale, it is in any case the larger private companies and professional voluntary sector organisations that are most likely to benefit from these and other opportunities to take over services previously delivered by the state (Taylor, 2012). Communitybased organisations might find themselves as subcontractors, but procurement practices borrowed from the business world, such as ‘payment by results’, are particularly ill suited to their circumstances and lead to them bearing disproportionate risks (Dayson et al, 2021). Legislation was introduced in 2011 to encourage consideration of social value in public procurement, but Kruger (2020, p 21) estimates that only eight per cent of public procurement actively encourages socially and environmentally responsible business practice. Guidelines and a new procurement model introduced by government in 2020 (see Cabinet Office, 2020) may improve on this. It would be a mistake to dismiss government’s interest in community-led provision. Many people in the most disadvantaged communities have suffered over the years from poor facilities and inadequate, stigmatising public services with high staff turnover. In addition, Kruger argues that the target-driven quasi-markets in which public services now operate have eroded their links to local

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areas. In contrast, there are numerous examples where residents have successfully run their own services and facilities, often in ways that complement or augment mainstream public services. Local responses to the pandemic have also demonstrated the importance of the informal support that neighbours offer each other. With rising levels of need, this will become ever more necessary. However, communities cannot be expected to substitute for mainstream public provision. There is growing interest from government and communities in forms of co-production, whereby the resources and knowledge of different players can be pooled. This may offer a more effective and affordable model for delivering desired outcomes (Durose and Richardson, 2015). What are the implications of these trends for community development? It can make a vital contribution in supporting those who want to take advantage of the new opportunities to run services and manage assets and to ensure that they are adequately resourced to do so. However, there are many who simply want ‘decent’ and culturally appropriate services without having to run them themselves. Community development has a particular role to play, therefore, in helping residents to defend and improve local provision so that, whoever runs them, these services and facilities are accessible, equitable and accountable for all who use them. Democratic renewal and localism Research published in 2020 found that satisfaction with democracy has eroded in most parts of the world, with a notable drop in the past decade (Foa et al, 2020), especially in high income, developed democracies. In earlier editions of the Short Guide, we suggested a variety of reasons for this: from the changing circumstances of contemporary life to the growing distrust among the electorate of the career politician. In addition, many of the more traditional workingclass organisations, where citizens found a common voice, gained a political education and established their collective strength, have declined or disappeared entirely. Political parties, trade unions, adult education institutes and social clubs, for example, no longer have a

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presence in many local neighbourhoods, nor are they able to inspire participation and solidarity very far beyond their membership. Since our first edition, the picture has changed. The decline in voting rates over the past two decades has reversed slightly, while the Scottish and Brexit referenda achieved turnouts of more than 80 and 70 per cent respectively, higher than any general election since 1997. Membership of the UK’s main political parties was at an historic low prior to the 2015 general election (Keen, 2015), but since 2015 the general trend has been upwards. However, recent years have also seen the rise of populism, here and in other parts of the world. In the UK, there seems to be general agreement that Brexit in particular and populism more generally tapped into a well of disillusion in those parts of the population that benefited least from capitalism and who feel they have been ignored by those in power (Flinders, 2020). Since the 1990s, the official response of many governments to the need for democratic reform has been a well-documented move from ‘government’ to more participative forms of ‘governance’. Various partnership and participatory mechanisms have been introduced over the years, such as neighbourhood forums, Healthwatch groups, participatory budgeting, citizens’ juries, citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative forms. In Scotland, for example, the Community Empowerment Act 2015 put Community Planning Partnerships on a statutory footing as well as requiring Scottish public authorities to involve the public in their decision-making. However, partnership working has proved a mixed blessing over the years. The ‘invited spaces’ in which communities and citizens have participated have often been shaped and controlled by the power holders rather than communities themselves (Cornwall, 2004; see Chapter  4). They have been criticised for co-opting local representatives and diverting communities from pursuing their own priorities, as well as benefiting the already empowered disproportionately and thus exacerbating inequalities (Hastings and Matthews, 2015). So when, in England, national government moved away from New Labour’s emphasis on partnerships, some saw this as giving community development an opportunity to rediscover its ‘soul’ (Taylor, 2012).

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Communities are not confined to the ‘invited’ spaces provided by power holders. Independent community action has a long tradition, with communities running their own campaigns and claiming their own spaces for debate and change. New social movements, like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Extinction Rebellion (XR), have erupted onto the scene in recent years. Social media platforms have provided new spaces for democratic debate, although their darker side has also become more apparent. What are the implications for community development? This is an approach that has long supported those who want to take collective action around a shared issue and influence policy and practice. That support is particularly important for communities engaging in partnership working and citizen participation forums. It can help ensure that communities have an effective voice and can hold services and policy makers to account rather than becoming co-opted or embroiled in partnership management issues (Beck and Purcell, 2020). At the same time, it needs to work with external actors – public and private – to raise their awareness and capacity to engage meaningfully with communities and other stakeholders. Cornwall (2004) contrasts ‘invited’ with ‘popular’ spaces, created by communities themselves. Community development has a significant role to play in cultivating such spaces to replace – or reinvent – the working-class institutions of the past and create opportunities for the learning, dialogue and debate that is needed to underpin collective action. Meanwhile, more radical approaches, like that of Citizens UK and ACORN, discussed elsewhere in this Guide, can bring communities together, in and across localities and regions, to challenge current trends and policy developments and create the momentum for change. Restoring community ‘Community lost’ has been a recurring theme in social commentary since the Industrial Revolution. In the 1990s a strong communitarian lobby emerged based in part on a perceived breakdown in moral consensus, social cohesion and civic responsibility. This was attributed to a loss of ‘social capital’, a concept first popularised by Robert

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Putnam (1993) to describe the networks, norms and trust associated with well-functioning communities and civil society. Some blamed this decline on the dependency created by state welfare; others saw the individualism of the market as the villain of the piece, giving rise to increasing fragmentation and eroding the public sphere. Putnam’s argument about social capital, which resonated strongly with policy makers throughout the world, was that it underpinned democracy and boosted economic development. It has since been linked with a range of other positive outcomes (see Chapter  4). ‘Restoring community’ can thus be seen as the foundation stone to the other policy themes discussed here. Without basic community development at local level, other interventions are unlikely to be adequately rooted or effectively implemented. Over the years there have been numerous programmes designed to ‘restore community’, encouraging neighbours to look out for one another, promoting resilience and strengthening ‘bonding’ social capital. Meanwhile, ‘community cohesion’ and similar programmes have sought to foster integration and multiculturalism through projects to connect communities and build ‘bridging’ social capital across ethnic groups, faiths, generations and other potential fault lines. We have already highlighted the negative impact of austerity on such initiatives. But other factors have also played their part in destabilising and fragmenting community life. One is the operation of the housing market and changing patterns of housing tenure. As social housing is replaced by less secure private renting, for example, people move more often and are less able to put down roots (Local Trust, 2018). It is often multiply disadvantaged areas that are expected to absorb new populations – asylum seekers or families who are displaced from more affluent areas, for example. And yet there is rarely any support or investment to help these areas accommodate changing needs and pressures on services. This may leave previous residents feeling abandoned and fan inter-ethnic tensions, with newcomers blamed for circumstances beyond their control (Taylor and Wilson, 2015). Another factor affecting community life has been the loss of public spaces where people can congregate or encounter each other spontaneously. This is the result of a cocktail of privatisation, public

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spending cuts, the move online, safety and security measures, and the centralisation or scaling up encouraged by the market – with local post offices, pubs, bank branches and village schools closing down. Social isolation was already a policy concern before the pandemic (Collins and Wrigley, 2014; Jo Cox Foundation, 2017) but, along with mental health difficulties, loneliness has been exacerbated over the months of restrictions related to COVID-19, and this is likely to leave a lasting legacy. Recent years have seen a new policy focus on ‘resilience’, borrowing from the environmental and disaster relief fields. However, this rhetoric is increasingly criticised. MacKinnon and Derickson (2013) argue that it normalises turbulence and crisis, placing the onus on individuals, communities and places to adapt to external threats and the ravages of capitalism: ‘setting up communities and places to take … “knock after knock” and keep getting up again’ (p 255). They prefer the term ‘resourcefulness’ which, they argue, focuses attention on the uneven distribution of resources instead, as well as highlighting the differences that exist in the scope for self-determination. Local responses to the pandemic have demonstrated conclusively that communities are not ‘lost’. The revival of mutual aid has been celebrated far and wide. But this resurgence of grassroots activity cannot be taken for granted. Research has shown that communities in less affluent areas and without a history of community investment have been less able to respond to the crisis (Felici, 2020). COVID-19 has revealed the legacy of austerity in relation to incomes and the loss of support from public and private services. In fractured and neglected neighbourhoods, where social bonds have been frayed by factors far outside the residents’ control, or in communities where everyday survival takes up enormous amounts of energy, resilience is stretched to the limit. These communities cannot be left to respond to personal trauma and the national crisis on their own. Regenerating places and economies Poverty is not confined to specific localities. However, some areas do have much higher levels of deprivation than others. These

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neighbourhoods – the ones that social and economic changes have left behind – have been the focus of many area-based initiatives over the past 50 years or so. The challenges they face have been compounded over recent years by the wholesale restructuring of the labour market, particularly the use of zero-hours contracts, which remove protections, undermine solidarity and create economic uncertainty. Residents in these localities find themselves on the front line of the economic challenges arising from the pandemic and Brexit. Community development has had a close relationship with planning and housing policy – in disadvantaged areas and more generally. The Coalition government post 2010 took action to reform the planning system in England in order to give local people more opportunities to shape the places in which they live, but questions remain about the influence communities can have in reality. Too often, the interests of developers trump the needs of citizens. Elsewhere, regeneration schemes replace socially rented accommodation in prime areas at prices the existing tenants could never afford, with legal requirements for affordable housing often reduced or waived. A feature of early initiatives such as the US War on Poverty and the UK Community Development Projects was their holistic approach. This was also the case with the various neighbourhood renewal, social inclusion and peace initiatives in the different UK countries in the early 2000s, as well as several EU-funded programmes. But in between times policy has focused mainly on physical regeneration and on reviving local economies, with an emphasis on job creation, employability and community economic development. This economic emphasis is only likely to intensify in the aftermath of the pandemic and we will return to its implications for community development in Chapter 6.

Conclusion Community development has a long history in public policy and practice as part of a wider and longstanding interest in the idea of ‘community’. Successive governments across the world have sought to strengthen community ties, build collective capacity and ‘restore community spirit’. Communities have also been seen as a crucial

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resource in programmes to reform services, to revitalise democracy, to regenerate local environments and economies and, most recently, to respond to the pandemic. But many critics argue that communities are being used to further a neoliberal agenda, which undermines the public sphere and the role of the state (Fraser, 2020). There is an important role for community development, therefore, in working with communities to identify and make full use of new opportunities, while ensuring that these meet real needs, are available to all and cannot be subject to exploitation. Crucially, community development supports communities in building links with policy makers and public service providers to ensure that opportunities and initiatives are developed in dialogue with communities and shaped by policies that address the wider causes of exclusion and inequality.

SUMMARY • Community development has moved in and out of fashion as policies change, but since the beginning of the 1990s, ‘community’ and community participation have been promoted by international institutions as well as national governments of varying political and ideological persuasions. • Community development has also been influenced by popular movements, from the civil rights struggles of the 1960s to global campaigns in the twenty-first century. • COVID-19 has demonstrated the potential that exists in many communities but has also exposed and exacerbated inequalities and demonstrated the impact of austerity on the public sector’s capacity to respond. • Policy interest in community development has in recent years been driven by the desire to reduce the role of the state and to give service users and local people a greater say in welfare provision and local planning. • Community development has contributed to policies that seek to increase citizen participation through devolved powers from central government as well as responding to concerns over

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the fragmentation of community life and a perceived loss of ‘social capital’. • Community development has supported regeneration initiatives over the years, working in areas that have suffered from the industrial decline and economic recession.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES Several books on community development provide a historical account. Students will find the community development readers mentioned in previous chapters particularly useful in this respect (see also Taylor, 2011). Those who are interested in learning from history (rather than repeating it) will find much of interest in the classic texts by Peter Marris and Martin Rein (1967) on the US War on Poverty, and Martin Loney (1983) on the National Community Development Project. Policy Press also publishes The short guide to social policy (Hudson and Kuhner, 2015), which will help to put the developments discussed here into a wider context. The Local Trust website is an important source providing access to their growing body of topical research, some cited earlier. The Community Development Journal meanwhile provides a window into international research and practice (see in particular Community Development Journal, 2019; Taylor, 2020). Government programmes often have associated websites, so it is worth visiting the relevant government departments or national organisations that host these. Examples across the UK jurisdictions include: https://www.justact.org.uk/ http://mycommunity.org.uk/ http://www.communityscot.org.uk/ https://www.scdc.org.uk http://gov.wales/topics/people-and-communities/ https://www.communities-ni.gov.uk

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These sites often signpost to current or recent consultations, so they are a good way of staying abreast of political and policy developments in the different countries.

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4 Theoretical concepts This chapter gives a brief introduction to some of the theoretical perspectives and concepts that inform community development. We look at ways of understanding the context within which community development works and its potential for social change.

What theory offers Chapter 2 described the core values and principles of community development; these tell us what it is trying to achieve, but not how it might do so. Theories help us to understand why and how facts and events come to be as they are and provide an analytical framework to guide our judgements and actions. Theories from a variety of different disciplines can help community development to understand the world in which it operates and to consider which strategies to pursue. These disciplines include economics, sociology, human geography, political science, psychology and management theory, for example. There are theories that help to explain how communities function (or not), how power works, how policies are made, how democracy works, how people can be mobilised and what motivates them, how collective action can be organised and how systems operate and adjust to change. A short guide cannot do justice to all the theories that might prove useful to the student or practitioner of community development but in this chapter we set out some of the ideas that we have found most helpful. For deeper insights, we recommend that readers follow our signposts to further reading. 53

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We start by exploring the idea of community and associated theories of social capital. We then discuss some psychosocial concepts that shape the processes involved in community development as well as recent thinking about identity, individual motivation and collective efficacy. We move on to models of the state, democracy and governance, since these inevitably affect how community development operates. The next section broadens the discussion to review theories of power and what they can tell us about the relationship between ‘structure’ and ‘agency’, that is, how much of what communities do and experience is shaped by external factors and how much they can determine for themselves. We then briefly consider how a fifth family of theories – about systems and institutions – helps us to understand more about the structures that promote or prevent change. In our final section we visit some aspects of social movement theory, to learn about opportunities for change and how to mobilise people for collective action.

Theories of community ‘Community’ can mean many different things. One study in the midtwentieth century (Hillery, 1955) found 94 definitions of community, and the most that could be agreed on was that community involves social interaction and some common ties or bonds. ‘Community’ can simply be a description of a set of people who share certain characteristics. Or it can be used normatively to suggest how communities should operate, as sites of moral cohesion, for example, where people trust one another and are prepared to help each other out. It can also be used instrumentally to suggest agency, implying that communities can act together to achieve common ends or implement government policies (Butcher et al, 1993). Often the three uses are confused, leading commentators to describe the term ‘community’ as ‘slippery’ and an ‘empty signifier’ – a word without meaning in the real world (Somerville, 2016). While it is tempting to search for a definition of community that is simply descriptive, free from normative and instrumental connotations, Raymond Plant (1974) suggests that this is unlikely to be achieved. He tracks interest in community back to German sociological thought

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around the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – a time of growing anxiety about rapid industrialisation and its impact on society. Concerns about the ‘loss of community’ were captured in the distinction that Ferdinand Tönnies made between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft and also in Durkheim’s comparison of organic with mechanical solidarity. Both compared the traditional territorial communities associated with rural life with the newer fragmented, contractual relationships that characterised industrial and urban society. The ties of community have also been contrasted with the impersonality of the state. Some sociologists saw ‘community’ as a critical mediating institution between state and citizen (Nisbet, 1953). Others preferred to see it as an alternative to the state, a view promoted in the 1990s by the communitarian movement, spearheaded by Amitai Etzioni, and influential in many policy circles at that time. Strongly normative, it emphasises self-government and service to others, responsibilities as well as rights, with the family first and then the community as the sites in which moral norms and obligations are developed (Etzioni, 1998). This view is reflected in model (c), the third of the models discussed in Chapter 2. The communitarian influence remains evident in more recent policies that support communities in taking collective action and running services for themselves. However, as Thornham and Parry point out (2015), these are potentially undermined by a parallel emphasis on individual responsibility and entrepreneurialism in neoliberal ideology. Various authors have discussed the contested nature of community and the many different meanings attached to it. They have been critical of the assumption that communities are static and homogeneous, an understanding which fails to take into account the differences within them. Normative approaches tend to ignore the fact that communities can be inward-looking, exerting a form of social control that may be experienced as oppressive (Berkeley, 2020). Community implies Them as well as Us, and Westoby (2021) contrasts community as ‘hospitality’ with community as ‘unity/uniformity’, stressing its potential for ‘othering’ outsiders and those who don’t conform. The communitarian perspective can also be ‘a recipe for parochialism and privilege’ (Wolfe, 1992, p 311).

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Similar critiques have emerged in relation to the latest concept in the community portfolio. The notion of ‘social capital’ first appeared in the early twentieth century but was introduced into popular debate in the 1990s through the work of Robert Putnam and others. As we saw in Chapter 3, Putnam lamented its apparent decline in the US, arguing that relationships of trust were crucial to making local economies and democracy work. High levels of social capital have been linked with greater productivity, effective democracy, better health, safer communities, higher educational achievement and a range of other positive effects (see, for example, Halpern, 2010). Like ‘community’, social capital is a contested term, subject to many interpretations. Some theorists, including Putnam and James Coleman (1990), regard social capital as a collective resource on which individuals can draw. Others see it as an individual property (Portes, 1995) and, as such, Bourdieu (1986) argued that it can be as inequitable as any other form of capital, allowing those who are members of the ‘right’ networks to gain access to scarce economic and cultural resources and thus reinforcing existing divisions and privileges in society. Later commentators have criticised the tendency of social capital’s champions to confuse the concept with the positive outcomes it is supposed to deliver and to overlook its so-called ‘dark side’. Networks can be exclusive, secretive and unaccountable. Trust is a hugely complex concept, dependent on individual connections and social contexts. Close ties can foster discrimination and conservatism, causing social stagnation and resistance to change (Sampson, 2004; Taylor, 2011). Robinson (2020) argues that factors such as access to adequate housing, decent living standards, space and Wi-Fi mean that establishing and maintaining relationships is far easier for some than others – an argument that has been amply demonstrated by the pandemic. Meanwhile, research by McCulloch et al (2012) suggests that social capital is unlikely to compensate for economic disadvantage. Some of these criticisms were addressed by Michael Woolcock (1998) and others in their distinction between different forms of social capital:

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• Bonding social capital describes enduring strong relations between people in similar situations, such as close friends and family. • Bridging social capital refers to weaker relationships between people who are different in their social identity or location, such as connections between different ethnic groups or communities of interest. • Linking social capital describes relationships between people that cut across status and connect people with differing levels of power: service users and service providers, for example, or community members and government officials. While bonding social capital is good for ‘getting by’, bridging and linking social capital are needed for ‘getting on’ or ‘getting ahead’. The ‘weak’ ties of the latter are likely to provide access to a greater variety of resources than the stronger, more homogeneous ties of the former (Granovetter, 1973; Wellman, 1979). So, what does this mean for community development? Distinguishing between different forms of social capital is particularly important in this field because social change cannot be achieved simply by working at community level on small-scale projects or local campaigns. Bridging and linking social capital are needed to harness resources and influence beyond the community, to connect with allies and broader social movements. And while many disadvantaged communities are characterised by strong ties (they can ‘get by’), they are often poorly connected with those outside their boundaries, whether other communities or power holders, whose resources and contacts may help them to ‘get ahead’ (McCabe et al, 2013; Gilchrist, 2019). What will translate these ties into effective collective action? To answer this question, we need to take a brief step sideways into questions of group behaviour, individual motivation and collective efficacy.

Psychosocial concepts and theories Since community development is primarily concerned with enabling people to work together for social change, we need to understand what prompts individuals to become involved and how they relate

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to others. Psychology, the study of mind and behaviour, provides useful insights and theories about motivation, decision making, social interactions and emotions. It can also help us to understand how groups form and operate. Here we offer a map of some of the psychological and psychosocial theories that can inform community development, and some signposts for the interested reader to explore further. Understanding motivation and efficacy Some models of motivation suggest that people’s decision making can be explained as a rational strategy to maximise personal benefits and minimise costs in response to probable rewards and incentives. However, this is widely criticised as too simplistic. It ignores the likelihood that most people will behave in ways that further group interests, not just individual advantage, and also the role of emotions in catalysing community action (Hoggett and Miller, 2000). One theory that helps to explain what drives or deters action is Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1943). This starts with basic physiological requirements, and then moves through security and safety, belongingness, self-esteem and recognition, to self-actualisation. Self-actualisation, Maslow argues, is only attainable if the layers of need below it have been satisfied. Albert Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy explores the factors that shape people’s behaviour in specific situations. He defines self-efficacy as people’s beliefs about their capabilities to ‘exercise influence over events that affect their lives’ (Bandura, 1994, p 71). He argues that these beliefs are the result of social processes and have four main sources: • experience (success increases self-efficacy, failure lowers it); • social modelling (if they can do it, so can I); • social persuasion (encouragement through positive appraisals and through structuring situations so that people are likely to succeed); • physical and emotional factors, and how they are perceived. It is easy to see from this list how circumstances and setbacks might undermine people’s self-efficacy. Individuals will be less likely to

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engage in any kind of collective action if their life experience does not instil confidence in their ability to succeed, if they have few models of success around them, or if engaging in any kind of public action makes them feel anxious, angry or insecure (Taylor, 2011). Nor will they feel confident in themselves if they are rarely encouraged or put in situations where they can succeed. The concept of collective efficacy, as developed by Robert Sampson and others (Sampson, 2004) highlights the limitations of policies that focus on the individual. In this, his model aligns with social capital theory, stressing the importance of personal ties, co-operation and social interaction. A study of crime prevention in Chicago (Sampson et al, 2002) observed that neighbourhoods with low rates of vandalism and less serious crime were those with strong social networks and signs of community-level organisations working to tackle local issues. Networks are only part of the explanation for collective efficacy, however. Sampson underlines the importance of a ‘strong institutional architecture’, including locally based services, and of community engagement with these bodies (2004, p 113). He is critical of policies that undermine trust, including zero tolerance, and highlights the negative impact of structural inequalities on collective efficacy. ‘Inequality in resources’, he argues, ‘matters greatly for explaining the production of collective efficacy’ (2004, p 108). Community workers can help to create conditions that promote self- and collective efficacy by fashioning opportunities for positive experiences that will build confidence. This includes putting people in touch with similar groups that have been successful and facilitating opportunities to learn from their own and others’ experience. They can also build the links between communities and external agencies that Sampson identifies as essential to a strong institutional architecture. Group dynamics and collective leadership Tuckman’s (1965) model of group development suggests that all groups go through at least four stages: ‘forming, storming, norming and performing’. This recognises that tensions and disagreements are to be expected, especially during the early phases of getting going,

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rather than being a major crisis. Since Tuckman’s model was first published, other stages have been added, including ‘adjourning’ and ‘mourning’, which helpfully reflect the endgames that some groups inevitably reach and which must be carefully handled. Exploration of group dynamics reveals the range of roles that people choose, depending on situational factors, personality traits, preferred emotional styles or skills sets (see, for example, Belbin, 2009). The choices made can affect how leadership evolves and also how conflicts are dealt with (or not). Theories of leadership tend to focus on individual characteristics, some stressing charisma or courage, while others have analysed what effective leaders actually do, emphasising skills in listening, communicating, empathising and so on. Some explanations for what makes a good leader highlight leaders’ roles in mobilising their followers, being entrepreneurial, managing conflicts, networking, facilitating co-operation and seizing opportunities for change, among other effective strategies for bringing people together (Bateson, 2016; Ogden, 2018). But leadership responsibilities do not have to reside with just one individual. As we shall see in Chapter 7, a collective, more participatory model is often more appropriate in community settings, operating through partnerships, working groups or subcommittees. Social identity Early community development focused primarily on place and social class, but, as we saw in Chapter 3, it was criticised for its failure to recognise or address the extent to which experiences relating to gender, race, disability and sexual orientation contribute to social disadvantage. Social identity can play a significant role in motivating people to join with others in collective action by shaping a sense of shared fate, group belonging and common feelings of grievance or injustice (Reese et al, 2019). People may find themselves in communities of identity for a number of reasons: by positive choice; being assigned by others’ assumptions; or determined by circumstances. For many, social identities are a basis for survival, political action and ‘radical empathy’. But identity politics have also been embraced by far-right

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extremism and used to justify xenophobia, homophobia, nativism and anti-migrant attitudes. Social identities are linked to exclusion and oppression, intersecting with different dimensions of people’s lives. A growing body of theory and evidence helps us explain the origins and effects of different forms of discrimination. Theories, developed through several waves of feminism, social models of disability, queer theory and anti-racism movements, highlight the range of ways in which prejudices and acquired attitudes blight lives. Recent thinking has highlighted unconscious biases and the micro-aggressions of everyday life, as well as exploring how ‘hostile environments’ are maintained by discriminatory policies and institutional practices (Lingayah, 2021). While it has been essential to recognise the different forms of oppression that exist, Meekosha et  al (2016, p  147) warn against ‘a fragmented politics of diversity’ which allows particularism to flourish. Focusing on distinct forms of discrimination can entrench people in segregated identities, advocating for their own community interests and competing for scarce resources. The differences within oppressed groups should not be overlooked either. The concept of intersectionality, originally put forward by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991), acknowledges that individuals have multiple, often hybrid, identities, privileging some over others depending on the context (Jessop, 2020, p  43). It also argues that experiences of relative disadvantage are qualitatively different, dependent on the overlap between gender, race, disability, sexual orientation and other identities. Deprivation and disadvantage take many forms and can be complicated by individual circumstances intersecting with prevailing social structures and power imbalances. This analysis was further developed by writers such as bell hooks (2014) and has been applied in many settings to acknowledge that all of us have complex and ambiguous identities (Appiah, 2018). In different contexts these interweave and overlap, often aggravated by class status and economic position (Hicks and Myeni, 2016). Focusing on the different forms of discrimination in isolation can also neglect opportunities for building solidarity between groups (Gilchrist, 2019) and addressing the structural causes of inequality.

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Until recently, for example, class had been downplayed in debates about identity politics. As Shaw and Mayo (2016b) observed, by 2015 we were all supposed to be ‘middle class’, while the term ‘working class’ was frequently used pejoratively to refer to a moral underclass. In addition, assumptions of a common interest and solidarity among the working classes had broken down over the decades with the restructuring of the labour market and the disappearance of many working-class institutions, along with the industries that produced them. However, discussions of class have re-emerged in recent years, in part fuelled by the rise of populism and the Brexit vote, which tends to be associated with the white working class. However, this is a misconception (Antonucci et al, 2017). Beider and Chahal (2020) are particularly critical of the stereotypes associated with the working class, which they argue, is as diverse as any other group and certainly not confined to those who are white. Meanwhile new socio-economic stratifications have been developed, including a growing ‘precariat’, to reflect major changes in the labour market, with the rise of the ‘gig economy’ and zero-hours contracts. What kinds of solidarity are then possible? There will always be divergent identities and interests within the communities where practitioners work. The heightened competition for funds associated with austerity, and now the economic consequences of the pandemic, risk exacerbating divisions but there are common interests, too. Kenny (2016) argues for the still-developing concept of cosmopolitanism, which underlines the global interdependencies between human beings. She cites Fine’s argument (2007, p  x) that ‘human beings can belong anywhere  … we find our community with others in exploring how [shared] predicaments are faced in common’. Cosmopolitanism recognises diversity as a welcome and ongoing feature of society but also acknowledges that inequalities persist. It highlights the importance of establishing areas of mutual concern through dialogue. The community worker plays a critical role in identifying these as well as encouraging groups to work together to develop mutual understanding.

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Theories of the state, democracy and the process of government Much community development in the post-war era in the UK set out to encourage people in disadvantaged neighbourhoods to build ‘community’ and to organise to help themselves. It also worked with local service providers to make them more responsive to need. But this approach was rejected in the 1970s by workers in the UK Community Development Projects (CDPs), who described it as ‘gilding the ghetto’ (1977). Adopting a class analysis, they placed the responsibility for the plight of disadvantaged communities not with residents themselves but with the state as the instrument of capitalism, highlighting the disappearance of financial investment, jobs and manufacturing from these areas and describing how government subsidies (for example, in housing policy) favoured the middle classes – a critique paralleled in the US (O’Connor, 2012). Marxist theories The CDP analysis was derived mainly from Marxist theory, which argues that the political and cultural arrangements in any given society are determined by the means of production, resulting in the exploitation of workers through the system of wage labour, manufacturing ownership and wealth generated through investment in stocks and shares. Marx argued that capitalism was based on inherent contradictions and thus, he suggested, contained the ‘seeds of its own destruction’. Change would come when the oppressed class (the proletariat) rose up against the bourgeoisie and placed the means of production under collective ownership, allowing the state to wither away. Although history has not supported this revolutionary forecast, there are many who still find Marxist economic analysis persuasive in understanding capitalism today (Piketty, 2014). The CDP advocated strategic alliances between disadvantaged communities and the labour movement, while elements of a Marxist analysis continue to inspire radical community work models today. But some of the most influential theory for community development

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over subsequent years was to come from other thinkers in the Marxist stable, notably Antonio Gramsci and Paulo Freire. Gramsci was critical of economic determinism and focused instead on the ideological apparatus of the capitalist state. He explored the idea of ‘hegemony’ to explain how dominant ideologies pervade society and become accepted as a kind of ‘common sense’ that is woven into the institutions of civil society (see Ledwith, 2020, pp 170–2). Instead of Marxist revolution, Gramsci saw political transformation as being achieved through education, cultural shifts and the formation of social movements. He argued that radical consciousness is developed through informed debate that questions the hegemonic views promoted by politically dominant forces. These ideas were further developed by Paulo Freire in Latin America through an approach termed ‘critical pedagogy’. Like Freire, Gramsci acknowledged the importance of outside ‘political educators’ as catalysts for change, but he also championed the role of ‘organic intellectuals’, who come from and remain culturally rooted in communities, combining knowledge and ideas with direct experience of class oppression. Pluralist theories Pluralist theories, which underpin model (b) in Chapter 2, regard power as being dispersed throughout society (albeit unevenly), with decision-making and resource allocation based on advocacy and negotiation between different stakeholder interests. Pluralism places the state in a mediating role: setting standards and upholding rights that protect the freedom of groups to further their political advantages, while preventing any one group from doing harm or undermining the liberty of others. In this view, community development contributes by supporting disadvantaged communities in making their voices heard and becoming politically active, so as to increase their bargaining power. Popple (2015) reminds us that the local and empiricist strategies that are derived from a pluralist analysis can be placatory and are unlikely to lead to significant change. Traditional pluralism has been criticised for its refusal to acknowledge the imbalance of power between different interests in society or indeed to recognise tendencies towards oligarchy, whereby

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decision-making remains with the few. It also fails to acknowledge the way that dominant hegemonies influence the application of power to favour certain interests and maintain existing social structures, such as patriarchy or capitalism. Jürgen Habermas, for example, is critical of ‘instrumental rationality’ in society (Habermas, 1984). He argues for new forms of ‘communicative action’, which can transform power relationships through reflection, dialogue and joint learning. Nonetheless, there are a number of implications for community development here. Practitioners can work with communities to develop their confidence and voice, so that they can organise effectively, create their own narratives, assert their interests and challenge prevailing hegemonies. Community development seeks to persuade power holders to engage in more equal consultation or partnership arrangements with communities. It can also create opportunities for communities to express and negotiate disagreements or to propose alternative solutions. Governance theories Governance theorists maintain that in today’s complex and fragmented society it is not possible for the state to govern on its own. Instead, it needs to bring new resources and knowledge into decision-making processes, involving a range of stakeholders across different sectors. The governance discourse highlights the potential for the institutions of government to ‘steer’ and to open up their democratic procedures to greater participation and more widespread deliberation. However, Davies and Spicer (2015) are critical of the concept of governance. They argue that it creates an illusion of democratic participation that obscures institutionalised power relations. Along with others, they argue that the networks of governance, like many other networks, tend to be biased, opaque and unaccountable. Far from being alternatives to markets and hierarchy, they have driven the extension of market relationships and retain the ‘shadow of hierarchy’ (see also Stoker, 2019), continuing to privilege certain interests over others. Davies and Chorianopoulos (2018) describe governance as a decaying paradigm that only works in times of growth. However,

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Jessop (2020) asserts that the move to forms of governance based on networks and heterarchy represents a fundamental qualitative shift in models of collective organisation and management in response to new technologies and a dramatic intensification of societal complexity. It allows connected units to operate more flexibly together without the need for hierarchical command and control. Nonetheless, he too criticises celebratory accounts of its potential, arguing that all forms of governance (in which he includes the market, state, networks and community) are prone to failure. Governance should therefore, he argues, be characterised by reflexivity, drawing on a variety of different modes as appropriate and seeking creative solutions, while acknowledging that any such solution will have limitations. There are different kinds of networks in the governance process, not all of which are closed. These ‘advocacy coalitions’ compete for influence and for the attention of ‘policy brokers’ (Sabatier, 1988) but are unlikely to sway the core beliefs of governing regimes. Nevertheless, they can shape the way in which problems are framed and the detail of plans to achieve common goals. Thus, the interest shown by the various levels of government in community engagement has the potential to give more disadvantaged groups an entrée into policy-making circles, bringing knowledge, legitimacy, influence and access to groups whose voices are seldom heard. This strand of theory suggests that there are opportunities for communities and those who work with them to influence policy and to have ‘agency’. If these opportunities are to be grasped, however, community workers need to understand the dynamics of policy making, help groups to gain access to policy makers and find allies within and outside the system. Increasingly, in today’s society, this will mean being aware of other interests beyond the state that influence policy and resource distribution in an area. It also requires an understanding of how power might work. Populism Before considering how power works, however, there is another approach to governing and democracy which has seen a resurgence

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over recent years. By 2015, populist parties had gained at least 10  per cent of voting support in 20  European countries. Stoker (2019) argues that populism is a response to the same set of forces as network governance, variously defined by commentators as the advance of modernity, the uncertainty of an increasingly complex society, the alienation driven by neoliberal capitalism, the privatisation of risk, and disillusion with democratic institutions. But populism is essentially anti-pluralist. It has been described as being based on simplistic explanations of complex social and economic problems, offering solutions based on the authenticity of ‘ordinary people’ rather than ‘out-of-touch’ experts or elites (Kenny et al, 2021). Significantly, it appeals to feelings rather than rational argument or even economic interests (Flinders, 2020; Mayo, 2020b) and can be fuelled by anger and fear. Populism thrives on a binary distinction of Us versus Them, often cutting across traditional class boundaries. ‘Them’ includes not only elites but the most disadvantaged in society (refugees, welfare recipients, immigrants and so on) represented as parasitic on the hard work of ordinary people. In some respects, populism could be said to be associated with the radical model of community development – the rise of the Tea Party in the US drew very successfully on the organising models promoted by Saul Alinsky. Certainly, there are parallels with community development more widely. Populist beliefs tend to embrace a common suspicion of globalisation and disillusion with established politics, along with a concern to maximise participation and amplify the voice or preserve the sovereignty of the people. However, although populism is not associated with any particular ideology, Kenny et  al (2021) contrast exclusionary right-wing populism with an inclusionary left-wing populism. Both forms of populism validate the anxieties and grievances of the ‘left behind’. But, despite its claim to rely on ‘the common sense of the people’, right-wing populism is not interested in democratic innovation or citizen education (Stoker, 2019), nor concerned with social justice in the terms community development understands it. Indeed, populist leaders are often drawn from the elites they demonise and reject the checks and balances of democratic accountability.

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Theories of power: structure or agency? Community development is concerned with promoting social justice, equality and inclusion, increasing people’s influence over the decisions that affect their lives. An understanding of power is therefore critical to effective practice, recognising the different ways in which power is denied to communities, but also the potential for communities to generate their own forms of power and affect the way power operates. How power works Steven Lukes (2005) identifies three dimensions of power. The first is where the powerful can directly dictate the actions of others; in the second, the powerful set the agenda or the terms on which issues are debated, what we might call the ‘rules of the game’. The third describes how the powerless internalise and take for granted the assertions of the powerful about what is and is not possible or desirable – power over ideas, akin to Gramsci’s concept of hegemony. Many of the theories of the state and democracy we have discussed so far assume that power is a zero-sum commodity – that the only way in which the powerless can gain power is to take it away from those who have it. A zero-sum analysis of power focuses on who has ‘power over’ whom and how that power is exercised. Alternative approaches, however, view power as fluid and diffuse. They see it as something that can be generated and reproduced – as ‘power to’ make things happen. These approaches consider how power is produced and what releases people’s capabilities or power to act. Theorists in this school see power as a positive-sum game, although much of the analysis still focuses on the ways in which power and knowledge are manipulated in order to encourage the oppressed to see their interests as consonant with those of the oppressor. Much of this thinking draws on the work of postmodernists, notably Michel Foucault. His early writings explored the way in which mechanisms of knowledge and power shape or ‘discipline’ the ‘subject’, using increasingly sophisticated technologies of surveillance to create, classify and control society (Rabinow, 1984). Indeed, the

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burgeoning of online communication, electronic devices and social media extends the potential for surveillance further than Foucault might ever have imagined – Bartos (2020) refers to the ‘panopticon in your pocket’. While his analysis focuses on power as domination, Foucault’s account does not see particular agents as possessing power – be they elites, classes or the state. Instead, he emphasises the ‘capillary’ nature of power and the way it operates through rather than on people. Central to his work is the argument that the exercise of power requires the compliance of ‘willing subjects’ and his exploration of how this compliance is secured. He emphasises in particular the significance of discourse as a vehicle through which knowledge and power are framed and transmitted. Foucault’s ideas have been taken up by the ‘governmentality’ school, which explores the way in which governing has become detached from government and increasingly takes place ’at a distance from’ the state. In this view, governing has become a domain of strategies, techniques and procedures through which different forces and groups in society attempt to render their programme operable (Miller and Rose, 2008). Governmentality theorists argue that through successive community programmes, local people are enrolled into governing themselves more effectively than the state ever could, ‘acting as their own overseers, while believing themselves … to be … making their own choices … and coming to their own conclusions’ (Lukes, 2005, p 106). Thus, while policies that promote localism, active citizenship and asset transfer can be seen as transferring power to communities, there is the ever-present danger in an increasingly unequal society that they make communities responsible for resolving problems which are often beyond their control – and easily blamed if they fail. Bourdieu provides us with another lens through which to view the operation of power. His concept of ‘habitus’ has been defined as ‘the unconscious dispositions acquired through daily life’ (Davies, 2011, p 63). It captures taken-for-granted patterns of thought, behaviour and taste that dispose agents to act and react in certain ways. Individuals operate in a series of ‘fields’, each of which has its own dominant institutions, operating logics, means of production and ways of

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understanding value. Individuals bring varying amounts of capital – economic, social and cultural – to these fields, depending on their background, education, wealth, networks and other attributes. Habitus structures the way they operate within them, privileging certain actors over others and reinforcing dominant power structures. The understanding of power in these different conceptions can be taken to mean that domination is inevitable and agency an illusion. Indeed, Foucault’s successors have argued that, although the new emphasis on ‘governance’ suggests that governing is happening ‘at a distance from the state’, in fact the state is furthering the neoliberal agenda: its power continues to operate in these new governance spaces – much as Lukes’ third face of power suggests. This analysis – and particularly Foucault’s emphasis on discourse – reflects Gramsci’s view of civil society as the site where popular consent is engineered, ensuring the cultural and political hegemony of the ruling class and capitalism’s stability. One example of the way discourse frames our world can be seen in the way the language of the new managerialism gained ascendancy in the 1990s and beyond with its continuing emphasis on measurement and impact. Another can be seen in the current prominence given to community resilience. Populists have used the power of words and slogans to great effect, as in Donald Trump’s Making America Great Again or Brexit’s Taking Back Control. Social media, meanwhile, can add another dimension, acting as largely unregulated platforms for conveying unsubstantiated assertions and conspiracy theories through memes and influencers. But this is an analysis that also offers grounds for optimism and shows that people can have agency. Gramsci, crucially, saw civil society as the arena where hegemonic ideas could be contested. In a similar vein, Foucault acknowledged that power could only be exercised over free subjects and therefore by its nature implies resistance: ‘Just as discourses are diffused throughout society and power is everywhere, so too can resistance be encountered at every point, in attempts to evade, subvert or contest strategies of power’ (Gaventa, 2003, p 2). Governmentality allows us to understand neoliberalism as an assembly of techniques and technologies that facilitate the process of governing. This can then be interpreted negatively or positively.

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A negative view would trace the relentless advance of the neoliberal agenda through multiple capillaries and agencies, seeing its power as inevitable; a positive view would recognise the multiple sites through which power operates and thus the potential for change ‘from below’. This opens the way not only for resistance but for the exercise of what Durose and Richardson (2015) call ‘constitutive power’, that is, forms of ‘power with’ that are co-produced, providing a synergy of experience and expertise. Nor is Bourdieu’s analysis as deterministic as it might sound. He acknowledged that at moments of crisis, critique and protest are possible because of the lack of fit between people’s subjective expectations and objective outcomes. Crossley (2003, p  49) goes further, describing how a history of contentious politics and the cultural capital it generates can create a ‘radical habitus’ sustained by support networks, social events and pedagogic agents within a field, thus reproducing radical culture over time. However, the advance of right-wing populist ideologies demonstrates that these processes are as likely to work against as for social justice. For community development, these theories and ideas underline the need to understand how power works: to challenge dominant discourses and taken-for-granted assumptions; to make power visible and open to debate. They suggest that there are opportunities for communities to construct their own narratives and theories of change and to promote alternative agendas rather than becoming complicit in those imposed by others. Levels and dimensions of power Empowerment has long been part of the language of community development and community policy, but it is a somewhat paradoxical concept. It can imply that power is bestowed on communities (and by implication can be taken away again). Previous sections have discussed some different theories about who has power and how power works. Sherry Arnstein’s (1969) famous ladder of participation addresses the question of how much power communities have in any situation. She suggests a spectrum of levels of influence from non-participation

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(manipulation and therapy), through degrees of tokenism (informing, consulting and placating) to degrees of citizen power (partnership, delegated power and citizen control). She argues, though, that many ‘participation’ exercises amount to little more than tokenism. This ladder has been used many times to gauge whether participation and ‘empowerment’ initiatives are giving communities real power over their services, economies and surroundings. It has been adapted and reworked but also criticised – for promoting a static view of power and assuming that ‘community control’ is always the peak of achievement. Communities are not a homogeneous entity and Arnstein’s analysis begs the question of how far those who are in control in the community are themselves sharing their power more widely. A more complex model for assessing the way in which power is working in communities has been developed by the Institute for Development Studies. Their power cube (www.powercube.net) combines different aspects of power: • The first aspect is the form power takes, equivalent to Lukes’ (2005) dimensions, described earlier in this chapter, and differentiating between visible (observable decision-making mechanisms), hidden (shaping or influencing the policy agenda), and invisible (shaping norms and beliefs). • The second relates to the levels at which power operates: household, local, national and global. • The third differentiates between the arenas in which power is acted out: ‘closed spaces’, where decisions are made by exclusive groups; ‘invited spaces’ where communities may be invited to join with external actors but on the terms of the host; and ‘popular or claimed spaces’, those that groups form for themselves, determining their own agendas and ways of operating. The model also extends the ‘power over’/‘power to’ distinction to include ‘power with’ (collective power, through organisation, solidarity and joint action) and ‘power within’ (personal self-confidence, often linked to culture, religion or other aspects of identity, a form of power that influences the thoughts and actions that are seen to be legitimate).

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The theories discussed here and the power frameworks with which the section finishes can help community development to understand how power is exercised. They show how communities can contest unfair power dynamics/relations, identify the potential to exercise agency and establish new ‘circuits of power’ (Clegg, 1989). They also address a central issue for community development – the question of ‘structure’ versus ‘agency’. How far is the fate of disadvantaged communities determined by external factors? And how far can communities challenge dominant forms of power? The next section explores these questions from an institutional perspective, asking how institutions frame the way that groups and organisations operate, or whether complexity theory offers a better understanding.

Organisations, institutions and systems: how agency is organised Many of the scholars we have referenced are critical of the individualistic explanations of human behaviour that we explored earlier. For new institutionalists, organisational behaviour is structured by the fields in which people operate and the ‘rules of the game’ in those fields. These rules may be determined by a variety of forces – competition, the state or professions – and they structure the way organisations behave in three ways (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983): • Coercive pressures are imposed by resource providers or cultural expectations. • Mimetic pressures lead organisations to copy other organisations that are seen to be successful, adopting ‘best practice’. • Normative pressures come from following professional or group norms and values. These pressures are particularly strong in times of uncertainty – with new ideas sometimes imposed, sometimes copied in the hope that this will provide competitive advantage, or simply accepted as the norm – ‘the way we do things now’. However, while communities need to recognise these pressures, they do not have to succumb to them. As

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Powell later acknowledged, there is scope for compromise or bargaining around external requirements and there are multiple sources of authority and guidance (see, for example, Powell, 1991). Organisations may combine influences from dissimilar sources and pressures may be partial, inconsistent or short-lived. Community development can therefore help communities to question the ‘rules of the game’ by challenging assumptions, for example about the way meetings should be run or how organisations should be structured. Groups can be encouraged to value their own processes, bring their own knowledge and experience to bear and find alternative models to follow. Systems and ecological approaches The rational choice theories that have been dominant in policy tend to focus on individual self-interest and assume linear models of change, treating individual actors as if they exist in a vacuum. But some of the theories discussed so far argue for a holistic approach, understanding the behaviour of individuals, groups and organisations as part of an integrated field or ‘system’ with interdependent parts. Systems models consider the whole set of organisations or stakeholders operating in a given situation, and the way in which interactions between them influence each other’s behaviour and result in collective impacts that are difficult to attribute to any particular cause or intervention (Cabaj and Weaver, 2016; Lowe, 2017). Complexity paradigms, for example, highlight the connectivity of life, suggesting that even small-scale events can result in major, unpredictable consequences (the butterfly effect) (Capra, 1996). They tend to see social progress in terms of the emergence of new solutions or spontaneous and evolving forms of self-organisation in ways that contrast with more linear explanations of change. They talk about ‘operating on the edge of chaos’ or in the ‘zone of creative complexity’ between stability and instability, turbulence and equilibrium (Waldrop, 1994). Although complexity thinking has its critics and is sometimes difficult to apply in practice, it can help to explain two phenomena characteristic of communities operating as adaptive living systems: the occurrence of familiar patterns of collective action; and the

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significance of happenstance conversations and unplanned events (Gilchrist, 2019). The implications of complexity theory for community development are that change cannot be engineered or directed. Helping communities to develop connections creates an environment that allows new groupings to emerge, enables change and sustains community activity. It also reminds us that there are many ways to interpret and influence the reality around us and that most systems contain ambiguities and contradictions that communities must navigate, even at neighbourhood level. As such, it encourages us to move beyond deadening binary explanations of the world and be open to unexpected disruption (Westoby, 2021).

Social movement theory We described earlier the distinction that the power cube makes between closed, invited, and ‘popular’ or ‘claimed’ spaces. Social movements are perhaps the clearest manifestation of ‘claimed’ spaces – natural experiments in power, legitimation and democracy (Crossley, 2002). Social movement theory borrows from a range of disciplines to explore the political opportunities for change, the ways in which resources are mobilised and how issues are framed. All three elements have obvious relevance for community development. One important factor in creating possibilities for challenge or change, according to social movement theory, is the opportunity structure. Changes in elites and/or a transfer of power in government at national and local level can prompt shifts in political alignments, with conflicts between elites, new access to decision makers and the potential for new alliances. These changes may introduce new institutional provisions for engagement and participation. Political opportunities are not, however, enough. The potential to exploit them will vary according to cultural and sociopolitical factors, while doors may close again. So, it is important to understand the factors that make for the successful mobilisation and organisation of resources. Social movement theory stresses the importance of networks in connecting people’s personal understanding of their situation to

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collective action. Embedding a movement in existing networks allows people to make sense of their situation and sustain a collective identity (Melucci, 1996; Castells, 2012). But theorists also stress the role of boundary-spanning connections in spreading the movement’s base beyond a narrow homogeneous core. They highlight the function of campaigning organisations as incubators of talent, collectors and disseminators of information, and springboards for mobilisation (Caniglia and Carmin, 2005). Social movement organisations (SMOs) and networks can help to keep movements alive during periods of repression or through ebbs and flows of interest. They allow people to stay in touch with one another, learn about new developments and take action should the need arise. But opportunity and mobilisation are not enough on their own to account for collective action. A third element of social movement theory relates to the importance of framing – the meanings and explanations that people bring to their situation (McAdam et al, 1996). As our earlier discussion of discourse and terminology implied, power can flow as much through meaning as resources. Movements based around feminism, disability equality, ethnic identity and sexual orientation have demonstrated this, challenging the predominantly male, white, able-bodied and heteronormative discourses that have framed reality, and progressively changing the way we use language. Melucci was among those who argued that traditional mass movements had given way to a new wave of social movements, organised around identity rather than class, seeking social and cultural transformation as well as political change (Melucci, 1988). Since then, Castells (2012) has described how new technologies, like the internet and social media, have given birth to post-organisational forms of politics, supplementing and possibly supplanting traditional political parties. These new forms, he argues, organise laterally through networks rather than hierarchically. Recent examples include XR, BLM and #MeToo, as well as democracy movements in Hong Kong, Myanmar and Belarus. For community development, therefore, social movement theory highlights the importance of identifying and capitalising on opportunities for change. It stresses the value of framing issues in

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ways that expose and challenge dominant narratives but also capture the attention of both communities and policy makers. It validates the importance of organising through networks, opportunities that are enhanced by the web-based technologies.

Conclusion Effective community development relies on the idea of praxis: practical action based on informed discussion and reflection. If social change is to be achieved, there needs to be a continual interchange between theory and practice, each learning from the other. But theorists develop their thinking within different schools and disciplines and seldom enter into dialogue with one another. In this chapter we have introduced briefly some of the theories that can help us to think about how communities work, how they interact with the state and their wider environment, how power works and how change might be achieved. In the following chapters we will be looking at the way community development puts its values and ideas into practice.

SUMMARY • Theories of community generally differentiate between the organic, local communities associated with the past and the more instrumental, dispersed communities of contemporary society. • Social capital theory suggests that social bonds and connections are as important to the health of society and democracy as other forms of capital. Bridging and linking social capital are both needed if social change is to be achieved but they can sometimes be in tension. • Psychosocial theories explore how people make sense of the situations they find themselves in and what motivates them. They also help us to understand group dynamics and social identities. • Theories of self- and collective efficacy emphasise the importance of context and collective experience. The structural factors that affect communities often undermine efficacy, but community

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workers can play a role in generating more positive experiences and rebuilding confidence. Theories of the state can be differentiated between those that see state and community in opposition, and pluralist models in which the state mediates between different interests. The former underpin a radical model of community development; the latter suggest a role as broker helping groups to negotiate the system. Theories of power can be based on a zero- or positive-sum model. The former tend to emphasise structure, but the latter suggest the potential for agency. The power cube developed by the Institute for Development Studies can help groups to explore different dimensions of power. Theorists show how power can be hidden and how discourse shapes our perceptions of the world. Community development has an important role in exposing hidden assumptions and drawing out alternative ways of understanding different experiences. Institutional theory explains the pressures on groups and communities to conform, but in a complex world the interactions between different stakeholders can lead to new forms of organising. Community development can learn from social movement theory about ways to identify and maximise opportunities for social change.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES A short guide can give only a brief introduction to the different theoretical approaches that inform community development. Readers are strongly advised to explore the wider literature by following references in the chapter, but there are some additional key texts suggested below. There are also important bodies of theory that we have not been able to touch on here: on the economy, for example, although those seeking alternatives to conventional economic theories will find Elinor Ostrom’s (1990) work on the commons to be of interest, as well as Kate Raworth’s (2017) Doughnut economics.

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Steven Lukes’ (2005) Power: A radical view is an excellent and accessible guide to different theories of power. The power cube, along with a much fuller discussion of its evolution and ideas, can be found online: www.powercube.net. A thorough discussion of governmentality can be found in Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose’s (2008) book Governing the present, particularly the chapter ‘The death of the social’, and the section within it called ‘The birth of the community’. Bob Jessop (2020) provides a much more detailed account of governance theory in relation to civil society than we could do justice to here, and Jonathan Davies (2011) also offers a valuable critique of governance theory from a Gramscian perspective. Readers can also find an introduction to Foucault’s writing in Rabinow’s The Foucault reader (1984). Writing specifically for community development readers, Margaret Ledwith (2020) provides an excellent introduction to Gramsci and Freire. Melling and Pilkington’s (2018) book on Paulo Freire and transformative education will be of particular interest to those working with young people in communities. Peter Somerville’s (2016) Understanding community explores social capital and Bourdieu’s habitus in some detail, while Catherine Durose and Liz Richardson (2015) provide a valuable analysis of positive (constitutive) and zero-sum (constituted) power in policy making. Eversley (2019) is also well worth reading for a comprehensive overview of relevant theory. Two books in the Rethinking community development series provide useful resources on class (Shaw and Mayo, 2016a) and populism (Kenny et  al, 2021), while Craig (2017) provides a valuable resource for community workers seeking to address racism (see also Chattoo et al, 2019). Volume 55 of the Community Development Journal focuses on intersectionality (2020). Hoggett and Miller (2000) and Jasper (1998) offer useful insights into the role of emotions in community development and social movements respectively. The present authors have also explored these ideas further. Alison Gilchrist’s (2019) The well-connected community explores how networking can be used by the community development worker, while much of the theory on community and power introduced in this chapter is discussed in more detail in Marilyn Taylor’s (2011) Public policy in the community.

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5 Effective and ethical community development As we saw in Chapter 2, community development is fundamentally concerned with enabling communities to organise collectively and gain greater influence over decisions that affect their lives. Its purposes are: • to promote the common good; • to challenge injustices; and • to nurture individual and collective capabilities. Community development has a number of core commitments that workers strive to incorporate into their beliefs and practice. It is primarily concerned with mobilising people and assets to overcome disadvantage. It is frequently deployed in places where the whole community is stigmatised and excluded, for example in areas where there has been social breakdown or long-term failure of the local economy. Such communities are characterised by low levels of voluntary activity and often lack suitable spaces to meet socially and to organise. Consequently, within these populations, informal networks may be unravelling and there will be further tensions caused by different forms of oppression, such as transphobia or ageism. Community development interventions sometimes start from supposed problems and deficits, because these difficulties are constantly eroding the capability of communities to tackle the issues they face without additional support and funding. Consequently, 81

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existing strengths and assets may be overlooked that have enabled communities to survive, if not exactly thrive. This chapter will look at the methods, resources and attitudes that assist communities to develop a sense of their own rights and responsibilities, while growing their capacity for collective action. It reminds us that important principles underpin community development and considers what is needed to support effective practice, including recognised skills and techniques. In doing so, it will address long-standing debates over whether community development is best seen as practical activism, an occupation, a profession, an intervention or a movement. Community development frequently lays claim to a radical political stance associated with ‘doing good’ and promoting social justice, but there has been less discussion about what Banks calls the ‘micro-ethics of daily practice’ (2019, p 3). This is especially important in the pursuit of both equity and equality. What counts as ‘fair’? And at what levels can these issues reasonably be addressed? This is a dilemma we will return to in the final chapters when we consider how to link micro-level impacts with the goal of ‘changing the world’. Not everyone who works with communities can be described as a community development worker. Workers in other disciplines may find their roles stretched to perform aspects of community development even though the words do not appear in their job titles and, as already acknowledged, this broad understanding is covered by the term ‘community practice’. Following reductions in state-funded public services and building on the role played by the voluntary and community sectors during the pandemic, many local councils and larger housing associations now recognise their vital contribution and envisage more partnership models for service delivery. Effective community development needs competent practitioners with access to necessary resources and support. While trying to operate within a general set of principles and processes, in real-life situations workers may find these more complicated to implement than they sound, and will need to find an ethical balance between the ideal and what is feasible. This involves thinking about emotions, roles, ‘self-identity’, relationships and the perceptual/political

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frameworks of other players (Banks, 2018), which poses dilemmas and practical challenges.

Understanding the community In addition to generic skills and values that can be applied in any role or setting, community workers must have a good understanding of the context in which they are operating: the demographics of the local population, power dynamics, recurrent difficulties, relevant policies and funding opportunities. Community development starts from ‘where people are at now’, not where outsiders think they should be. This is known as a ‘bottom-up’ approach and contrasts with ‘top-down’ models where the agenda is set by external targets, area programmes or funders’ priorities. Community workers need to develop knowledge about specific communities and their current circumstances: expectations, recent history, cultural traditions, customs and strengths, as well as their hopes for the future. Do people from different backgrounds mix or are there antagonisms that tend to keep community members apart on a day-to-day basis? Other factors to investigate might be types of employment, housing tenure and layout, migration patterns, living standards and health. How does the local economy function and how has it changed over the last few years? What about transport connections and the reputation of the area? How do residents define their ‘community of belonging’, for example in relation to social identities and physical boundaries, such as railways and main roads? What assets and amenities does the locality enjoy? What is lacking? Are there plans for its regeneration or other improvement strategies being developed by the authorities? And most importantly, how are things experienced by community members: what do they want to see changed and what do they want to preserve? Even community workers who are already familiar with a community can benefit from mentally stepping aside in order to develop a well-rounded and accurate portrait of what’s really going on there, a portrait that isn’t just based on what they are told, either informally or officially. A newly arrived community worker can

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usefully spend their first few weeks getting to know the community by simply being ‘out and about’, casually visiting popular or significant venues and dropping by places for impromptu chats. ‘Loitering’ in different places and at different times of the day is time usefully spent in building a picture of the key players, organisations, networks, immediate pressures and longer-term issues. Regular door-knocking is a good way to contact and talk with less vocal individuals who may nonetheless care passionately about where they live and have interesting ideas about what could be improved. These conversations, involving radical listening, are core features of the community organising model. They can be fairly intense and time-consuming, but they build essential relationships, reaching out to residents who are not already involved in the various local groups and activities. Crucially, getting under the skin of a community requires the worker to be able to glean information from observations and informal encounters and begin to understand the meanings expressed through casual remarks, stories and local conventions. Information can also be conveyed non‑verbally, through body language, street sounds, graffiti or the general appearance of buildings. The asset-based model emphasises the need to discover and build on community strengths. It is useful to undertake some kind of mapping exercise to find the range of skills, talents, expertise, traditions and physical resources that are available. This can be achieved through involving community members in participatory action research, systematic community audits to draw up their own community profile or using co-produced research to investigate a particular issue. There are lots of creative ways of gathering evidence and ideas using film, video boxes, photovoice, careful observation, reading relevant official reports and scanning the local press. Many villages and neighbourhoods host online community forums where local information, debates and announcements can be found. Related Facebook pages often carry dialogue about community issues, and it may be worth looking at the websites of voluntary organisations that serve different communities living in the area. In order to work effectively with a community, the worker needs a sound, up-to-date map of the physical and psychosocial geography of

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an area or population, the significance of different landmark buildings and boundaries as well as usage of important community facilities. Visiting the spaces and places where people regularly gather is an efficient way of contacting people, for example around school gates, young people’s ‘hang-outs’, outside the mosque after Friday prayers, around local shops, or attending local sporting and cultural events. Community workers should know how to access relevant information from formal sources such as the media, census figures, surveys, or data on levels of deprivation. This means being able to interpret and apply the findings from recent research or consultation exercises. For areas in the UK, Local Insight is a service provided by Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion for public and community organisations that collates statistics from official indicators of deprivation covering employment (and unemployment) rates, health, housing conditions and demographic patterns.1 These can also be obtained from council websites and broken down into small areas. Care should be taken in how this information is interpreted to avoid false generalisations and labelling communities in terms of deficiencies. Nonetheless, the problems that a statistical profile reveals often match the issues that communities themselves want to address.

Working with people individually and in groups Community development involves working directly with all sorts of people in all sorts of roles. ‘People skills’ are essential to building these relationships, finding out what’s important to community members and helping people to work together. Community workers must be active and empathic observers and listeners, able to establish an authentic rapport with a wide range of people. It is vital to be able to develop trust, respect and mutual confidence. Community development encourages people to think creatively and collaboratively to devise solutions to shared issues, develop community leadership and resolve conflicts. This requires skills in persuasion and informal coaching, on a one-to-one basis or as part of the support given to a group. This kind of group work may involve facilitating discussions, helping members to co-operate, addressing difficult dynamics and

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occasionally diffusing tensions by mediating between individuals or factions. Meetings are an important aspect of community development, providing a forum where communities can share experiences, discuss alternatives and take decisions about what needs to be done. Workers often play a role in setting up the meetings, publicising and servicing them. They may even act as chair, at least in the initial stages, drawing up an agenda and keeping order. Meetings should normally be as inclusive as possible and ensure maximum participation, so knowing when and where to hold them, as well as how to set agendas, arrange the furniture layout in the room, take minutes, prepare posters or communicate through social media are all useful skills. Increasingly, groups have found ways to conduct their business online, to organise social gatherings and even to run workshops using digital platforms. While not ideal, these virtual meetings have allowed organisations to continue with discussions and decision-making throughout the pandemic and are likely to become common practice.

Dealing with differences and difficulties Community workers need to understand the diversity of cultures and abilities in the communities they are working with and must be sensitive to individual differences as well as being aware of power inequalities and strains between different groups. They will encourage individuals to take on roles or tasks that will stretch them a little and to question prejudices or behaviours that are oppressive. This may involve dealing with negative emotions such as fear, resentment, anger and hurt, in addition to challenging damaging and discriminatory attitudes. An important role for practitioners is to maintain an overview of the community’s interests and potential for growth so that they can work with people to respond positively to changing circumstances and not necessarily defend the status quo. By encouraging community members to ‘let go’ of cherished ideas that no longer work and enabling new forms of collaboration to emerge, community workers can make a really valuable contribution. It is therefore crucial to focus on collective benefits and community goals

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rather than the specific needs and desires of individuals, however articulate, angry or assertive they might be. Particular skills are needed in knowing how and when to challenge people constructively so that unhelpful attitudes and personal antipathies do not hold back progress, discourage participation or prevent people from learning from one another (Mayo, 2020a). However, it is important to be sensitive to how such interventions might be perceived and situations are rarely straightforward in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or who is most influential or disadvantaged. In order to be both ethical and effective, community workers must be aware of how they themselves are perceived by community members, as well as the flow of influence between people who are peers and counterparts, some of whom may experience different forms of unacknowledged or entrenched oppression (Pyle, 2019). Community workers are often on hand to help groups and organisations that run into difficulties. These may be caused by undemocratic or burnt-out leadership, failure to attract new members, personality clashes, ideological disagreements or competing interests, reflecting internal tensions or changing circumstances. They may require conciliation, a rethink of an organisation’s priorities or a deeper cultural change to allow alternative agendas to emerge. Facilitating these discussions, advising on transitions and dealing with the inevitable fall-out are important aspects of the community development role, which demand high levels of negotiating skill and insight.

Establishing formal organisations Generally, the formal features of organisations provide the stability that sustains collective visions and voluntary action over the long term. Constitutions and standing orders enable both continuity and legacy by recording objectives and establishing the procedures that members need to follow. Transparent decision-making, accurate recordkeeping and formal reporting mechanisms ensure that an organisation maintains momentum in the medium term, refreshing its officers and staff and addressing conflicts of interest without personal rancour or corruption. Governance frameworks allow an organisation to function

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independently of its individual members by setting out powers, duties, roles, liability and internal democracy. This is a distinct advantage if disputes arise or in making sure that tasks are fairly allocated and followed through. As we saw in Chapter 2, organisational development is a core aspect of community development and there may come a point, usually as a group expands or seeks greater influence, when it chooses to turn itself into a more formal, perhaps legally incorporated, entity. The development of organisational protocols often accompanies growing ambition, financial responsibilities and a widening remit. These are deemed necessary for ‘properly incorporated’ or mature organisations; indeed, they are often required by potential funders or partners. While formal procedures are certainly useful they can inadvertently exclude those who find constitutional niceties boring or baffling. It is sensible to let organisations evolve organically according to changing needs and functions rather than imposing an ‘off-the-shelf ’ format. Legal incorporation is neither inevitable nor necessary. The best course of action might be for a group to remain relatively informal and delegate formal responsibilities (for example regarding insurance or financial administration) to an already constituted body. Nevertheless, ‘incorporating’ a group has an advantage because it is the organisation, rather than individual members or trustees, that enters into contracts, such as leases for premises or to employ staff. If things go wrong and the board or committee has acted reasonably and with ‘due diligence’, then the individual decision makers are protected from financial and legal liability. The community worker should therefore be able to advise the group on the different forms of incorporation. In the UK there are a number of models to consider regarding legal incorporation, including becoming a charitable incorporated organisation (CIO), a community interest company (CIC), a community land trust or a community benefit society (BenCom, formerly known as industrial and provident societies). These options allow different modes of operating, with or without charitable status, and require different governing documents. It may be advisable to seek legal advice before deciding on format, as this can help groups to consider what they want to do and which legal status suits their aims.

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The question of whether to register as a charity is a separate issue. It depends on the overall purpose and whether the associated restrictions (for example on trading and some political activities) would limit the organisation’s scope for generating income or campaigning. If the organisation aims to become financially sustainable through trading, then it might be wise to set up a social or community enterprise. There are numerous guides available from the relevant national infrastructure organisations to help choose the right format and think through the implications of moving through different stages (McMorland and Erakovic, 2013; www.mycommunity.org.uk). One obvious gain from incorporation is that the organisation is normally in a better position to attract external resources and official recognition. Workers may assist with this transition to a more formal structure by suggesting how the group might devise its internal governance procedures, such as explaining officer roles and collective responsibilities, elections or sub-groups. They are also likely to support the organisation in ensuring its relations with both the wider community and partners. This is important because organisations that don’t refresh their membership, maintain their profile and evolve with changing circumstances can become moribund or implode altogether. Nevertheless, on some occasions and perhaps as a last resort, the best course of action may be to assist an organisation to end, while preserving the best possible legacy. This might be accomplished by merging with another, closing down or going into temporary hibernation. Knowing how to help an organisation ‘shut up shop’ in a dignified way has real value in terms of acknowledging, indeed celebrating, the group’s achievements, tying up loose financial and administrative ends and leaving a lasting impression in the community.

Networking and engagement Within communities, community development widens the pool of ‘active citizens’ and those willing to act as dependable ‘team players’, by helping them to connect with one another and contribute to community life. It supports individuals to gain confidence, skills and knowledge to act as community organisers, leaders or representatives.

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At community level, a loose network of groups, forums and organisations ensures that these people are sustained in their roles and held accountable for their decisions, without becoming a clique. Effective networking also helps to build bridges between different sections of the population, taking into account diverse interests and identities, while addressing issues around equity, privilege and power. Community groups and voluntary organisations rarely operate completely independently. They form part of a rich ecological system sometimes known as civil society, the ‘third’ or ‘social’ sector. In areas where this is thriving, there will be strong overlapping networks linking individuals, collective action groups, public agencies and private businesses. Involvement in these allows groups to share their ideas with like-minded people and to work collaboratively. Community workers can foster connections by organising activities that bring people together to share resources, combine efforts and develop services. They can help groups to forge alliances with other organisations in order to overcome a particular blockage or to seize an opportunity that is too big for a group to deal with on its own, for example by setting up a consortium to pursue a contract to run facilities on behalf of the council. Community development is vital for increasing the influence of communities over the design and delivery of public services, either directly through procurement or through involvement in cross-sectoral partnerships. As well as directly supporting communities to organise independently, community workers can help them to develop informal links to statutory agencies, which provide access to information about the wider policy or financial context. They also play an important role in facilitating engagement and consultation. Sometimes this means providing forums where council officers or other professionals can meet with residents to debate how services can best be provided locally. At another level, the worker may support the development of collaborative working, liaising between sectors to ensure that those involved understand what contribution they can make and easing some of the inevitable tensions that arise due to clashes in organisational cultures, competing interests or misunderstood conventions. At the same time, community members may need support to ensure that

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their views and expertise gain influence among the professionals in multi-agency coalitions. Co‑ordination across organisational and sectoral boundaries has been shown to be an essential feature of community development practice (Gilchrist, 2019). By acting together on common issues and engaging with public bodies, community members develop a stronger voice and greater negotiating power. Community workers need therefore to be aware of the constellation of groups, partnerships and organisations that make up the local community, voluntary sector and relevant services. They need good brokering, mediating and interpreting skills when working across boundaries and may find themselves translating official jargon into language that community members can relate to. From their usual position on the periphery or outside large institutions, community workers often have a good overview of how separate functions operate in the community and find themselves helping colleagues in different departments to adopt a more joined-up approach. Community practitioners employed by statutory agencies – for example, working for a police authority or public health body – have a crucial role in maintaining relations with communities, particularly the most disaffected or marginalised (Butcher et al, 2007). They can provide a strong and sustainable foundation for co-production and citizen engagement by creating the conditions and capacity for more equal dialogue and co-operation, challenging taken-for-granted cultures within their own organisation and enabling their colleagues to understand and work with communities more effectively. They can help their colleagues to change structures and procedures that exclude or inhibit community empowerment, introducing alternative forms of communication and consultation that encourage more diverse and democratic participation.

Resources and support Political rhetoric sometimes seems to imply that communities can deliver services for nothing by mobilising the unpaid labour of volunteers. The initial grassroots response to the COVID-19 lockdown

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has been hailed as a resurgence of community spirit and pro-social behaviour. However, the rapid proliferation of mutual aid groups was born of necessity as well as compassion. It may not be sustainable in some of the poorest areas without community-led infrastructure and support from paid workers (Macmillan, 2020; Taylor and Wilson, 2020a). It would be an easy mistake for government to assume that these mostly informal networks can be mobilised to run communitybased amenities over the long term without external funding. Social action and volunteering are generally enhanced and more sustainable if people have access to professional support, including community development practitioners. Communities also need money to run their activities, albeit on a small scale. They often struggle to raise funds through jumble sales, raffles, sponsored events or membership dues. These may cover basic running costs but do not allow for growth and innovation. Furthermore, these forms of income require a great deal of effort from already stretched activists and call on the generosity of community members who may have few resources. To rely on this is both unfair and unrealistic. Community workers play a key role in helping groups to obtain core costs and the resources they need to achieve their goals. Usually this is some kind of external funding, which might be used to pay for staff or equipment and may result in the acquisition of a building or other facilities such as a minibus or an all-weather sports court. Community workers should therefore be competent in all aspects of resource management and fundraising, including: knowledge of potential sources for grants and donations; being able to work with communities to draw up a budget and put together an application for funding; and a grasp of financial accounting to make sure that money is properly spent and recorded. Communities may also need advice on complying with legal and policy requirements, for example, regarding insurance, safeguarding, health and safety, which can be complicated and time-consuming. Even quite small grants for community development can make an enormous difference, such as providing seedcorn funding for new or experimental initiatives, or allowing groups to lease vital equipment, to arrange an exchange visit or to hire a meeting room. Ideally, these

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grants should be readily available and without strings attached, perhaps at the discretion of a local councillor or community worker. Some areas have experimented with communities having control of a pot of funds that is ringfenced for community benefit. Grant allocations can be made at meetings, usually open to community members or representatives who listen to the applicants and agree, sometimes by voting, where the money can best be invested. Such exercises are themselves forms of community development because they are empowering: building links across communities; raising awareness; and enhancing a variety of skills, including presentation, advocacy and negotiation. They need careful preparation and facilitation to make sure that the procedures are transparent and fair. Access to or, better still, control of some kind of communal hub can make a huge difference. This could be as basic as a community room in a block of flats, right through to a purpose-built centre with offices, performance space, sports facilities, a cafe and meeting rooms. But while current policy on the transfer of assets from local authorities to community ownership can make vital resources available for community use, it can also leave communities struggling to maintain these amenities unless they receive some level of financial or community development support. Workers should therefore know how to attract (and manage) funding for community projects and prepare basic business plans for the takeover of assets. Neither community workers nor residents need to understand everything about all of these matters, but they should know how to obtain advice and expertise, for example, from infrastructure support organisations such as local councils for voluntary service (CVSs). There are significantly fewer of these since austerity cuts reduced local government spending but those that have survived provide specialist services to the third sector, including formal training in committee skills, leadership, governance and fundraising.

Opportunities to learn When getting involved in running community activities, community workers find they need to develop new skills and knowledge, for

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example in order to run effective and democratic meetings, to take minutes, to organise events or services and so on. Perhaps more importantly, they should be able to share this knowledge and these skills with community members so as not to encourage over-dependency. This could be through workshops, informal buddying or shadowing schemes for willing residents who want to take on these roles. This is sometimes known as capacity building and involves developing people’s confidence as well as specific know-how among community members. Informal situations provide valuable opportunities for communication and learning, through discussion, skill-sharing and mentoring. Unfortunately, the expertise of community members gained from experience or passed down through custom and practice is habitually disregarded by professionals and seldom validated in ways requiring external verification. Drawing on Freire’s (1972) model of social pedagogy, community workers play their part in supporting informal education, encouraging reflection and dialogue so that community members become individually and collectively more confident and more powerful. Action learning sets and enquiry-led learning methods represent excellent models for facilitated peer education. These offer structured group spaces to explore topics and real-life challenges through open questioning, investigation of alternative explanations, generating potential solutions and useful learning from what happens in practice. Both approaches promote a positive and supportive mindset that emphasises the value of critical thinking. Many paid community workers start out as activists, leaders and volunteers, so encouraging this collective model of experiential learning is important for people to access and advance careers in community development. Specific training may be required in a range of areas: financial accounting; health, safety and hygiene regulations; safeguarding procedures for children and vulnerable adults; all aspects of information technology; staff recruitment and supervision; equalities policy and practice; or any number of topics which are unfamiliar or where existing knowledge needs updating. In their role as trainers and educators, community workers will need skills in running workshops, supporting action learning and

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facilitating discussion, as well as knowing how to question and learn in order to improve their own practice. For people who are new to community development, there are taster sessions or standalone workshops offering an introduction to community development or a chance to develop skills in group work, fundraising, running meetings or similar techniques. These can be complemented by short accredited courses relevant to particular applications for community development, such as health, social investment, equalities and so on. ‘Communities of practice’ are another avenue for collective learning, bringing practitioners together from different teams to pool ideas and reflect on their experiences.

Working with volunteers and activists Much community development is delivered and managed through unpaid voluntary effort and so working with people who are giving their time and energy is a normal facet of community development. The term ‘volunteer’ is used here to include anyone who has made a free choice to be involved in a community group or activity and is not being paid for their contribution (though they may receive out-ofpocket expenses). Individuals are motivated by many different interests and emotions, and these may change as people get more confident, perhaps moving into roles with greater responsibility (Ockenden and Hutin, 2008; Rochester, 2013). A volunteer could therefore be a parent concerned about air pollution or a childminder helping to run the local playgroup. The committee members of a tenants’ group are volunteers, as are the community representatives on the crime reduction partnership board. After-school clubs, sports associations and youth centres may employ trained and paid leaders but are often assisted by a team of dedicated volunteers, all of whom have to be vetted and supervised. Community activists are also volunteers, often putting in long hours in pursuit of a local vision or campaigning to right a wrong. People who are active in their own communities, whether driven by self-interest, altruism, fairness or desperation, do not necessarily see themselves as ‘volunteers’ in the traditional sense and they may have an uneasy relationship with paid community workers. Some

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community members act together out of solidarity or neighbourliness. Or they might be disgruntled or neglected service users who want to improve things for themselves and others. Many become involved because decent or much-needed provision is simply not available for themselves or the people they care about. They may not require, or indeed may resent, external support or supervision, for example, from volunteer co-ordinators, even in the guise of community developers. During the COVID-19 emergency, there was an upsurge in unpaid collective action, with many donating their time to produce muchneeded PPE (personal protective equipment) or to help out at foodbanks and vaccination centres. While many wish to continue their community involvement, they do not want to be taken for granted. Working with volunteers is quite different from dealing with paid staff with clear job descriptions and defined status and responsibilities. Some community activists lack confidence, so appreciation is welcome from whatever quarter. Others can display dogmatic arrogance or single-minded devotion to their ‘cause’. It requires great skill and diplomacy to find out how individual members of the community can most effectively contribute towards achieving shared goals and be rewarded for their efforts. While volunteers are to some extent free agents, there are inevitably expectations (and some regulations) that govern their involvement, especially where the welfare of children, young people or vulnerable adults is concerned. Helping volunteers to make full use of their talents, to surprise themselves, to learn from each other and to work as part of a team is essential to community development. Volunteers come from all walks of life. They range from highperforming mavericks, used to getting their own way, through to committed and enthusiastic committee members, including individuals with low self-esteem and possible mental health issues. As well as offering much-needed time and skills, they may bring emotional demands and discriminatory attitudes. Such difficulties need careful handling and clarity. They can be compounded when the worker is line-managed by a member (often the chair) of a voluntary management board who may have insufficient time and experience to carry out this role properly.

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Communication and knowledge management Although community workers may be employed by voluntary organisations, the focus for their work is usually at the level of the community sector: the smaller, less formal groups and networks that have fewer resources and are often run almost exclusively through voluntary effort. The existence of these ‘shadowy’, ‘do-it-yourself ’ and ‘below the radar’ groups is often precarious and less visible to outsiders (Chanan, 1992; Richardson, 2008; Phillimore and McCabe, 2010), so knowing what they do and how to contact them is important. Concerns have been expressed about the ownership of information gathered by and about communities in relation to data protection and the role of paid staff so care must be taken about how this information is stored and shared. There are also more fundamental issues about status and respect for ‘local’ knowledge and residents’ rights to determine how their area is described. Community workers should consider carefully how information is communicated, whether through the informal grapevine of gossip and rumour, in official directories and reports or via online platforms. Sophisticated databases allow the interrogation of vast repositories of knowledge relating to communities and their environments. Young people in particular make extensive use of these for learning and campaigning and, for most communities, social media have become familiar and mostly accessible channels for communication and organising (Vromen et al, 2015). Despite continuing disparities in digital skills and internet connectivity, innovative software has enabled a whole new dimension of community development, with local websites, blogs and chat forums providing cheap and fast mechanisms for inter- and intra-community communication (Local Trust, 2020; McCabe and Harris, 2021). The use of information technology and web-based forums has developed exponentially in recent years. Early evidence suggests that these enable a larger range of people to engage with local decision-making and collective initiatives, particularly among those who may be reluctant to attend public meetings or become involved in face-to-face interactions.

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Presentation and media skills are valuable for communities to counter false information, myths and negative reputations. Community workers can work with local people to challenge these narratives and to offer positive alternatives and images that change public awareness and expectations. Community workers are often themselves trusted sources of information. They have a responsibility to share what they know (unless there are grounds for confidentiality) and to enable communities to develop their own modes of communication. This means understanding the dynamics of local channels and cultures: the mechanisms and conventions for sharing ideas and knowledge; the way information flows through community networks; and the means by which communities can articulate their views to leaders, representatives and decision makers. Some residents may object to the use of certain media, such as Facebook, for practical, ethical or political reasons, so judgements may have to be made to justify or reject their use. However, communities rarely speak with one ‘voice’ and community workers need to be confident in facilitating discussion, interpreting different worldviews, managing dissent and discouraging online trolling. Encouraging dialogue and debate is a crucial aspect of the role, and this can take considerable skill, especially when feelings are running high.

Using and influencing policies Communities are part of larger social, economic and political systems, so community workers need to be able to operate within these but also to attempt to change them where necessary. They should have some political acumen, understand the policy-making process and know how to be effective on committees and working groups. Having a sound understanding of the wider context and systemic pressures will make them more effective as negotiators and, on occasion, able to take an ethical stance in opposing the abuse of power or insider information. An effective community worker therefore needs to be aware of the current policy environment, including pertinent legal rights and responsibilities and, perhaps most importantly, any opportunities for

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political leverage for influencing decisions or gaining resources, such as through asset transfer, service contracts or programme funding. This requires a good knowledge of local decision-making structures – council committees as well as any forums where residents can talk with officers and elected politicians. There may also be cross-sectoral partnerships and consortiums operating to deliver services, while community consultation exercises will pop up from time to time. An important role for the worker is to make sure that community members are able to engage with these or become valued partners. Careful judgement and debate is required in deciding whether taking up such options will be worthwhile or simply divert energy and time from community efforts to achieve more meaningful change. An effective community worker will be alert to opportunities to exploit uncertainties or divisions between decision makers, or for finding allies in unexpected places. As Chapter  4 suggests, there is much to be learnt from the experience of social movement activists, especially in relation to levering open ‘cracks’ in the system and mobilising people around a common cause. The practice of community development is also potentially affected by a plethora of policies and organisational procedures, some of which may be contradictory or obscure.

Evaluation: capturing learning and measuring change If community development is to be taken seriously as a strategic and professional intervention, then it must be able to show what difference it makes for communities, as well as delivering ‘value for money’ in terms of desired policy and social outcomes. There are several recognised models for evaluating the work. A combination of stories and statistics serves to measure progress while bringing to life, indeed celebrating, how lives have been improved (McArdle et al, 2020). There are many toolkits designed to gather evidence to assess progress and long-term impact. We are now seeing more creative examples that are based on communities capturing learning and change for themselves. For example, rather than depending on formal statistics, Big Local communities are encouraged to use a variety of media

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(photos, film, song and so on) to tell ‘Our Bigger Story’, tracing their ‘journey’ in accounts from direct experience, including successes and failures. This qualitative approach may not seem as rigorous as using definite figures, but in community development terms it is rooted in residents’ visions for change and is ultimately more inclusive and empowering. Quantitative data may, however, be more persuasive for some decision makers, so it is always helpful to discuss in advance what is required for a robust evaluation and ensure that the desired narratives are supported by credible evidence. Ideally community members should be involved in all aspects of evaluation; from developing the ‘vision’, deciding the aims, implementing change and collecting data, through to analysing and presenting the findings to gauge progress (Banks et al, 2019). Various participatory and co-designed research techniques are available to make an initial appraisal of community needs and assets, as well as selecting criteria to assess, and learn from, how things develop. Community-led action research can present certain ethical challenges, but the overall intention is to demonstrate the impact of particular actions and thereby to identify innovative solutions to shared problems. Participatory appraisal is extensively used in the rural areas of countries in the global South (Chambers, 1994) and has been adopted by some organisations in the UK, for example, in the development of village or neighbourhood plans. It uses a set of creative, flexible techniques designed to involve as many people as possible in mapping an area’s problems and assets, setting priorities and devising solutions. An advantage lies in training community members in these methods so that they can select those most appropriate to the situation and facilitate the process themselves. External funders or commissioning agencies should listen, learn and respond to community experiences rather than coming in with preconceived interventions. This allows members of the community to have a greater sense of ownership over proposed strategies and increases the likelihood that these will work in the particular circumstances and therefore be sustained. ‘Theory of change’ models have introduced conceptual frameworks that encourage communities to contribute ideas about how their

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goals might be achieved, while allowing for thinking and plans to adapt to changing conditions and insights. One guiding principle is to focus on collective impact, rather than individual advancements. Do people generally have less fear of crime? Can the refurbished village hall act as a community anchor building? Are relations between young people and the older generation more cordial and respectful? Have incidents of racial harassment declined? There should be shared gains, although individuals directly involved will almost certainly benefit more because of their enhanced skills, confidence, networks and opportunities. Being able to demonstrate shifts in their reputation, resourcefulness and collective efficacy is likely to result in communities being in a better position to influence how they are treated by external bodies when negotiating improved services or more say over planning. They may be more apt to gain resources and develop stronger networks linking with the wider world of social movements and powerful partnerships. Detailed target setting and monitoring is rarely appropriate in community development as it is important to stay responsive to ideas and issues that emerge over time. This allows flexibility and acknowledges that it is both impossible and undesirable to try to control what happens within the changing circumstances and complexity of community eco-systems. Change is rarely linear or predictable, and the arbitrary timelines commonly found in project management schemes often appear neither relevant nor realistic to communities for planning their activities or measuring progress. Everyday life creates unforeseen opportunities but also obstacles that can derail even the best intentions.

Integrity and accountability Performance management frameworks may prove useful for evaluating progress towards specific goals, but they have been found to distort work priorities and demotivate staff. This is likely to apply even more so to volunteers and activists who are motivated by passion and philanthropy rather than material incentives. Nonetheless, standards are important. Poor services or advice can harm or disadvantage those

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whose rights may be jeopardised or lives endangered. Compromises are needed between informal and formal models for accountability and regulation so that communities are empowered to have high expectations and develop their own approaches. As we have already noted, community development is a values-based approach that is informed by an enduring set of principles. While nearly all community workers will have their own beliefs and biases, it is imperative that they conduct themselves with integrity and align their practice with the principles that underpin this broad approach. Just how these principles are put into practice will be determined by local conditions and community priorities. Nevertheless, they provide an ethical framework that will guide how workers behave as well as how their effectiveness will be judged by members of the community, their peers and managers. Ultimately, community workers should consider themselves accountable to the wider community, but this can often be hard to define or may well be restricted by an employer’s job description. In the case of paid community development roles, workers will probably be held to account for their performance through some kind of management structure, for example a team leader or employment sub-committee. It is a good idea to produce regular reports of what activities have been carried out and how these have contributed towards agreed goals. Adopting a stance that deliberately disrupts social power dynamics and questions the status quo requires consistency and clarity. Personal integrity is needed and ideally a set of policies as back-up (for example, an equalities statement) because some people will be unsettled and resentful, even mounting active opposition and sabotage. Community workers in paid roles must understand how to make ‘use of self ’ while also acknowledging their power and status as an employee. But anyone working within a community development approach, whether professionally or as a community member or activist/volunteer, should try to be aware of any power and privileges attached to their social identity. Class or cultural background, for example, may affect how they interact with local residents. Regardless of circumstances, effective and ethical workers will be continuously reflecting on their own motivation, attitudes and practice, preferably with the help of

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some kind of supervision or mentoring. Informal discussions with colleagues help people to explore how different facets of their lives are relevant to their work, what predispositions these might engender, and how to navigate these in daily practice.

Conclusion Community development takes time, commitment, resources, practical knowledge, self-awareness and a huge amount of trust. It does not offer a quick fix to society’s problems. Rather, it is a skilled and strategic approach for working in and with communities that builds relationships, acknowledges people’s contributions and capabilities and aims to address shared problems through collective action. In this regard, it has similarities with modern social movements but is committed to enabling communities themselves to identify priority issues, to devise or negotiate workable solutions and to set the direction and pace of change. Community development requires more than a set of skills, resources and know-how. Occupational standards models that emphasise practical competencies and knowledge appear to focus on the ‘job’ aspects of community development, while concern about values and capabilities suggests an orientation towards professionalisation that not everyone will agree with (Kenny, 2018). Ethical judgements based on principles, processes and beliefs are also made that should ensure that communities are empowered, that individuals are encouraged to fulfil their potential and that groups are enabled to achieve their own ends to the benefit of others across the wider society.

SUMMARY • Community development takes place in many different settings but is shaped by a set of agreed principles. • People working with or in communities in different roles use community development values and practices to produce community outcomes.

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• Community development primarily helps people to work together in networks, groups and organisations and often involves nurturing connections across community and sectoral boundaries. • In order to work ‘from the bottom up’ it is necessary to know how specific communities function and how community members view their situation and prospects. • Helping communities to identify and acquire shared assets provides resources and a foundation for further development. • Community development supports people to learn skills, build confidence and combine their knowledge. This grows collective capacity for community members, whether as volunteers or activists, to run things for themselves or to push for improvements. • Local knowledge is an important resource for community development. It should be properly managed and shared through effective communication channels, including online media. • Community development sees itself as operating within political systems. It shapes and is shaped by policies and power relations. • Community development can also be seen as a broad approach akin to a locally rooted movement for social justice.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES Henderson and Thomas’s book on Skills in neighbourhood work remains a classic, now in its fourth edition (2013), while Alan Twelvetrees is working with Russell Todd and others to update the latest version of Community development, social action and social planning: A practical guide (2022). Steve Skinner’s Building strong communities (2019) offers an introductory framework for working with communities to empower grassroots actions. Over the years, there have been repeated attempts to define the skills and knowledge required by competent community workers. The National Occupational Standards (NOS) set out the different roles and skills required for effective community development and are currently being revised. A summary framework is available from the Endorsement and Quality Standards Board for Community

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Development Learning (ESB) here: http://esbendorsement.org.uk/ index.php/nos This is broadly accepted by practitioners, trainers and employers, and is used to write job descriptions and person specifications. The NOS can also be used to manage performance, deliver training courses and identify staff development needs. Internationally, a similar set of standards has been adopted and can be viewed here: https://www.iacdglobal.org/international-standardsaccreditation/standards/ Numerous guides on community development and engagement were published by the Community Development Foundation (see Chapter 1). Useful handbooks are also available from the Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC). There is a range of toolkits and techniques available that can improve community engagement, public participation, to help meetings to reach consensus or to set planning priorities. Have a look at https://mycommunity.org. uk/neighbourhood-planning/, involve.org.uk and Participedia.net. Guidance on setting up formal organisations and associated legal and governance responsibilities is available online. For example, Locality runs a website MyCommunity (https://mycommunity.org.uk/) that offers a compendium of ‘tools, tips and ideas’ so that community groups can access the latest advice in a virtual ‘one-stop’ shop. Contact details for local CVSs can be found here: https://navca.org.uk/finda-member-1 Note 1

See ocsi.uk – research, data and analysis for public and community organisations.

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6 Community development in action Community development can contribute to outcomes in many different policy fields: community safety and crime reduction, culture and the arts, education, environment and sustainable development, health and well-being, housing, planning, regeneration and local economic development among them. However, as the following sections demonstrate, many of these issues cannot be divided neatly into policy silos or dealt with by separate professional disciplines. Community development strategies that reduce inequalities and community tensions generally, for example, also aim to improve wellbeing, living conditions and life chances. Fear of crime and nuisance behaviours are real issues for many communities. On the one hand, they make people unwilling to engage; on the other, legitimate unease can be whipped up into vigilante campaigns – against street sex work or ‘county lines’ drugs dealing, for example. While residents might understandably want to take action to protect their neighbourhood, local communities should be persuaded to organise group activities that minimise harms without confronting the perpetrators. By addressing milder forms of vandalism or dangerous and antisocial behaviour, community development can increase people’s sense of local pride and mutual responsibility, thus giving them confidence to address more serious issues. Community safety strategies cover several issues that trouble both policy makers and local communities, including domestic violence and hate crimes. Community development approaches have been used by public authorities and voluntary organisations to improve community safety, for example in relation to arson, gang violence, 107

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traffic accidents and/or nuisance behaviour. These involve public and peer education about risks, alongside a commitment to listening to community concerns, developing solutions that will work in given circumstances and generally trying to improve relations between community members and public services such as the police, firefighters and planners. In other situations, community development has worked with the victims of crime to set up support groups and to organise campaigns that highlight particular kinds of assault and harassment, often reflecting prejudices and unequal power. Community development can be used to address educational underachievement, especially since the pandemic restricted pupils’ access to classrooms in many poorer neighbourhoods for nearly a year. It can build links between schools or colleges and their communities, opening up additional resources and learning opportunities to children and adults. Community development can involve parents in their children’s education, for example through Saturday schools or trips. This could give those who might be reluctant to engage in a system that has failed them in their own past the assurance to return to formal education. By helping community members to enhance skills and interests on their own terms, community development encourages them to learn more confidently as parents and as citizens. In these and other policy areas, community workers support communities in campaigning for better services and contributing to local planning. They help communities to access information and the resources they need for effective participation and work with professionals so that they understand and respond to community needs. In the rest of this section, we focus on the contribution community development can make in five policy fields. The first four are at the forefront of the political agenda: housing; economic responses to poverty and social exclusion; environmental action and sustainable development; and health, well-being and social care. The fifth is more cross-cutting and addresses how community development can be applied to promote equality, diversity and inclusion. In each case, we describe the current context, ask what community development can offer and highlight some of the challenges that communities and workers might face.

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Housing Housing has been a central issue for community development over many years. In the 1960s and 1970s community workers worked with tenants’ associations on campaigns for housing improvements, better facilities and fair rents. They supported campaigns against redevelopment proposals that often involved the demolition of homes and dispersal of long-standing communities. They have been employed in successive government regeneration schemes, from the Community Development Project in the 1960s and 1970s to the New Deal for Communities in the 2000s. Many social landlords, whether councils or housing associations, have employed tenant participation officers and more recently, community workers have supported tenants in taking on the management and even ownership of social housing. Context The housing market in the UK has changed fundamentally over the past 50 years. Owner-occupation is now the most common tenure, while the balance between social and private rented housing has been recast. Since the 1980s the proportion of households in social housing has steadily fallen, with ever-longer waiting lists. Conversely, after a steady decline, the proportion of people living in privately rented accommodation has risen and has now overtaken social housing (MHCLG, 2020). Homelessness has also increased – the proportion of rough sleepers went up by 250 per cent between 2010 and 2017 to 8.54 per 100,000, and this does not include homeless people in temporary accommodation (Ritchie, 2019). These changes have made a significant difference to many disadvantaged communities. In the mid- to late twentieth century, community development was often focused on large estates of social housing, usually provided by local councils and with a relatively stable population. Now, these estates are more likely to include a significant proportion of housing units bought by their tenants under the ‘right to buy’ but then either sold to private landlords or rented out directly.

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In 2017 this was estimated to be some 40 per cent of all right-to-buy purchases (Barker, 2017). The nature of social housing has altered too – since 1988, local authorities have been able to transfer the ownership and control of housing stock to registered social landlords and, since 2007, the proportion of housing owned by housing associations has overtaken council housing. The 1980s also saw the introduction of a right-tomanage to tenants through the formation of estate management boards and tenant management organisations (TMOs). In 2017, a fire in a block of flats in West London spread rapidly through the cladding, killing 72 people. The Grenfell fire was a stark reminder of major issues about the safety of high-rise blocks, the impact of spending cuts and deregulation, and the lack of response to previous concerns (Power, 2018). Questions were raised about the neglect of its poorest tenants by a wealthy borough, which had cut spending but had also cut council tax in its highest bands. This was a familiar story of widespread underinvestment in both building and repairing housing stock, leaving many tenants living in poor conditions and facing unaffordable costs. Some communities have developed alternative forms of tenure such as housing associations run by tenants, development trusts, self-build schemes, co-housing schemes and housing co-operatives. The transfer of public housing assets to residents has also grown appreciably over the past 15 years or so, partly as the result of ‘endowments’ from major regeneration initiatives that transfer the ownership of social housing to TMOs, partly through the enterprise of residents themselves and partly through community economic development initiatives. Since the early 2000s the Community Land Trust model, first developed in the US, has attracted attention in the UK, offering ways to build affordable homes for local families or to bring empty homes back into use. For over half a century the trend has been towards ever-greater participation in planning, engaging residents directly as well as through democratically elected leaders. In 2011, the Coalition government went a step further and introduced a new suite of community rights – to bid (for assets of community value), to build (local facilities and amenities), to reclaim (derelict or unused public land), or to challenge

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(for the delivery of services). It also took action to reform the planning system in England to give local people more opportunities to shape the places in which they live. Neighbourhood and community planning continues to attract government support across the UK. However, as we write, there are new planning reforms under consideration (Barton et al, 2021), which have attracted widespread criticism from housing charities, planning officers and architects, and threaten to dilute democratic oversight. What can community development offer? The Grenfell experience demonstrates only too clearly that there is still an essential role for community workers in supporting tenants to challenge poor management, safety and maintenance. It is not only social housing tenants who need support. Private tenancies are insecure and often significantly more expensive, with letting agents charging high fees, increasing the financial burden on would-be tenants. Community organisers working with private tenants have also uncovered countless incidents of poor and exploitative management. There is a growing body of experience across the country, working with renters’ groups to improve housing conditions and management. ACORN, for example, was established in the UK in 2014 in Bristol and is now active in 25 towns and cities across the UK. Describing itself as a ‘community-based union of working class people: tenants, workers, residents’, its successes include the adoption of an ethical lettings policy by the local authority, defending tenants from evictions and contesting mortgage terms that prevent landlords from renting to benefits claimants. During the pandemic, its extensive member networks were mobilised at speed to provide local communities with shopping, prescriptions or just a friendly chat. Meanwhile, social housing tenants continue to need support in campaigns to ‘beat the bulldozers’, destroying homes through redevelopment programmes that have been dubbed ‘social cleansing’ (Wainwright, 2020). These take advantage of prime sites and an overheated housing market, but usually offer little in the way of affordable housing for tenants to return to. There have also been

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campaigns against segregation between social housing tenants and owner-occupiers in new schemes, with separate entrances and restricted access to communal facilities such as playgrounds. When it comes to wider planning issues, community development has considerable expertise to offer strategies for public engagement, with various skills and exercises available from a range of specialist organisations to encourage inclusive participation and group deliberation. The SCDC worked with communities to produce a set of standards, and several local authorities are using their own guides based on these principles. Challenges The social housing estates where community development workers were traditionally based often suffered from a range of disadvantages. But the changes in the housing market reported at the beginning of this section have altered the nature of these neighbourhoods and present a number of additional challenges for those seeking to organise there. First, there is no longer a single landlord to negotiate with, either because the stock has been transferred to several registered social landlords or because of the increase in private renting. Secondly, the rise in private renting increases the risk of poor management and deteriorating housing standards. Thirdly, populations are more transient, leaving communities fragmented and less cohesive (Local Trust, 2018). Many private tenancies are insecure and tenants may have to move on after six months. Transience is not just an issue for public housing estates. Research by Localis (Localis, 2018) found that even in market towns and new towns, turnover in the resident population was increasing, while in rural areas, the issues are different again as families, young people and low-paid workers find themselves priced out of the market by tourism, second homes and city dwellers escaping to more congenial locations. The increase in home working during the pandemic may well increase these pressures. What does this mean for community development? Population change can bring new vitality into communities, while for inner-city

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neighbourhoods experiencing waves of incomers over the years, the evidence suggests that hostility to immigration is low (Kaufman and Harris, 2014). But elsewhere, especially in areas with little experience of in-migration in the past, transience can be unsettling. High turnover affects local schools. Private rented accommodation may be poorly maintained and lead to a supposed decline in local standards. And these perceptions can be exacerbated by changing demographics, introducing racial or generational tensions. Of course, private renting and housing mobility can be positive choices. But it is difficult to organise people who have few options as to where they live and do not know whether they will still be in the same place six months on. They have little incentive to put down roots or to get to know their neighbours, let alone to get involved in community initiatives to improve local conditions and social networks. All these factors are challenging for community workers whatever an area’s history and demographics. But do the new community rights offer opportunities for community development? Early evidence from neighbourhood planning suggested that plans were more likely to be developed in more affluent areas (Parker and Salter, 2017). Residents in these areas can often call on local specialist expertise or afford to employ someone to work on the plans. Similar issues relate to claiming community rights. In practice, exercising the right to bid, for example, can be a complex undertaking not only in terms of the resources available to the community but also in terms of accessing information and challenging landowners and developers (Taylor and Wilson, 2016).

Economic responses to poverty and social exclusion The UK is witnessing widening income and wealth inequalities (Koch et al, 2019). After remaining level for some time, numbers in absolute poverty are rising again. The restructuring of the labour market around low-paid, insecure jobs means that many of those in work are themselves in poverty and reliant on benefits and tax credits, which have been subject to cuts. One of the costs of industrial and economic change has been that, as towns and cities are deserted by the industries on which they depended, many areas are left without

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the jobs and the skills necessary to compete in today’s economy. Meanwhile, the reduction of social housing over the years has led to the concentration of poor households in what remains and in private rented accommodation. Context Many of these areas are referred to as ‘left behind’. They are found on the periphery of large urban areas, in former mining and industrial areas and some coastal areas, typified by high indices of deprivation, poor connectivity and a loss of social infrastructure. Over the years, they have been abandoned by services, local retailers and financial institutions (OCSI, 2019). This means residents often have to pay more for essential goods and services – the ‘poverty premium’. Any income they do have ‘leaks out’ of the neighbourhood to external businesses, energy providers, landlords and loan sharks. The most disadvantaged areas have also suffered disproportionately from austerity-driven cuts in public services (Kruger, 2020). These communities have been hit hard by the pandemic and the associated economic uncertainty, most probably compounded by Brexit. Meanwhile, lockdowns have closed the libraries many of their residents rely on for the internet, and other public and community spaces they depend on for warmth, support and companionship as well as the charity shops they visit for affordable items (Fitzpatrick et al, 2020). How have policies responded? The regeneration programmes described in Chapter  3 took a comprehensive approach, with integrated strategies designed to tackle not only lack of income and employment in the most disadvantaged areas but also associated ill health, educational disadvantage, insecurity and environmental degradation. More recent community and social action programmes funded by government, trusts and foundations have also taken a holistic approach, although with more emphasis on a communityled agenda. More targeted initiatives over the years have developed a repertoire of models that aim:

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• to increase income and resources (improving access to jobs and training; enhancing working conditions and job security; increasing benefit take-up; promoting community enterprise; social investment; and through asset transfer and contracts for local services); • to reduce expenditure (debt advice, repair cafes, foodbanks, energy saving schemes, community transport, social supermarkets and local food production); • to share skills and resources (mutual aid, co-operative housing, credit unions, TimeBanks, bulk-buying and recycling projects, online exchange schemes and community shares). Government support has focused on the first of these: building the capacity of communities to take on assets and services and promoting social investment and community business. In 2012 it used unclaimed monies in dormant accounts to set up Big Society Capital as a social impact investor. Three years later, the Big Lottery Community Fund set up Power to Change as an intermediary body to promote and support community business, with an endowment of £150 million over ten years. Community businesses also have the potential to benefit from local authority schemes such as ‘the Preston Model’ (Manley and Whyman, 2021), which aims to promote community wealth and keep money in the local economy in a variety of ways. These include directing large contracts (from the council, the university, health trusts and so on) to local businesses and providing targeted support to help BME organisations to develop communityowned enterprises. Community development finance institutions (CDFIs) are an important source of finance for local enterprise. Originating in the 1970s they have grown since the 2000s with government support. In 2014 they contributed over £0.5  billion to the UK economy (responsiblefinance.org.uk/history). More recently, crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending have increased the options available to community ventures. The pandemic has affected community and social enterprises, however, especially those reliant on physical space or dependent on a single source of income.

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Economic responses to poverty and exclusion often focus on increasing access to the market. But for areas that have been abandoned by the market an alternative is to find non-commercial ways of meeting their needs. As such, several of the options listed above fit with a revived interest in ‘the commons’, described by De Angelis (2003, p 7) as ‘forms of direct access to social wealth … not mediated by competitive market relations’. As this definition implies, these draw on social as much as economic capital, valuing not only the common ownership of physical assets but also of local knowledge and localised traditions. Interest in ‘the commons’ draws on the work of Elinor Ostrom, offering a model beyond markets and states, based on local legitimacy and social trust, with the potential to lead to more diverse and creative solutions to current problems (Kaye, 2020). What can community development offer? Many of these initiatives have come from communities themselves. Community development has worked with communities to identify opportunities, develop ideas, and, where appropriate, scope potential markets and likely investors. Community organisations may need support in developing the skills and knowledge required to run a business or take over an asset. Community development can build confidence and signpost social entrepreneurs to external resources, such as technical expertise, financial advice or information to help them manage the risks and responsibilities involved, including taking on paid staff. And it can put them in touch with other groups who have valuable experience to share. Community development can also ensure that such schemes remain inclusive and accountable to the wider community, that they are fair and transparent in their dealings and that community members have a say in decision making. Challenges Critics have expressed considerable disquiet about government intentions to transfer responsibility for services, and the associated risks, to community enterprises. They argue that this will simply

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add to the pressures on poorer communities and that social finance products will serve government and market priorities rather than those defined by communities. Aiken et al (2011) point out, for example, that many community organisations running buildings do not want to expand, preferring simply to act as stewards of an important local resource. Assets easily become liabilities when buildings fall into disrepair and community members can over-extend themselves in taking on new responsibilities. The demands of running a business can separate social entrepreneurs from their community roots. There are also questions about sustainability. Many social enterprises continue to rely on grants several years into their existence, with a high failure rate (Cox and Schmuecker, 2010). Similar worries have been expressed about CDFIs (PwC, 2015). Despite the rhetoric about citizens running local services, operating responsive and commercially viable initiatives is challenging in a market that privileges the large over the small. The current legal and policy framework in the UK is ambivalent towards community ownership, while mainstream financial institutions remain reluctant to lend the necessary funds. Nonetheless, Murtagh and Goggin (2015) counsel against a rejection of the possibilities of social investment, arguing that it is necessary to work with the economic system and its structures in order to challenge it. They argue that social investment can ‘liberate as much as it can discipline’ (p 502), and give the example of a technical aid organisation in Belfast which has been able to challenge elite regeneration projects and protect the designation of social housing sites using social finance to reduce its dependence on government. There are also examples in the UK and beyond of ways in which community development can adapt state agendas in line with their own priorities and values, such as the international Organization Workshop model adopted in Marsh Farm, Luton. This worked with the local Jobcentre Plus to develop training and local enterprises for local unemployed people (https://www.corganisers.org.uk/what-iscommunity-organising/stories/marsh-farm-organisation-workshop/). It is important to recognise that many communities have made conscious choices to run their own services, feeling they can offer something the state cannot provide (Richardson, 2008). But, even

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so, encouraging community enterprise is about more than offering start-up grants and business advice. It needs to be part of a wider empowerment process and to open up possibilities for alternative economic models, like ‘the commons’. There is much to learn from the field of international development, where tackling gender inequalities in what is generally seen as women’s work goes some way to raising household incomes, alongside investments to build women’s business capacities. There is a strong social economy tradition in mainland Europe, but in the UK and the US the policy emphasis has often been on business performance and capacity to earn income, rather than social innovation and ethical outcomes (Defourney and Nyssens, 2012).

Environmental action and sustainable development Our planet is facing a grave and growing climate crisis. This is no longer controversial. The scientific evidence overwhelmingly predicts an environmental emergency and activists have taken up the cause within communities and as part of worldwide movements. Due to rising temperatures and our failure to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, the destruction of natural habitats continues apace. Environmental degradation is threatening biodiversity with mass extinction and catastrophic human suffering. Extreme weather events, escalating migration, wars and ‘natural’ disasters are pressurising and displacing communities, many of whom are fighting for their survival. Context Although in Europe the scale of the threat can feel remote, communities have been organising to take action and campaign for local policies that will safeguard the environment, for example in relation to air pollution, access to green spaces, anti-flooding measures and so on. The phrase ‘Think globally, act locally’ has been widely adopted, and it is clear that determined action is needed at every level to ensure that future lives and economies are sustainable. Recognition of the scale and urgency of this threat is generating concerted and individual action to reduce waste, cut greenhouse gas

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emissions and lessen our dependency on fossil fuels. Policy in the UK encourages voluntary and community organisations to develop their own initiatives and to be involved in local planning to address this challenge. Growing numbers of community groups are seeking to reduce their carbon footprint and generate energy from renewable sources, for example through hydroelectric schemes harnessing the power of local rivers. Interest in growing and consuming food locally has gathered pace, with community gardens, kitchens and cafes providing a valued focus for collective activities during the pandemic. In some cases, communities have worked with local authorities to develop larger-scale schemes around transport and housing, for example to build sustainable apartment blocks or create safe routes and pedestrian zones that encourage ‘active travel’. As well as contributing to the ‘green agenda’, community-led environmental projects often have additional outcomes, including benefits for societal well-being and boosting local economies. During the COVID‑19 restrictions, many people came to appreciate time spent outdoors in nature. Disadvantaged groups appear to gain a larger health benefit and have reduced socio-economic related inequalities in health when living in greener communities, so [greening] urban environment can also be used as an important tool in the drive to build a fairer society. (Public Health England, 2020) ‘Green volunteering’ and outdoor activities are a chance to spend time in natural surroundings thereby enhancing both physical and mental health. What can community development offer? There are many ways in which community development supports environmental action. Recent campaigns have highlighted inequalities in relation to public access and control of natural assets and this raises fundamental questions about land ownership and exclusion, particularly affecting disadvantaged groups (Warburton, 2021).

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Community ‘clean-ups’ can be organised at very local levels or they can form part of national campaigns to ‘keep Britain tidy’. Increasingly, communities are reclaiming abandoned sites for public use. ‘Guerrilla gardening’, as it has become known, has gathered momentum, inspired by the Incredible Edible initiatives in Todmorden in northern England (Warhurst and Dobson, 2014). Under the ‘community rights’ agenda, communities are being encouraged to take on responsibility for local assets and services, resulting in rising numbers of ‘friends of  …’ groups. These are replacing council maintenance teams, with volunteers managing ‘green infrastructure’ resources, such as parks, village greens and canals. Communities are often concerned about threats to their area from pollution, traffic congestion, developments on cherished open spaces or the arrival of a superstore displacing shops that sell local products and do not drain the local economy. Community development helps community members to organise around these issues, mobilising protestors and ensuring that counter-arguments are well presented and persuasive. Assisting communities to organise local ‘walkabouts’ or ‘open homes’ enables people to identify opportunities for environmental improvement and to learn from households that are already trying to live sustainably. Community development also puts people in touch with what’s happening elsewhere, for example arranging visits to places where local communities or ‘transition towns’ have set up projects to achieve ‘net zero’ carbon emissions, sometimes as social enterprises. These might be funded initially through community shares or be run in partnership with private companies. Examples include wind turbines that feed electricity into the national grid, thereby producing a financial return on the investment. A village in Bangladesh has established a network of solar panels through which the electricity generated can be used for direct consumption by the households themselves or can be traded in off-peak times to power local businesses. This co‑operative initiative has improved educational attainment (because children can continue to study at home when it is dark), allowed home working to flourish and increased the productivity of enterprise and smallscale manufacturing.

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Recycling and repair schemes are especially effective, both creating income from waste management contracts and also enabling people to swap, share and trade the resources that are surplus to their personal requirements. Websites such as Freecycle (www.freecycle.org) or web-based neighbourhood tool share schemes (see for example www. streetbank.com) help to tackle poverty, foster community connections and reduce demand on landfill sites. Challenges For many people experiencing poverty and discrimination, perhaps living in run-down streets or neglected rural areas, the environment might not seem a major priority. However, pollution, diminishing resources and rising costs of energy hit the poor hardest, and they usually have fewer means of escape or protection. Ecological disasters such as hurricanes, mudslides and forest fires have wiped out homes and livelihoods across the planet. Environmental injustice is experienced in communities the world over. Yet until recently many leading politicians have been resistant to the arguments and complacent about enacting policies that will reverse global warming (Willis, 2020). Communities will be motivated to protect their environment if they think that they have some stake in it at a local or personal level. The challenge is to find not only an issue that people feel they have in common, but also one where they believe that their actions can make a difference. In the UK, many towns have organised citizens’ juries to develop local strategies for decarbonisation. Representative panels of people, chosen from the electoral roll, meet regularly to agree their priority themes, hear from experts about plausible solutions and to devise plans for medium-term implementation, such as tree planting or reducing car journeys. Attempts to combat climate change through community-level schemes may meet with scepticism and resistance due, paradoxically, to their impact on the landscape or disagreements about how to distribute community benefit funds. All these difficulties may block progress until a consensus can be found, and it requires diplomatic

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leadership and skilled application of community development principles to negotiate a way forward.

Health, well-being and social care Evidence has accumulated that community participation and affirming social connections correlate positively with physical and mental health. This is not only about individual well-being and survival but also about how health outcomes can be co-produced for whole populations. Health agencies and communities have devised various ways to work together, including community referrals and public health initiatives to increase fitness and address patterns of consumption that cause diabetes, lung disease and malnutrition. Local campaigns are also vital in tackling issues that contribute to or exacerbate ill health, such as child hunger, heavy traffic, poor housing conditions and workplace risks. There are many social and economic determinants of health, including access to good medical services, nutritious food, clean water and decent environments. Health promotion is not just about preventing harms, but about promoting flourishing. Levels of wellbeing have fallen in the UK over the past few years alongside the longer-term decline in support networks (Oxford Economics and the National Centre for Social Research, 2018). In Western societies there are growing concerns about the social care needs of an ageing population, as well as rising mental health problems, especially among young people. Well-being is a significant dimension of personal and community life. The Carnegie Trust define it as ‘having friends and loved ones, the ability to contribute meaningfully to society, and the ability to set our own direction and make choices about our own lives’ (Davidson, 2020, p  2). A recent study asked people to describe what well-being meant for themselves and identified five conditions that are relevant for community development: creating a sense of community; a strong volunteering ethos; networking and partnership working; positive language; and enhanced relationships (Coburn and Gormally, 2020).

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Context Community development has long been seen as a means of addressing problems around health and social care. This is one of the few areas where community development continues to enjoy both interest and funding, especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It has been used by community and public health practitioners and has also found favour with policy makers as a way of involving patients and the wider public in making decisions about health services. Community engagement has a growing evidence base as a method of improving community health, alongside volunteering, peer education and ‘expert by experience’ patient empowerment models (NICE, 2016). Social prescribing, the practice of referring patients to beneficial, but non-pharmaceutical or surgical interventions, has been incorporated into the 2019 NHS Long Term Plan with allocated funding. It has risen in favour because it offers communitybased solutions to people’s health problems and can supplement medical treatments. Social prescribing includes gym subscriptions, membership of choirs or walking groups, and even arts and craft groups hosted in GP surgeries. Social prescribing officers (also known as link workers and health connectors) signpost patients to sources of help within their community and facilitate their access to activities and services that will help them improve their health. They focus on individuals with long-term conditions or complex needs to develop personalised care plans and routes back to good health. Community development has much to offer here through supporting self-help groups or ‘good neighbours’ schemes as well as a wide variety of local projects and social enterprises, such as those supported by the People’s Health Trust (https://www.peopleshealthtrust.org.uk/). However, social prescribing can only work if the community sector and other agencies are sufficiently resourced to take on additional responsibilities, and this is not always recognised by frontline health services. Person- and community-centred approaches also help people to maintain a healthy lifestyle. By increasing ‘health literacy’ across the general population, people become better able to navigate the health

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system in order to access and understand advice about their health needs and treatment options. Unsurprisingly, there is a disturbing correlation between poverty, poor health and early death, creating what Marmot calls a ‘social health gradient’ (2015). This is starkly evident at neighbourhood level and seems to be further associated with ethnicity (Public Health England, 2017). This requires a multi-agency approach that tackles the causes, not just the symptoms of poor health, and that empowers communities, such as that advocated by the New Local’s ‘community paradigm’ model (Lent and Studdert, 2019). In England, responsibility for public health strategies has been returned to local authorities to be overseen by boards, including partners from voluntary organisations and community-based self-help groups. Similar arrangements are in place in the other UK jurisdictions, with community health partnerships (or their equivalents) aiming to improve well-being and better integrate health and care provision. Communities that have limited access to opportunities for exercise and that live in impoverished environments experience higher-thanaverage rates of heart and respiratory disease, sometimes exacerbated by obesity and stress. This holds true across many countries and is attributed to the pressures of living in an unfair economic system where rewards and opportunities are unevenly distributed with little prospect of change (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009). The known correlations between class, ethnicity and age were exposed brutally by the COVID-19 pandemic, generating much-needed debate about the value placed on different lives and the limited choices available to many (Marmot et al, 2020). There is also evidence suggesting that people’s level of social capital – the strength and diversity of their informal networks – affects individual resistance to infection, contributes to speed of recovery and generally supports a sense of mental well-being (Christakis and Fowler, 2009). The association between mental health and physical health is more widely acknowledged, calling for a more joined-up approach that tackles loneliness, distress caused by relationship breakdown and social stigma around some diseases, physical disabilities and psychiatric disorders. Increasing demand is placed on overstretched health

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provision, but spending cuts mean that clinical resources have to be rationed prudently. Understandably, then, policy makers are interested in harnessing volunteers to deliver alternative ways of preventing ill health and caring for people who are alone and incapacitated. What can community development offer? Community development contributes to all these policy aims by helping communities to tackle some of the causes of ill health and creating opportunities for living healthier (and happier) lives. In particular, community development ‘reach[es] out beyond the larger voluntary organisations to the hinterland of small, often overlooked groups and social networks, to the sections of the community who are least organised, least vocal and sometimes least healthy’ (Chanan and Fisher, 2018, p 14). Providing opportunities for exercise, volunteering and social interaction encourages people to make links with others in the community and share responsibility to make sure that people receive the care and support they need. Simply bolstering participation in community networks, building capacity, promoting kindness and reducing the social isolation caused by ill health can improve wellbeing (Ferguson, 2017; Unwin, 2018). Cottam (2018) argues for community-centred models of ‘radical help’ that place relationships and connection at the heart of co-designed services. Initiatives to strengthen community capital and neighbourliness can similarly improve social care by focusing on shared concerns and mutual trust (Knapp et al, 2013; Parsfield et al, 2015). Furthermore, partnership with community-led health organisations enables public sector bodies to work directly with marginalised communities to develop skills and confidence so that local assets of all kinds can be applied to improve health outcomes (Foot, 2012). Community development has a long tradition of helping people to campaign against local conditions, such as dampness or air pollution, that give rise to disease and reduce life expectancy. Individuals with particular interests, conditions and expertise may seek to be more involved in determining local priorities in health provision or to improve how services are delivered and taken up. Ensuring effective

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engagement between patients, service users and health decision makers is an important role for community development. Communities can also be supported to develop their own self-help activities to address what they believe are the causes of poor health. For example, some communities have challenged the dominance of outlets for cheap alcohol and fast food on the high street, arguing that these make it too tempting for people to opt for the easy choices that are bad for health. Others argue that town centre premises would serve as ideal community hubs for the delivery of health care through the co-location of friendly and accessible services (Wood and Finlayson, 2020). There are many opportunities for communities to work with health agencies to promote healthy choices or improve access to health services through outreach, peer education and patient participation groups. Treating the hazards of drug misuse, sex working and alcohol addiction as health issues, rather than condemning individual pathological or criminal behaviour, can radically alter community perceptions and generate different kinds of responses. These might include helping those affected to be drawn back into the community by altering personal networks and improving their self-esteem, allowing them to develop new social identities and hope for better times, thereby reducing both temptation and dependency (Best, 2019). There has been a lot of interest in co-production models of health provision using integrated strategies, such as Healthy Living Centres or Recovery Colleges. These are often located in community settings and offer holistic approaches to mental health and well-being that are accessible and relevant. Communities are involved in managing the facilities and deciding on how preventative measures, care and treatment can be made available to suit local preferences. Challenges Illness and infirmities are often regarded as individual, private or ‘lifestyle’ matters to be addressed through attempts to change behaviour or to improve people’s access to health and care provision. Health professionals trained in the medical model tend to use a clinical lens to focus on diagnosis, treatment and prevention. Community health

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programmes tend to be delivered through ‘top-down’ engagement and follow externally set agendas. As we have seen, community development takes a different approach, empowering people to identify the things that they collectively rank as most damaging to their well-being. This involves listening to community views and supporting their efforts to address neighbourhood harms or even tackle broader economic issues such as joblessness. This mismatch between models, professional mindsets and organisational cultures has sometimes made it difficult for the health system to make use of community development, even though it is widely acknowledged in principle that supplementary community-based approaches are needed for effective prevention (South et al, 2015). Finding a shared commitment and appropriate language for consistent messaging is crucial in enabling community development to make meaningful inroads into health promotion strategies, especially during periods of constrained budgets and where there is a strong emphasis on meeting targets using linear theories of change. But people’s assessment of their own health is affected by a range of factors: some circumstantial, others originating in their personal psychology. It can be useful to take a holistic or systems approach to understand the interactions between different life experiences, shared social conditions and agency responsibilities. Despite the complexity of this approach, it seems to be successful, although it faces some of the same difficulties as community development generally in robustly attributing outcomes to specific interventions.

Tackling inequalities The terms ‘equality’, ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ are sometimes used interchangeably or combined under one policy heading. They are actually different, but related concepts. Equality does not mean treating everyone the same, but rather ensuring that everyone has the same opportunity to achieve their potential and enjoy equivalent social and economic outcomes by tackling barriers or attitudes that constrain choices and life chances. While people have things in common, they also differ in various ways. So, diversity is concerned with honouring

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individual and group differences by acknowledging and meeting personal or cultural needs. Inclusion is about ensuring that different abilities and preferences are valued and do not prevent people from participating in activities or contributing to society. Context These concepts have a sound ethical basis in notions of equity or fairness, underpinned by values such as dignity, choice and freedom. They are also legal requirements, as enshrined in the current integrated or pan-equalities approach pursued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. This considers how people come to be disadvantaged by identifying factors, known as ‘protected characteristics’ that restrict the chances of them fulfilling their ‘capabilities’ (Sen, 2009). In many instances, disparities are correlated with biological features, such as sex, age, skin colour and so on, which render people ‘vulnerable’ to discrimination or limit their choices. Other factors are socially determined, caused by prejudices associated, for example, with faith, appearance, or class background. In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 is the main law, which is intended to defend people against discrimination according to a set of nine ‘protected characteristics’ that relate to different aspects of someone’s bodily traits, lifestyle or social identity. They are: • • • • • • • • •

age disability gender reassignment marriage and civil partnership pregnancy and maternity ethnicity religion sex and gender sexual orientation

These dimensions have been the focus of political struggles over centuries, eventually cemented into legislation and gradually associated

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with changes in attitudes among the wider population. Although usually reflected in policy statements, they are not always implemented in practice and the experience of oppression is corrosive, causing longterm stress and health vulnerabilities. The effort required to cope with constant setbacks has been termed ‘weathering’ because it depletes the immune system and erodes people’s sense of agency. This dire situation for many people is not just about wealth or income. Life chances and outcomes are affected by interactions between different dimensions of our lives and community identities. Additional models of analysis have appeared since the pioneering movements for Black power, women’s emancipation and disability equality. Many have focused on institutional and intersectional discrimination, ‘baked-in’ implicit bias and structural inequalities, rather than individual civil rights relating to access and opportunities (Lingayah, 2021). These movements have sought to change society and power relations through campaigns using direct action and arguments, rather than finding better ways for individuals to fit in, integrate or succumb to patronising or ignorant attitudes. The call has been to establish equality through building alliances across a carnival of different interests and social identities, while at the same time critiquing the paternalistic philanthropy of pity-based charities. Discussions have become more nuanced, recognising the complexity of people’s lives and ambitions, and are couched in terms of freedom, rights, solidarity, dignity, inclusion and justice. For example, Disability Rights UK campaigns for principles ‘enabling independence and connection’ (DRUK, 2020, p 9). Positive action strategies acknowledge historic and traditional disadvantages and increase choices, for example the ‘positively queer’ debates that challenge and extend long-standing categories associated with sexual orientation and gender (McCann and Monaghan, 2019). Similarly, intercultural practices are designed to combat taken-forgranted ethnocentrism through greater self-awareness, understanding different values and promoting more equal relationships (Kulich and Prosser, 2009). The emphasis on open communication, empathy and mutual respect encourages us to be sensitive, curious and nonjudgemental in our interactions with people with different identities

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and cultures. Although interculturalism is primarily about respecting diversity, it goes some way to mitigating unconscious assumptions and ‘othering’ tendencies. While the moral and organisational tides flow in the direction of greater equality and inclusion, many communities are still riven by divisions and resentments, with opportunist politicians dismissing legitimate grievances or policies as ‘political correctness’ or ‘woke’ politics. Obviously, community development has responsibility to disrupt and reverse these regressive trends. Most people’s sense of community revolves around notions of neighbourliness, co-operation, solidarity and compassion. This all resonates well with the avowed goals of community development to promote social justice through collective empowerment and by working with the most vulnerable and excluded people. What can community development offer? The core principles of community development require a focus on learning, organising and participation. In practice, these combine in different ways to combat unfair discrimination, prejudice and power imbalances. It is not unusual for personal antipathies, negative stereotypes, superficial loyalties and ancient rivalries to foster divisions that prevent people working together to tackle common problems. However, sometimes the barriers hindering progress or participation are physical rather than mental and can be overcome through practical adjustments such as improving access to buildings and activities, by providing translations, ramps, childcare, hearing loops and so on. Ensuring a culturally appropriate welcome, through internal décor, signage, positive images and food, indicates that diversity is valued and that people’s needs and preferences are being met. In some instances, this may require targeted support and services. Community workers can help community members to identify the gaps, find out what’s needed and establish separate groups where necessary or requested, for example a lesbian drama club, youth activities specifically for Asian girls, or English classes for refugee and migrant communities. If resources are limited or there is insufficient

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demand, it may be preferable to concentrate on improving existing activities to become more inclusive and accessible. This approach is likely to require some changing of minds, perhaps through formal equality and diversity training, but also using informal learning, such as facilitated peer education and reflective practice. Challenging oppressive attitudes and behaviours is never easy but holding what have become known as ‘difficult conversations’, a rediscovered technique using Socratic questioning and radical listening, can expose unconscious biases and introduce alternative insights. These discussions are sometimes designed to overcome the reluctance of people to examine unacknowledged privileges (Eddo-Lodge, 2017; DiAngelo, 2018). They gently challenge hidden assumptions and antagonisms, which tend to ‘leak out’ through micro-aggressions or pejorative language. Community development is not just about micro-level changes that enhance the quality of life and increase opportunities for a specific set of people. Indeed, while place-based approaches may appear coherent, they are limited in scope and have been criticised for failing to acknowledge other forms of solidarity. As Rob Berkeley, a gay Black commentator, argues, transformative change needs to ‘address where power resides’ (2020, p 7). In order to combat vested interests in the wider world, making it a fairer and more inclusive place, campaigning tactics are needed, mobilising community forces and building alliances to confront powerful forces through political social movements that connect grassroots aspirations to large-scale visions. Challenges Dismantling the embedded power relations that sustain structural inequalities is rarely straightforward. It usually involves working with deep-seated expectations and emotions, as well as systems of privilege and control that have endured for centuries. Community workers are bound to encounter and experience anguish and anxieties. They should consider in advance their own position regarding such issues, perhaps in conversation with knowledgeable allies or through training workshops, and be prepared to deal with the emotional fallout of

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equalities practices with strategies for reframing issues to forestall blame and recriminations. A rule of thumb for working with rival interests in communities could be to oppose narratives that fuel suspicion and seek alternative explanations that develop trust and common purpose while minimising conflict at the grassroots. This may not always be possible, so community workers need to work simultaneously on many fronts and at different levels. Helping people to overcome prejudices and tackle oppressive behaviours may involve working against the grain of majority community opinions. For example, the stigma and xenophobia encountered by asylum seekers or disabled people may appear in the form of unwitting exclusion from community activities, leadership roles or public services (Todd and Munro, 2021). A three-pronged strategy is needed simultaneously: • to introduce practical actions to increase access and promote equal outcomes; • to confront or challenge discrimination and prejudice that hold people back or reduce their options; and • to build a sense of solidarity by facilitating mutual engagement and understanding. Various factors following the Brexit vote and associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have worsened income inequalities and contributed to increased political polarisation and social fragmentation, for example a rise in hate crime against various minority groups, including Gypsy, Traveller and Romany communities (Greenfields and Rogers, 2020). Notwithstanding the apparent revival of neighbourliness during the lockdowns, the immense challenge facing community workers is nurturing inter-personal connections across diversity and finding ways to develop equal partnerships and inclusive alliances.

Conclusion The sections in this chapter demonstrate that community development, as a broad-based approach that starts from people’s own concerns, can contribute to many different policy areas, primarily by supporting

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community participation and generating collective strategies for change. Developing a knowledge base among community activists and leaders that is derived from sound principles ensures that analysis and solutions are grounded in evidence and more likely to be taken seriously by other community members and policy makers.

SUMMARY • Community development contributes to effective working in a range of policy areas. • It enables professionals to identify and respond to community priorities in services and planning. • Community development enhances participation, especially in relation to those groups that are marginalised or deemed more difficult to engage. • But community development poses challenges in relation to decision making, which policy makers and service providers are not always equipped to handle. • It is essential that communities are able to play to their strengths and are not expected to take on responsibilities regardless of their capacity to do so.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES Several textbooks on community development already mentioned have chapters addressing the contribution community development can make to specific issues. Each of the policy areas described here has its own specialist literature. Shelter is a good source of information on housing, tenancies and homelessness. The National Community Land Trust Network (www.communitylandtrusts.org.uk) will bring you up to date on progress in this area. Just Space is an informal London-based alliance that aims to improve community participation in all aspects of planning and regeneration by providing technical advice and

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encouragement; https://justspace.org.uk/about/ is a useful source of general advice. For more on community-led economic development through social investment, visit https://www.socialenterprise.org.uk/Socialinvestment/. Inside social enterprise, by Helen Fitzhugh and Nicky Stevenson (2015), provides an excellent introductory guide to developing community-run businesses. Localise West Midlands has published a report on mainstreaming community economic development (Morris et al, 2013), and the New Economics Foundation (NEF) is always a good source of information on the most recent ideas and innovations: www.neweconomics.org. The charity Power to Change supports community businesses and social enterprise to improve services, protect and boost local assets and help people to address their shared needs. It has carried out a wealth of research on community business which you can find here: powertochange.org.uk Responsible Finance is a good source of information about social investment. Stir to Action is a UK-based national organisation that aims to boost the ‘new economy’ by providing training and encouragement to young entrepreneurs, ‘commoners’ and people interested in community-engaged businesses and co-operatives: stirtoaction.com/ For resources on the environment and sustainability, have a look at the Centre for Sustainable Energy. Here, you can find guidance for communities wanting to do more in their own neighbourhoods (see www.cse.org.uk) including a myriad of possible initiatives, from wholesale neighbourhood planning or district heating schemes to more piecemeal projects around waste recovery, alternative modes of transport or the preservation of green spaces such as local woodlands or parks. Semble is a UK network of people and projects using social media to connect like-minded people who are working on environmental issues: see https://semble.org/campaigns/. From their website you can learn more about a wide range of community-level activities. For additional community development materials on health and well-being, visit the CHEX website (chex.org.uk/); and the Community Development and Health Network (cdhn.org).

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The organisation Equally Ours is a useful source of information and guidance across all forms of discrimination: see equallyours. org.uk/. Andrew Ryder’s work with Gypsy, Traveller and Romany communities has generated a model of ‘inclusive community development’ which includes some general lessons for working with excluded communities (2017). Neil Thompson’s (2012) Personal, Cultural, and Structural Analysis (PCS) model is well regarded as a framework for understanding oppressive power dynamics and antidiscriminatory practices.

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7 Challenges for practice Community development faces various intrinsic challenges for which there are no easy answers. Although individual workers may well find pragmatic solutions that reflect local conditions, personal preferences and political priorities, expediency sometimes wins out over principles. Practitioners experience tensions and dilemmas arising from their numerous roles and commitments. The situations they face are often characterised by dynamic uncertainty, conflicting loyalties and confusing ‘role strain’ (Hoggett et al, 2009).

Coherence and infrastructure Community development intervenes at different levels, from supporting standalone grassroots activities to campaigning locally for the aims of global social movements. Community organisers are located in a wide range of agencies, including trade unions, faith-based organisations, even some political parties. Where community-oriented posts still exist within local authorities, they may be found working in different departments with limited co-ordination. Years of falling budgets oblige specialist teams to cover several large areas, while their jobs are often located at the margins rather than the heart of the organisation. The purpose of community development is still contested in some quarters and it is frequently carried out through short-term micro-projects, fragmented funding and precarious job contracts, making it difficult to carve out a strategic and sustainable approach. In the UK the loss of core funding for the major agencies promoting community development has led to a decline in resources and training, 137

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eroding its fundamental commitments and leaving a fractured and insecure occupation split across different programmes and models. Internationally, the position is often just as bleak (Clarke et al, 2021). The key national infrastructure and membership networks that in the past brought practitioners and activists together and acted as champions for community development have closed down. Others have become more dependent on government contracts, making it difficult for them to exercise an independent critical role. This has proved a loss to the field since a shared understanding of community development creates a sense of alignment and mutual support. Consequently, community development lacks coherent infrastructure to advocate for its application in social policy at all levels. We have already noted that community development should be seen as a long-term and systemic approach, albeit locally focused. It is most effective when it forms part of a comprehensive strategy that sets out various objectives within a broader vision for change towards goals of social justice, community empowerment and better local democracy. Community-led initiatives usually contribute towards the policy outcomes of several sectors, with the joining-up often being done behind the scenes or through multi-agency partnerships. The role played by community workers in networking and creating conditions for community empowerment tends to be unnoticed or taken for granted. This raises issues about how this work can be better recognised and supported through core funding, guidance from expert bodies and training strategies.

Role boundaries and power dynamics Community development is fundamentally concerned with power relations, in society at large and at the micro level. It is inevitable that workers find themselves caught in conflicts between those who hold power and those who want or deserve more say over their life choices and living conditions. There is no escaping the counterhegemonic nature of the work (Reynolds, 2020). Those working with communities need ethical sensitivity and political awareness in tackling underlying inequities. The complexities of systemic power

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and interpersonal relations that influence decisions and interactions require workers to demonstrate empathy, respect and astute courage. Paid community developers often find it difficult to explain their function, choosing to blur their role in relation to community members in case they sound patronising or excessively directive. They are generally employed to enable communities to take collective action, to find their own voice and to make links with others. This is a different role from friend, activist, representative or leader of the community. This distinction is not always clearly drawn and indeed is sometimes denied, especially where workers identify strongly with the community with whom they are working, perhaps because they live in the area or share key characteristics and interests. They may be driven by anger, hope, altruism or solidarity, possibly framed by political ideologies or faith perspectives. Personal motivations may well affect their work priorities and strong convictions can also blinker them to the needs and wishes of community members. This is not to say that community workers must be detached or aloof, merely that they should be attentive of role boundaries and avoid inadvertently pursuing their own interests and objectives. The 7 Es referred to in Chapter 2 were devised to highlight the ways in which community development is fundamentally about helping others to participate, organise and learn. This is important because some community workers see themselves as indispensable, taking on too many tasks and leaving community members dependent on their skills, time and services.

Community allegiance: place and identity In its heyday towards the end of the twentieth century, community development was generally organised around area teams or by assigning a worker to one or more ‘patches’, often of indeterminate size and boundaries. It was presumed that residents would be united in organising or speaking up to improve the quality of life in ‘their’ community. But this assumption no longer holds, and community workers now need to acknowledge a range of experiences and opinions that reflect different identities living within one area.

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The neighbourhoods where community development resources are usually deployed are often places where many residents have not actively chosen to live and sometimes struggle to sustain a sense of community spirit. However, injunctions to ‘stay at home’ during the COVID‑19 months have triggered an apparent resurgence of neighbourliness, which may have renewed people’s commitment to locality, with greater loyalty for the people and amenities available within walking distance. Where communities do organise locally, this may be as part of an externally imposed initiative targeted at their ‘zone’ or in response to the unwanted arrival of a new business that taints the neighbourhood or literally pollutes its environment. There are frequent examples of NIMBY-inspired (‘not in my backyard’) campaigns uniting communities against perceived threats such as waste incinerators or plans for new upmarket housing. Similarly, attempts to provide sites, hostels or sheltered accommodation (for example, for Travellers, adults with learning difficulties or people recovering from addiction) tend to generate resistance and hostility. This kind of neighbourhood-level parochialism poses dilemmas for the community worker, who is supposed to support communities on issues that they identify, but is also guided by values around treating marginalised people with respect and compassion, paying particular attention to issues around power inequalities and social stigma. In these situations, the community worker will need to use diplomatic skills in talking and listening to people while building levels of trust among all concerned. Some communities form around identity rather than place but set aside their differences to work together on shared visions or to combat a common threat. This ‘radical pluralism’ (Hoggett et  al, 2009, p 20) allows people to organise separately in ways that suit their circumstances before they can confidently join with others in broader alliances or mainstream forums. Not everyone chooses to engage with local community interests. For some, their most pressing issues may be something that they want to keep private owing to continuing social prejudice or simply because it is not a concern or interest shared by their immediate neighbours.

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People who experience discrimination are more likely to make connections with others in similar predicaments – either because they feel safer in their company or to organise to change things (or both). In the face of endemic racism, Black and minority ethnic communities have established voluntary organisations, often alongside faith bodies, designed to provide culturally appropriate services and alleviate interethnic tensions. These offer important rallying points for the different communities, allowing the formation of vital campaigns, for example highlighting under-representation of minority ethnic groups within the charity sector (Lingayah et al, 2020; #charitysowhite).

Equality and diversity Most people understand equality as a key component of social justice and on the surface, the meaning of the term seems non-contentious. However, there are a number of competing interpretations. As we saw in Chapter  6, equality is usually linked to ideas of fairness, inclusion and diversity. However, these terms have no legal basis and it is important to be clear about how community development can use these concepts. By tackling unfair discrimination and respecting differences, community workers help people to achieve their full potential, make use of services and participate equally in activities. Some approaches favour using a human rights model that incorporates a shared commitment to ensuring that all citizens enjoy the same entitlements and opportunities (BRAP, 2015). Crucially, this does not mean treating everyone the same and some commentators distinguish between equal treatment, equal opportunities and equal outcomes. Proactive and affirmative action strategies may be required to overcome the adversities that deter or prevent some people from achieving equality of outcomes or exercising free choices. So, for example, community development is justified in using such measures to support the self-organisation of minorities by removing practical and psychological barriers that hinder progress and prevent participation for some members of marginalised communities. Targets for representation and inclusion are more controversial, but are designed to make sure that organisations and activities are

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genuinely inclusive and that everyone is guaranteed a fair chance to influence the decisions that matter. Some critics argue that this marginalises the social impact of widespread disadvantage affecting whole populations, focusing instead on the human rights, experiences and capabilities of individuals. Campaigning for equalities, antidiscriminatory practices and honouring diversity therefore need to go hand in hand. For community development, a broader focus allows flexibility in promoting equality in opportunities and outcomes at a local level in specific circumstances, as well as tackling more pervasive biases that cause the ‘othering’ of some sections of the community and perpetuate exclusionary stereotypes. Equality is a core value for community development but nonetheless it can be difficult to work out what is fair or feasible in any given situation. For example, failure to understand or respect different cultural requirements, such as offering halal food, can deter some Muslims from accessing services such as elder care. Discrimination and privilege are embedded in society, resulting in deep-rooted disadvantage and social exclusion. Community development is concerned with all such issues and has acquired expertise in identifying and combatting different forms of disadvantage. Implementing positive action strategies within limited budgets is difficult, however, and can lead to accusations of favouritism or bias towards ‘equality groups’. Community workers who are committed and proactive in challenging inequalities may find themselves criticised by those who have become accustomed to their own privilege and or oblivious to familiar, but inaccurate presumptions. Care is needed to justify prioritising work with certain groups and making sure that the workers cannot be accused of looking after their own interests, especially if they share the same identity, for example, as a woman. Dealing with cultural insensitivity and prejudicial attitudes can be awkward. A balance has to be struck between being supportive towards community members and explaining why certain phrases or behaviour are regarded as derogatory or hurtful, for example using identity- or impairment-related terms as insults or referring to adult women as ‘girls’. A common dilemma for community development

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lies between accommodating diversity, while at the same time trying to promote a sense of community and solidarity. As Audre Lorde (2018) wrote: Without community there is no liberation … but community must not mean a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense that these differences do not exist.

Leadership and representation Community leadership enables people to organise around shared ambitions, to effect change and overcome challenges. It is not about charismatic individuals making brave but unilateral decisions or being the ‘face’ or ‘voice’ of the community. Self-appointed, externally designated or even elected community leaders are not always the best people to represent others or galvanise them into action. They may be hard-working individuals with undisputed integrity but their role can sometimes put them at odds with other members of the community. Community leaders can become caught up in formal hierarchical or partnership arrangements – attending committees and bureaucratic meetings, leaving little time and energy to keep in touch with what would be of most help to other residents. Or they may be too partisan, interested only in narrow issues or obtaining resources for their favourite groups. A more participatory model of leadership can be both liberating and empowering with tasks allocated among people who may be good at different aspects of leadership (Skinner and Farrar, 2009). This allows for leaders with a range of backgrounds, interests and skills to emerge, working to each other’s strengths and sharing the responsibilities for achieving community or group goals (Onyx and Leonard, 2011). Power and responsibilities are distributed more evenly and democratically in the group: chairing meetings, fronting the protests, driving the action and championing community interests. Collective leadership can be developed as a pooled set of functions, a capacity to be nurtured so that it fairly reflects and expresses community aspirations.

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Sometimes individual leaders are unwilling to delegate aspects of their role to others or to step away from the position, resulting in burnout and domineering behaviour. This is less common than might be expected, with community leadership often transferred willingly to successive generations of volunteers and activists (Ockenden and Hutin, 2008). Nonetheless, community workers should instil a style of leadership that is inclusive, collaborative, egalitarian and democratic by anticipating signs of stagnation and encouraging a variety of people to gain experience in leadership roles. Sometimes perfectly capable people lack confidence or feel intimidated by the prospect of inheriting the responsibilities of a long-standing leader. But with a bit of support in the form of coaching, shadowing or mentoring (and perhaps some training), they will grow into the role and in turn pass it on to someone else. Good leadership should be proactive and flexible. Community development aims to create conditions whereby leaders and representatives emerge through debate and action. This allows leaders to represent effectively the views of community members and work with others to turn ideas into reality. Nevertheless, it is sometimes necessary to challenge community leaders where they control discussion or are dismissive of opinions that don’t match their own. This may not be easy for community members to do themselves, perhaps because of the leader’s status or because of misguided loyalty. Community workers tend to be more objective and often have to be diplomatic. They can suggest alternative ways of looking at a situation and persuade other potential leaders to put themselves forward or to pursue a different course of action. Their role may be to ‘hold the ring’ while disputes play out, ensuring that issues are dealt with fairly and civilly. Sometimes they may have to act as mediator to get to the bottom of rivalries and help a group to move on. Unfortunately, people can act in selfish, prejudiced and defensive ways that exacerbate division and discrimination, rather than fostering community spirit and social justice. Some individual activists are more articulate, louder or able to give the most time. This can drown out the quieter, less confident voices and potentially mask or misrepresent majority views. Although community workers can be

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guilty of these tendencies too, the challenge for the person working with such communities is twofold: first, to build the capacity to debate difficult issues and manage competing interests and, secondly, to ensure that people with more marginal or uncomfortable views can be heard, perhaps by acting as their advocate or finding other routes to influence decisions. Active citizens are sometimes awkward citizens, showing an ‘ugly’ face that can be intimidating or cynical but is, nevertheless, locally committed and enterprising. Although they may have preferences, workers cannot generally pick and choose who they work with and must find ways to enable people to collaborate constructively with one another and with decision makers. Keeping the stalwarts on board while also giving an airing to fresh voices and alternative perspectives is a serious but manageable challenge. Continuity is helpful but new people also need to be brought forward and allowed to develop their own areas of enthusiasm and expertise. Community leaders must genuinely engage and represent a full range of community views, and this is why accountability is so important for communities and practitioners alike.

Multifaceted expectations and accountabilities Community development has never been regarded as belonging to any single policy domain or professional discipline, and this ambivalence continues to the present day. In its early years, community development was often located in education departments (alongside youth work), also embedded in ‘patch’ social work teams. Later it found favour within health services (supporting public health initiatives), planning (guiding engagement exercises) and local economic regeneration programmes, for example in promoting social investment and community enterprise. In Chapter 5, we considered how and why community workers exercise their accountability and maintain integrity regarding their own values and interests. In practice, this frequently generates challenges arising from the complex array of formal and informal accountabilities surrounding their roles. Workers can be pulled in different directions because of community expectations set against

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the organisational cultures and policies of employers. Managers will want to see progress towards explicit project aims. Funders such as charitable foundations will usually have their own priorities, for which they in turn are answerable to donors. Community members tend to want the worker to respond to their immediate needs and help them to achieve medium-term objectives: organising events, running a group, sorting out troublesome committee members, raising money and so on. Meanwhile, practitioners are expected to conform to principles established over the years by the community development field: enhancing participation, empowerment, learning and equality. A major challenge for community development is finding a balance between how the work is done (that is, in accordance with community development values) and the accomplishment of specific goals. Community workers are regularly faced with unacknowledged and unresolved conflicts, shaped by incompatible interests and different ideas about how, and at what pace, to proceed. Issues of accountability are further compounded for workers employed by elected authorities such as district or county councils. The tensions between representative and participative democracy are inherent in an electoral system that sees councillors as community leaders and commissioners of public services (Needham and Mangan, 2016). Meanwhile, government thinking favours active citizenship, volunteering and the co-production of policy outcomes by mobilising the networks of civil society and some kind of ‘civic core’ (Hornung et  al, 2017; Cabinet Office, 2018). In order to negotiate this complicated set of municipal relationships, community engagement officers have been drawn into the localism and empowerment agendas, helping authorities to set up participatory structures, such as neighbourhood panels or health and well-being boards, and are forced to become more strategic and less responsive in their work with communities. Consequently, community workers report that they have become embroiled in council bureaucracy and are losing their direct involvement with grassroots activism. Working with communities can be surprisingly isolating, so support from colleagues in similar positions can be invaluable. Team working offers opportunities for reflection, to learn from peers and

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to receive informal feedback and supervision about practice issues. However, teams can also be fractious, with workloads unfairly distributed or discussions dominated by particular individuals. With their groupwork skills, shared values and sense of fairness, community workers should be adept at team working and can also make valuable contributions to interdisciplinary advisory groups or multi-agency partnerships. These arrangements require people from different professions and organisations to work together on agreed outcomes and are often characterised by complicated or obscure lines of accountability. Previous chapters have illustrated how community development can be ‘unsettled and edgy’ (Shevellar and Barringham, 2019). Workers are often operating at the interface between communities, statutory agencies, private business and civic institutions. They act as intermediaries and brokers, spanning sectoral or community divisions to facilitate dialogue and partnership working. Given the recent policy context, some critics have argued that community development has allowed itself to become co-opted into government and neoliberal agendas (Meade et  al, 2016b; Reynolds, 2020). In the past, community development was commonly state-sponsored: workers were either employed directly by local authorities or their wages came via government grants. Being both ‘in and against the state’ made it hard to maintain a degree of independence and the freedom to challenge services or to criticise authorities’ policies and practices (LEWRG, 1979). This in-between stance poses a perennial dilemma for community workers. Their primary function is to support communities in developing local solutions to tackle common issues and to do this in ways that are respectful of people’s needs and aspirations. This creates particular difficulties if the activities designed or favoured by the community are not congruent with agency objectives or seem likely to mature too slowly for the timescales imposed by performance regimes (Briggs et al, 2020). Community development is often on slow burn. It takes a while for trust to ripen, for new ideas to be mulled over and absorbed, and for relationships to mature. Experienced workers will understand this tension between goals and processes and be able

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to explain it to all parties so as to negotiate a legitimate way forward that accords with community wishes but also satisfies their bosses. Less experienced workers often find it frustrating to manage these competing expectations and are sometimes accused of ‘going native’. Alternatively, they capitulate to their manager’s demands or feel forced to resign. Contrary to popular thinking, community is rarely about ‘unity’, and the principles of community development do not always supply a clear indication of the best course of action. Dealing with disputes, disagreements and personality clashes is inherent in community work and yet not all practitioners have the experience or skills to do this. It can be easier to avoid or suppress conflict than to devise strategies for working things out equitably. Developing the personal and collective capacities for successfully navigating such struggles is a neglected aspect of modern community development.

Balancing formal and informal ways of working Communities are complex and dynamic. Their behaviours are largely informal and unpredictable in terms of specific outcomes. Working with this unpredictability requires agility and flexibility, involving a shrewd but lively fusion of formal and informal processes (Gilchrist, 2016). The interplay between formal and informal modes of organising generates frictions and anomalies; some reflecting power differentials, others due to cultural differences. A great deal of community development takes place outside formal settings, through conversations, chance encounters and spontaneous activities. Time for pleasure and conviviality is vital and can be sensitively and creatively woven into or alongside formal proceedings so that people find enjoyment as well as purpose from their involvement in community activities. But informal relationships and exchanges tend to reflect social biases or personal prejudices and can therefore be discriminatory. Conversely, already disadvantaged social groups may be further marginalised by formal styles of organising, because they feel alienated and prefer to operate through informal processes that seem more flexible and ‘level’. Meetings of community members

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should therefore ensure that people feel comfortable with one another and that their contributions will be valued. Too much emphasis on formal rules and regulations can suppress discussion and preserve existing power roles, so it is a good idea to make sure community gatherings are friendly and fun, perhaps by sharing food or playing icebreaker games. Informal interactions depend heavily on the nature of relationships but can stimulate sustained generosity and commitment to community, especially if they are properly facilitated to be inclusive and strengthening of positive group dynamics. Experienced community workers should be aware of the benefits and disadvantages of formal and informal modes, using deft skills and judicious choices that blend informal processes with formal procedures to create the optimal conditions for collective discussion, agreeing goals, making and measuring progress, engaging with people and agencies, keeping going, being fair and so on (Gilchrist, 2016). However, formality tends to be regarded by policy makers and public officials as the optimal or default mode and its imposition must sometimes be resisted by community workers. Formal procedures and structures are usually seen as essential for effective management, efficient working and ‘proper’ accountability. But formality can be intimidating, time-consuming and tedious, especially for those who are relatively powerless or who are unaccustomed to bureaucracy. Formal protocols can also stifle originality, detract from people’s motivation, divert energy or exclude some from contributing. While rigid frameworks with checks, registers and defined competencies tend to be seen as necessary for mitigating risk and assuring quality, they may deter potential contributors arriving through informal community channels. Nonetheless, informal situations provide valuable opportunities for communication and learning, through discussion, skill-sharing and mentoring. Yet too much informal conversation can also be distracting, with a danger that agendas are disregarded and meetings become engulfed in banter, gossip or personal acrimony. Similarly, off-stage networking can be disruptive, undermining democratic procedures through the use of ‘soft power’ and personal pressure that is not open to scrutiny.

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Resourcing, recognition and professional status We have already alluded to the long-running debate in community development over whether it should be seen as a profession (with all the attendant restrictions regarding entry qualifications and standards) or whether it is more like a social movement, drawing on a network of community leaders and activists, some of whom are lucky enough to be paid. The latter position reflects community development’s rejection of notions of expertise or elitism, and a desire to acknowledge all kinds of contributions to community development, whether through employment, activism or voluntary roles. Those who believe that community development should claim the status of a profession argue that it is an occupation requiring specialist knowledge, sophisticated judgements and dedicated effort, at a level equivalent to the work of other recognised professions such as social work or teaching. There is a danger that unless community development is understood as a skilled and strategic intervention, it will be seen as amateurish – an optional luxury rather than a necessary means for pursuing social advancement and well-being. Many communities face almost insurmountable obstacles in coming together to achieve the changes they want. Their resources and energy are depleted by decades of industrial decline and systemic oppression. Local infrastructure is limited and levels of social capital are low or patchy. Skilful support for collective action can make a vital difference in such neighbourhoods or when working with particularly disadvantaged groups. Yet it is an approach that would benefit all communities, helping them to avoid or deal with many of the issues that occur when volunteers or small community groups come together to campaign or plan for future improvements, deliver services or influence wider decisions. This kind of proactive ‘interference’ can sometimes prove uncomfortable, especially if it comes from an ‘outsider’. Interventions therefore need to be critically examined through reflective practice for issues of power, accountability, trust and respect. International definitions and national occupational standards refer to the ‘skills, values and processes required for effective and appropriate

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practice’ (FCDL, 2015; IACD, 2018). Although these benchmarks are not designed exclusively for paid community workers, they provide a useful reference point for assessing whether a practitioner is acting within agreed principles of community development work. There are many routes into paid community development work and an array of qualifications. While these open doors for some activists and volunteers, there needs to be coherent training provision and perhaps a body to regulate and validate qualifications at each level. However, were community development to become overly professionalised or occupational standards to act as a kind of straitjacket, this would run counter to some deeply embedded tenets and probably restrict how people can perform the role, possibly inhibiting learning and innovation. There is a critical difference between establishing a framework for ‘effective and ethical practice’ and the kinds of formal qualifications that accompany professionalisation and control entry into a closed occupational elite. Nonetheless, there is a danger that the core skills and values associated with community work may become obscured, thereby allowing managers and practitioners to assume that anyone who works with communities or even just works in a community setting is delivering long-term community development. Without appropriate training and supervision, community development is in danger of being poorly practised and losing its value base. It is unfortunate that the opportunities for work-based learning and higher education qualifications in community development listed in the first edition of this Guide have been substantially reduced. Accredited and non-accredited courses are run by various agencies across the UK, but many national organisations have scaled back on training programmes; others no longer exist. However, there are new initiatives such as Local Trust’s Community Leadership Academy and the National Academy of Community Organising. The SCDC provides a range of learning resources, and tailored training is offered by some of the other national bodies, for example Citizens  UK, ACORN, Nurture Development, Locality and Community Matters in England. See also https://supportingcommunities.org/trainingoverview for Northern Ireland.

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Many of these training modules are accredited but do not yet provide a coherent form of professional qualification for community work. Most university-based courses now focus primarily on work with young people, although there are still a number of undergraduate degrees on social change where students can learn about community development. Being ‘too’ professional risks coming across as intimidating or condescending, and so may put off community members. Paid community workers are sometimes seen as representing authority or being remote, especially if they are seen as ‘external’ or insufficiently ‘embedded’ within community networks. This may generate unease on the part of the worker, and deference or resentment among community members, which can all get in the way of true community empowerment (Ife, 2016). Partly as a result of this ambivalence, community development continues to be poorly recognised and under-resourced. Local community action in the shape of increased neighbourliness, support groups, charitable welfare schemes and local volunteering activities invariably receives sporadic appreciation from policy makers and politicians (Kruger, 2020). We saw this during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and in similar crises much is made of the resourcefulness, resilience and solidarity of communities (McCabe et  al, 2020). But many areas face major challenges and struggle to maintain these levels of mutual aid (Clarke et al, 2020), often relying on the dedication of just a few individuals whose energy and enthusiasm eventually fizzle out (Dayson et al, 2018). While their contribution is celebrated as a welcome example of the ‘Big Society’, ‘active citizenship’ or faith-driven compassion, this kind of voluntary service cannot replace paid, statutory provision, especially for those most disadvantaged. There is therefore urgent need for community development to be more firmly embedded across a whole range of policy themes, notably health, well-being, social inclusion, civil renewal and education. This could be accompanied by programmes of ‘light-touch’ generic support that can facilitate and co-ordinate community-led initiatives for specific areas. Despite some well-intentioned research studies (for example, Schifferes, 2011) and numerous performance management

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frameworks, community development has been disadvantaged by its fragile evidence base and the lack of a sound business case needed to persuade senior officers, funders and politicians that it offers a costeffective way of delivering higher-level results. As we have witnessed over the past few years, it is especially vulnerable to cuts as well as remaining peripheral within government thinking and mainstream public sector organisations. It nevertheless offers a distinctive and valuable service, particularly in relation to reaching target groups who are ‘under-served’ and ‘seldom heard’ by mainstream providers. So far, unfortunately due to the unseen nature of its work, community development has not been able to sufficiently prove its worth as an effective and sustainable way of tackling deep-rooted problems.

Demonstrating impact: identifying outcomes and social return Community development claims to improve the quality of life for people, especially disadvantaged groups, by helping them to campaign on important issues, engage with services, increase their influence over decision making and generally lead healthier, happier lives. Community development needs public and philanthropic funding and so must justify that the investment of money, time and effort into communities yields results (social returns). In Chapter  5 we discussed the importance of establishing criteria and processes for measuring progress and gathering evidence of impact (McArdle et al, 2020). Despite the recent popularity of theories of change and logic frameworks, it has long proved difficult to attribute communitylevel change (intended outputs as well as intangible outcomes) to specific inputs or interventions. In community development this is partly about timescales and the importance of moving at a pace dictated by community circumstances and capacity – meaning that projects may take years to fulfil significant, sometimes unplanned goals (Lankelly Chase, 2017). Difficulties in demonstrating and claiming impact are related to the sometimes chaotic conditions in which much community development takes place (Lowe, 2017; Kania et al, 2018). Residents move in and out of areas, their lives often subject to

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change and uncertainty, while the rate and direction of progress are affected by a wide range of contradictory policies and programmes that undermine what communities are trying to achieve. By its nature, community development tends to operate within large, multi-component, complex systems, involving a number of partners, not least community members themselves (Gilchrist, 2021). By acknowledging the ‘collective impact’ of all these contributions (Cabaj and Weaver, 2016) while emphasising the learning aspects of evaluation (see https://www.humanlearning.systems/) it should be possible not only to demonstrate what has changed but also to understand the main factors that have enabled community development to occur. Continuous reflection and discussion are crucial because it is inherently difficult to foretell exactly what is going to happen in communities. Usually there are many people involved, often on a voluntary basis, and they may be accountable to numerous bodies or sometimes to no one at all. Change depends on a range of factors, most of which are not controlled by either the community or the community workers (Kelly and Westoby, 2017). Statutory employers of community workers usually expect evidence that plans have been delivered and that things have improved in line with their policy goals or nationally imposed performance indicators. Some funders require applicants to state their expected outputs and milestones in advance, demanding regular updates showing progress towards these, even though the actual outcomes are necessarily uncertain and may be contested. In these circumstances it is simply not feasible to plan using detailed objectives. In fact, too much focus on predetermined targets reduces the responsiveness vital for sound community development. Community groups frequently change their collective minds about what they want to achieve and which issues they want to prioritise. Their aspirations evolve over time as they enjoy their own successes and learn from the experiences of others. The funding and policy context also shapes the feasibility of different options, so community workers need to be alert to political changes and the wider social context.

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Scale and sustainability Whether you think about communities as rooted in localities, coming together around specific interests, as identity-based networks or a combination of all these, community development is usually regarded as a grassroots activity. Particular interventions, such as funding for posts and projects, tend to be tightly focused: relatively small-scale and temporary. Any intended change is likely to be incremental, benefiting a limited number of people and may or may not result in permanent reforms, even at local levels of policy and practice. And yet, the scope of community development encompasses more sweeping ambitions such as social justice, empowerment and the eradication of poverty. Even the less radical models aspire to broad public or policy outcomes: improved well-being, enhanced community spirit, strengthened resilience, social cohesion and so on. But many of the problems experienced by communities are ingrained: symptomatic of wider structural issues arising from the (global) economy, climate change, patterns of migration and international trading agreements. They cannot be solved through micro-level actions, relatively short-term projects or even large-scale, multi-year interventions. In particular, given the impact of the economic recession on employment, the pandemic itself and further cuts in welfare benefits and public services, it will be important for communities to look beyond the local level, so as to understand and address the root causes of their problems. Links between like-minded community groups, voluntary organisations, campaigning networks and sympathetic politicians at all levels can serve to strengthen and ground social movements aiming for fundamental and far-reaching transformation. Most community workers see themselves as agents of change, rather than simply ‘doing good’ in the world through charitable acts or helping people to cope with problems. But as change-makers they are also wary of becoming too associated with or entangled in politics for fear of losing funding, credibility or practical support. It is a balancing act that involves the mobilisation of ‘social power’ (Sheila McKechnie Foundation, 2018) and ‘radical empathy’ (Givens, 2021), accompanied by intelligent analysis and diplomacy to identify potential allies and

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political levers that might bring about lasting change. Campaigning movements, such as Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion, Global Justice Now or Reclaim Our Streets, provide far-reaching platforms that can join with national community development infrastructure organisations to mobilise local actions on these major issues. ACORN, Citizens UK and Community Organisers are among those coordinating efforts to bring pressure to bear around issues such as access to Wi-Fi, food poverty and housing security. People involved in community work, in whatever role, tend to be strongly committed to making a difference. If they experience burnout and become demoralised, it can be very damaging and may jeopardise long-term objectives, especially when disagreements are encountered. Compassionate support and conciliation may be needed to help avoid disillusionment, exhaustion and bitterness. Showing consideration, tolerance and patience can help oneself and others survive difficult times.

Dealing with uncertainty and disruption Uncertainty, stress and turbulence have had profound effects on communities throughout the world (Evans et al, 2020). Responding to the challenges brought about by Brexit, COVID-19 and the global climate crisis while planning for a better future requires a range of strategic capabilities and a better understanding of the kind of situations we are facing. How can communities develop their collective influence and confidence to take control in these circumstances? They need imagination, hope and enterprise, alongside practical support to develop resourcefulness, leadership and resilience (Pollard et al, 2021). A final challenge is posed by the need to keep things going for the long haul and recover from shocks and stresses so that momentum is maintained despite setbacks, when funding dries up and when people get tired. Communities need to be able to stay proactive: absorbing and coping with crises; adapting to changing circumstances; and continuing to transform situations and structures for the better (MacKinnon and Derickson, 2013). Community-led infrastructure is crucial: for example, community hubs that act as resource centres

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or gathering spaces that nurture networks of activists, groups and supportive voluntary organisations (Wilson et  al, 2020). Building collective resilience strengthens agency and enhances capacity (Jeans et al, 2016). Shared identity helps, and is related to, the vigour and extent of connections and mutuality.

Conclusion Community development is probably best regarded as a skilled and values-led approach for achieving social improvements. It is carried out by people in several different roles: the professional community development worker; other paid specialist community practitioners including engagement officers, social entrepreneurs, volunteers, community members, politically motivated activists, charity workers, elected councillors or trustees; plus a whole range of people who simply want to make life better for individuals and communities, such as artists, faith leaders and school governors. As this Short Guide has shown, community development enjoys various perspectives and applications; in practice this gives rise to many challenges. It has lived through many guises and been deployed for various purposes, not all of which sit comfortably with its declared principles. The emphasis on high-level, but often intangible outcomes, such as community spirit, well-being or cohesion, has lent it a certain ambiguity about what can be accomplished on a day-to-day basis. Community development claims to address the causes of major social problems, but often makes little headway. It can appear mired in dealing with the symptoms of poverty and conflict that are endemic in our unequal society. Making a difference to social justice in the long-term calls for a critical and reflexive praxis that links theory, politics and practice (Shaw and Crowther, 2017; Ledwith, 2020). Community development happens within a tangle of paradox and complexity; there is nothing certain about how it is performed, from a practical, political or ethical stance (Westoby, 2019, p 209). At an individual level, ‘people’s feelings may be contradictory and are seldom clearly expressed’ (Beck and Purcell, 2020, p 102) so it is incumbent on us all to be self-aware and to seek out opportunities for reflection

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and debate. The ambiguities, dilemmas and challenges set out in this chapter reflect, but also blur, the core values and competences that define community development. But by drawing on traditions of practice and theory, in the UK and across the world, we can ensure its continuing relevance to social progress and democracy.

SUMMARY • The status and purpose of community development is often obscured by political rhetoric and role ambiguity. • It is poorly recognised because it embodies processes that take time to mature and its impact is difficult to demonstrate among other changes at community level. • Community development works with communities of interest as well as place. These are often not tied to specific localities and may enable communities who feel marginalised or who share particular political or cultural identities to organise together. • Actively promoting equality and diversity is an important aspect of community development and this can generate tensions. • Community development supports a model of shared leadership and is concerned with complex issues of representation and accountability. • Practice combines formal and informal methods of working with communities, and workers must find ways to juggle these effectively. • Its value base provides a significant foundation for setting standards and guiding practice. • In order to achieve large-scale and lasting change community development should be better resourced at every level and its contribution more widely recognised by policy makers.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES The IACD is a useful source for examples of practice around the world and a platform for the debate around professionalisation, echoed in

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Kenny’s (2018) critique. Anne Clarke and colleagues have compiled a collection of contemporary international community development practice (2021). The ECDN (eucdn.net) offers news, case studies and briefings on various current issues, such as migration and regeneration. As mentioned in earlier chapters, national organisations such as Community Organisers, Locality, Local Trust and the SCDC are routes into current debates and reflections on the state of community development in the UK. Community Work Ireland was formerly the Community Workers Co-operative and continues to work collectively. The Irish government’s Department of Rural and Community Development has published a policy framework (https://www.gov. ie/en/publication/b2d370-framework-policy-for-local-communitydevelopment-in-ireland/), although alarmingly there is no mention of community work as such. Nonetheless, the All-Ireland Endorsement Body promotes a set of standards for community work that you can read here: http://www.aieb.ie/aiebdocs/All-Ireland-Standards-forCommunity-Work.pdf

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8 Future prospects COVID-19 has demonstrated the risks associated with predicting the future. Prior to 2020, few could have imagined the global crisis that it has created. And even as countries took steps to contain its spread, hardly anyone expected these measures to be required for so long. As vaccinations begin to provide some protection and restrictions ease, we can perhaps allow ourselves to see a post-pandemic future. But we are conscious that, by the time this Short Guide is published, the wheel will have turned again. We do not yet know what this will mean. However, in some respects, the pandemic has simply served to expose or accelerate underlying trends. This chapter considers how these trends are likely to affect local communities in the coming years, what community development can offer and how, in turn, prevailing conditions are likely to change the nature or focus of work with communities.

Developments since previous editions The first edition of this Short Guide was published shortly after a Coalition government had come to power in the UK, with the incoming government pledging to give communities more powers and devolve decision-making and responsibilities downwards. But since that time, the commitment to empowering communities has wavered. The community development infrastructure has been seriously hollowed out and those working with communities have faced new challenges posed by austerity and widening inequalities as well as the entrenched divisions exposed by the Brexit referendum 161

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and its longer-term consequences. As we write, the UK, along with many other countries, faces a likely economic downturn as well as the unknown effects on mental health of social isolation and interruptions to education that have accompanied the pandemic, especially for adolescents whose rites of passage into adulthood have been disrupted. Globally, war, the oppression of minorities and the impacts of climate change have contributed to a refugee crisis that is all too often met with the building of walls and closing of borders. New social movements have emerged, but authoritarian and populist regimes are on the increase in Europe and beyond. Meanwhile, technological advances open up fresh opportunities but also present new risks. As a result, some of the prospects for community development have changed considerably since earlier editions. Others remain relevant. The issues we raise here are interlinked but we have grouped them under the following headings: changing politics; poverty and the economy; navigating the digital universe; redefining community; the public sphere and public space; the climate and sustainable development.

Changing politics The main trends identified in earlier chapters – increasing dissatisfaction with traditional politics, deep divides revealed and aggravated by Brexit, the attractions of populist conspiracy theories – are unlikely to disappear. Much has been written about the way we increasingly live in bubbles, avoiding opinions other than our own. In 2016, we reported on new statutory opportunities emerging in Scotland and Wales around civic engagement, governance and citizen empowerment. But the potential break-up of the Union will inevitably have a more far-reaching impact on politics in each of the four nations. This could lead to the emergence of new democratic institutions, including regional government in England and increasing decentralisation to local levels – the latter long promised but rarely achieved. It remains to be seen how local government will survive the drastic cuts of the past decade, but there may be further experiments in

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local democracy in some areas, building on initiatives like ‘flatpack democracy’ in Frome (MacFadyen, 2014) or new approaches to the local economy as in the Preston Model. Some see opportunities for further participatory mechanisms and for more control at local and sublocal level, as the government calls on resilient communities to address the fall-out from continuing economic uncertainty. If so, community development will have much to do in supporting communities to take up new democratic powers and to negotiate different decision-making arenas, but also to resist unrealistic demands and potential exploitation. New powers will not only rely on what is bestowed from above. Post-pandemic, there will be no shortage of issues that demand action. We referred earlier to the explosion of activity around climate change and racism through Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter, as well as the successes of radical organising through Citizens UK, ACORN and others. These are all resources for communities to connect with: building solidarity, offering a range of repertoires for collective action and appealing to different constituencies. The eventual lifting of restrictions on public gatherings could well release new energies into existing campaigns and allow further forms of protest to emerge, although measures to restrict protests in proposed legislation are causing concern. Community workers can also support communities themselves to give their local issues more prominence, to join forces with others facing similar concerns, to share their ideas and, where necessary, to scale neighbourhood initiatives up to regional and national levels. A lively working democracy will ultimately depend on strong roots at local level. But how can community development respond to increasing divisions and distrust between citizens and communities, and particularly to the rise of populism? Most commentators see this as a long-term process but one that has to be based in dialogue. This requires difficult conversations with people ‘unlike me’ that can help to dismantle stereotypes and cultivate genuine understanding and respect between strongly held views. Community workers can host and expand the increasingly rare spaces where people feel safe enough to make this possible. To do so requires a willingness to understand and respond to the experiences and emotions behind opposing

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perspectives, as well as the honing of skills in empathy, mediation and conflict resolution.

Poverty and the economy Despite early claims, we were never ‘all in this together’ when it came to the pandemic. Instead, COVID-19 has intensified preexisting inequalities – between ethnic groups, between generations, between those who can afford to self-isolate, home tutor their children and keep a job and those who cannot. The more affluent have seen their savings grow as they have spent less; the less affluent have been forced into debt and benefit dependency as well as regular reliance on charities, such as foodbanks. The pandemic has also exposed the ravages of austerity, with public services cut to the bone or shut down completely. With economic uncertainty looming in the wake of the pandemic and Brexit, it is all too likely that the effects will be visited, as with the 2008 global banking crisis, on those who are already vulnerable. This will fuel hardship, discrimination and blame. Communities will be expected yet again to be resilient. Much hope will be invested by funders and politicians in community enterprise, social investment and community shares/ownership. Some see scope for a massive expansion in community energy, community land trusts and grassroots power, with more local supply chains, enabled by new technologies and with the potential to revive ‘left-behind’ economies and generate local employment (Evans et al, 2020). In specific communities, the initiatives cited above can make a significant difference to people’s life chances and the quality of everyday life. Community development has an important role in opening up opportunities, testing out ideas and supporting communities to decide what is likely to work for them. It can ensure that new enterprises remain community owned and accountable, share stories of successful ventures elsewhere and also help residents to influence public policy so that it continues to support and invest in these developments. However, as discussed earlier, community economic initiatives in the UK, and especially England, while inspiring and often generating social as well as economic returns, remain relatively marginal to date. In the

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foreseeable future, debt and financial exclusion will continue to be major issues in many ‘left-behind’ communities, and the decline in cash usage precipitated by the pandemic may well affect the most vulnerable. Credit unions, local currencies and community savings schemes do offer some ways forward but, again, with mixed success and not yet at scale. Setting up enterprises in impoverished communities is always going to be challenging but if communities are to benefit from advances in this field, community workers will need to engage with the latest thinking, exploring ways of working creatively with private business and new financial arrangements. However, communities have different forms of capital. Feminist economists and others remind us that the economy consists of many different activities, only some which relate to market transactions (Gibson-Graham, 2006; Raworth, 2017). COVID-19 has demonstrated the value of community mutual aid, for example, while TimeBanking and other exchange or sharing schemes have strong advocates. Shaw and Mayo (2016b, p 3) comment that community development ‘has been deployed both to address inequality and to mask its causes’. In many areas there will be a delicate balance between encouraging self-reliance and leaving the most disadvantaged communities to fend for themselves. Employment may become even more precarious; affordable, decent housing for the poorest in society even more scarce. As a growing community union, ACORN has demonstrated how communities can mobilise to defend their most vulnerable members and influence policy as well as providing networks of mutual aid in the face of crisis. Meanwhile Citizens UK has campaigned for a living wage and for better treatment of asylum seekers with some notable successes. Since the pandemic hit, there has also been renewed interest in ideas of a universal basic income but emergency policies to support incomes during the pandemic (through a boost to Universal Credit, for example) seem unlikely to be sustained.

Navigating the digital universe Advances in digital communication and artificial intelligence have opened up huge possibilities – for production, for exchange, for

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entertainment. Communities and citizens can access and share information on a scale unimagined at the turn of the century. The pandemic has highlighted the importance of ‘community online’ (Westoby and Harris, 2020, p 554), creating a new commons. It has enabled community groups to mobilise vast amounts of support, to get information out at speed and to reach new people. Online platforms have made it possible for groups and organisations to hold meetings, socialise and learn together. They have introduced new ways of raising money, such as crowdfunding. Novel forms of community art and culture have evolved, with dance, music, comic memes and so on created and shared through apps such as Zoom, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. Local people are using virtual spaces to co-operate and trade, setting up community businesses in ways that sidestep global corporations. The internet is allowing new ways for people to connect beyond their locality, even globally. With ever-more technical innovation, there is potential for more and more communities to benefit from digital advances over time. But there are caveats. In 2018, 10 per cent of UK adults either had never used the internet or had not used it in the past three months (ONS, 2019), while 20 per cent of the population had zero or limited digital skills. These proportions are declining, partly due to enforced social distancing and the need to use online services, but one study suggests that 7.9 million people will still lack digital skills in 2025 (CEBR, 2015). Promises from tech companies and government to provide equipment and free data have yet to be fully implemented, resulting in major problems of financial and educational exclusion. Policy makers and enthusiasts keen to exploit new technologies seem unaware of the barriers to take-up, and the pandemic has opened up possibilities for even more services to transfer online – GP consultations, for example. For Naomi Klein (2020), this shift to digital has been ‘a living laboratory for a permanent – and highly profitable – no touch future’. Chapter 4 highlighted the scope for increased surveillance. Data, including on personal health, are being harvested by private tech companies with no accountability. Platforms like WhatsApp, which have been used by citizens for mobilisation, have also been used by

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governments and others to track and disrupt protests. Other platforms have so far proved less permeable but can be used by social movements that are not necessarily committed to social justice, as the 2021 assault on the US Capitol showed. And while the internet and social media have generated a new commons, digital identities and spaces can be appropriated, distorted and censored through biased marketing and search algorithms. New technology, while it has played a significant part in innovation, has expedited the transformation of the labour market and the exploitation of workers. We are also becoming more aware of its environmental costs. This may seem a depressing picture. But those who alert us to these challenges also remind us of the potential. Community workers can be at the forefront of tackling digital exclusion. There are many examples of community projects renovating and re-distributing laptops, finding ways of reaching community members without internet access by campaigning for free and/or extended Wi-Fi (Taylor and Wilson, 2020; #Operation Wi-Fi). In previous editions we called for community workers to become more digitally literate. Many of them have had to do so. New skills are needed in filtering and retrieving information, keeping safe and protecting privacy, navigating constantly changing technologies, and designing the message and its medium. The challenge now is to develop a ‘critical digital literacy’ (Westoby and Harris, 2020) that can support people in exploring new forms of virtual communication and online organising while being vigilant about potential misuse. In an age of information overload, it is important to resist the attentiongrabbing properties of social media. Zoom and other platforms have been indispensable for keeping meetings going, for example, although they can be difficult for some disabled and older people (Todd and Munro, 2021). The pandemic has also reminded us of the value of face-to-face interaction in maintaining our sense of community and mutual belonging (Pinker, 2015) and the value of serendipitous encounters in the neighbourhood. Many of us miss the informal interactions that accompany in-person meetings. The future lies in finding and promoting blended approaches: ‘tech where it matters; people where it counts’ (Robinson, 2020, p 32).

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Redefining community: migration, identity and the significance of place Wars, climate change, the destruction of habitats, global media, cheaper travel and the opening up of markets have all contributed to the movement of people over recent years, reconfiguring national populations and local communities across the planet. However, while some borders have opened, others have closed. Anti-immigration moral panics illustrate the ‘dark side’ of community. ’Tough’ policies on border control have always offered an easy mark for politicians seeking popular support, as the campaign for Brexit and the success of nationalist, far-right organising across the globe demonstrate. Demographic and cultural change has been a recurring feature of some urban communities over the years, but this is likely to be the case for a wider range of towns and villages in the future, as their populations become more transient and diverse. Community development has an important role to play in promoting co-operation and mutual understanding. But the need to foster solidarity and build bridges between communities will continue to present a challenge, as people seek someone to blame for unwelcome changes, and politicians, abetted by parts of the media, fan division. Divideand-rule has always been a powerful tool and uncertainty breeds defensiveness. In these circumstances, community workers will need creativity and political acumen in bringing people together around common issues: creating opportunities for different communities to build the confidence that they need to reach across social divisions; fostering solidarity rather than resentment; and finding ways of recognising and addressing the fears on which animosity feeds. Thousands of projects across the country have been launched to bring people together, including those organised by The Great Get Together in memory of the murdered MP Jo Cox, and the Big Lunch organised by the Eden Project. These gatherings have proved invaluable during the pandemic and there is plenty of good crosscultural practice and inter-faith facilitation to draw on, often based around food, storytelling and the arts.

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For significant minorities, however, place may offer less of a sense of belonging and safety than their shared identity, especially if the place they end up in feels temporary or hostile. Immigration is transforming the meanings of both community and development as communities become increasingly multi-ethnic and transnational (DeFilippis and Saegert, 2012). Many ‘ex-pat’ communities, even though settled here and well integrated into society, organise to raise funds for projects in their country of origin. Does this contribute to community development in their home city? Will the notion of community, as a result, become even more detached from place? We have also remarked earlier on the impact of changing patterns of housing tenure. Private tenants may not be able to put down roots in a community, while the transience they introduce can feel disruptive to settled communities. It may be more appropriate to help them to organise on a city-wide level, as ACORN does. To announce the death of the local is premature. Localism is part of current political rhetoric and place is still significant for many people, especially in disadvantaged areas, cut off from the mainstream. But place is now one source of community belonging among many. Collective identities are used strategically to create a sense of safety, to seek integration and to assert rights, for example in relation to sexual orientation or disability. Ethnic origin, faith and citizenship are not straightforwardly aligned, leading to hybrid identities that combine nationality with other characteristics, such as British Sikh. Similarly, cultural patterns of oppression are interrelated and the nature of this intersectionality needs to be understood. Community development must take into account these more complicated patterns of connection and be aware of the power differentials and political perspectives associated with them.

The public sphere and public space In 2016, we commented on the shrinking of the state that accompanied the rise of neoliberalism. We argued then for the role of the state in mediating competing interests, supporting the unorganised, ensuring accountability and as the ultimate guarantor of

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equalities and social justice. Since then, the picture has become more complicated. Successive Conservative governments have ensured that the trends away from the public sphere have accelerated since 2016, with continuing cuts to public services and increasing privatisation. But COVID-19 demanded a strong response from the state, with an unprecedented increase in public spending to deal with the health crisis and protect the economy. At the same time, however, many of the initiatives to address the pandemic have been outsourced to private firms, with mixed success. The contracting out of services has depoliticised large swathes of the statutory sector and already means that it is more and more difficult to know who to hold responsible when things go wrong or standards slip. Over the years, increased regulation has hit communities hard as they struggle to implement health and safety protocols, safeguarding obligations, criminal checks and burdensome monitoring schemes, as well as to resist an increasingly litigious society, with the media waiting to pounce on any infringement. There may be good reasons behind all of these measures and successive governments have made commitments to cut red tape. However, the unintended consequences of these regulations and associated assumptions can make it more difficult for communities to generate income through their own activities and this raises questions about proportionality. Increasing regulatory requirements are likely to increase risk-aversion and may erode trust, while the costs of adhering to legislative requirements can be a disproportionate burden on community initiatives in lowincome areas. Once again, COVID-19 has changed this picture, with community responses generally being less controlled and more informal. During the pandemic, ‘the small, the fast and the expert by experience have demonstrated the value of qualities which large organisations find it difficult or impossible to replicate’ (Robinson, 2020, p 20). While large-scale schemes were encumbered by bureaucratic and unwanted procedures, most communities have just used their own initiative to get things going. More formal partners have valued the flexibility and reach this allows. Funders too have relaxed their rules in order to get money as fast as possible to the communities that need it (IVAR,

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2021). Where this has worked well, it is to be hoped that lessons regarding trust and flexibility will lead to longer-term change. Earlier sections have highlighted the problems that contract funding can bring to community organisations. And the pandemic has left many who depended on this funding uncertain as to their future. In the longer term, moves towards co-production offer new opportunities that allow communities to contribute to the provision of local goods and services as they see fit (Durose and Richardson, 2015). There are inspiring examples of community-run services and important lessons from the past about what works and what doesn’t. Distilling and applying these insights is something that community workers are well placed to do, helping to ensure that such services are sustainable, responsive, inclusive and accountable. Supporting communities to make their voices heard when services are threatened or of poor quality will also continue to be a priority. This means finding creative ways of holding service providers and commissioners to account, especially for those in communities whose needs are not adequately or appropriately met. It is not only services that are shrinking. Neglected public spaces may no longer seem safe or welcoming for hanging out or as places for communal get-togethers. It is the poorest communities in society that depend most on open access to spaces such as pubs and public parks, and the pandemic restrictions highlighted how meaningful these were for countering social isolation. Meanwhile, community centres, youth centres, public leisure and sports facilities, adult education, playgrounds and libraries have all been affected by cuts (Kruger, 2020). Venues that used to be free often have to charge due to severely reduced funding. All this has had detrimental impacts on community life, meaning that in some communities, there is nowhere for community groups to meet or hold events, and young people are left to congregate on street corners. Market developments are at play here too. Out-of-town shopping malls have contributed to the decline of high streets, while banks and post offices are closing local branches. But sometimes, the erosion of public spaces simply reflects changes in the way we live, with more and more being done online, a trend only accelerated by the pandemic.

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This gradual disappearance of social infrastructure, which Kruger (2020, p  39) describes as ‘the software of social capital, trust and belonging’, has significantly reduced opportunities for social contact – people bumping into others outside their immediate circle and getting to know one another through the kind of serendipitous encounters we wrote about earlier and which are crucial for marginalised or isolated people: Our public spaces are the bedrock of community life. They bring places together, enabling us to meet our neighbours, rub shoulders with people we might not otherwise run into, realise the things we have in common. (Armstrong, 2018, p 4) Access to public places is vital for our physical and mental wellbeing. First, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of nature and outdoor spaces and we hope this will be recognised in future policy. Secondly, it has shown the worth of those community hubs that remained open, acting as lifelines for their local communities by providing practical help, moral support and information. But these hubs have themselves struggled to survive, losing income from rentals and other forms of trading, while reopening often incurs significant expense due to social distancing and cleansing requirements. Will their value be recognised in the longer-term?

The climate and sustainable development Despite repeated warnings from international experts and ‘green’ social movements, global warming has reached a tipping point (Grossman, 2020). In addition, demands for environmental justice argue that the earth’s resources are being exploited unfairly and that the impacts of rising temperatures are disproportionately falling on populations that have gained least from economic growth and scarcely contributed in terms of their carbon footprint. The impending climate emergency is forcing governments and communities to take action, with stringent policy goals and locally led initiatives to promote biodiversity and restrict emissions of greenhouse

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gases. For community development this is likely to mean more support for schemes to reduce waste, restore habitats and achieve net zero carbon levels through localised food production, sharing resources and ‘active’ travel. It may also involve a greater focus on measures that mitigate the various impacts of global warming on local communities, such as flood prevention. The challenge is to convince people that individual and community actions can make a difference. Somehow we need to reframe the debate about what can and must be done over the next few years and discover a politics of hope and agency to counter common narratives of despair and apathy (McKinnon, 2014). Just as importantly, examples of concerted programmes to combat global warming at communitylevel (and beyond) all help to reframe the debate about what can and must be done over the next few years.

Conclusion A number of studies have shown levels of formal volunteering and mutual aid to be higher in affluent than in low-income communities. While this research may not pick up all the more informal, ‘below the radar’ activity that is common in the latter, the challenges of organising in poorer communities are undoubtedly higher. There is ever more emphasis on community resilience, fuelled perhaps by the spontaneous community responses to the pandemic. But communities that have experienced waves of hardship and catastrophe cannot be expected to go it alone. Skilled as they are at survival, they will need resources and practical support to enable them to meet the challenges outlined in this chapter. We have seen in these pages how policy interest in community has ebbed and flowed over the years. And community development has reinvented itself accordingly, with different models gaining ascendancy at different times. We have also seen how terminology has changed, although not its values and principles. This adaptability is a major asset but it means community development can be difficult to pin down. New agencies have emerged in the UK in response to various funding opportunities and sometimes focused on specific models of working

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with communities. There is always a risk that different approaches will plough their own furrows and promote their own brands, even competing for resources. In the past, these differences have been negotiated, allowing organisations to join forces under umbrella bodies like the Community Sector Coalition or CDX, but these no longer exist. In Scotland a strong infrastructure has survived but with devolution, national programmes tend to run independently, reducing the scope for cross-border learning. So, what will the future bring? In our Introduction, we asked whether community development was an approach, a practice, a profession or a movement. Over the decades, there have been fierce debates about values and the risk that these will be eroded if community development is used in an instrumental way or co-opted into government (or indeed any other external) agendas. But there will always be a range of models and standards, working in, with and against the state. As policies and practice change over time, these debates will continue to be important alongside a willingness across the board to learn from experience and to work together to advance community development’s common principles and the communities it seeks to support. There will be further opportunities and dilemmas, many unpredictable at present, but a clear ethical framework along with a strong reflexive commitment through which to challenge and improve practice will be the strongest guarantors of effective community development into the future.

FURTHER READING AND RESOURCES Think tanks are a good resource for research on new opportunities and trends. Those relevant to community development include the New Economics Foundation (NEF), Demos, Nesta, the RSA (Royal Society of Arts), the Resolution Foundation, IPPR, Involve (involve. org.uk). These variously explore futures in citizenship, governance, new economic models and the environment, while the Institute for Community Studies focuses more specifically on communities. The Road Ahead is an annual analysis by NCVO (the National Council for Voluntary Organisations) of the changing operating environment

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for the voluntary and community sector, while the Better Way network is bringing together a wide range of leading thinkers and practitioners with an interest in improving services and building stronger communities (abetterway.network). Local Trust has published The Future is Ours (Evans et al, 2020), exploring the factors that will shape the future for England’s communities. A wealth of research on community and voluntary sector responses has been generated during the pandemic and this is likely to continue in its aftermath. Many of these studies can be found in the repository curated by the Voluntary Sector Studies Network (vssn.org.uk). It is also worth scanning the websites of the organisations involved in community research referenced throughout this volume.

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Together Coalition (2021) Our chance to reconnect. Available from: https://together.org.uk/Our-Chance-to-Reconnect.pdf Tuckman, B.W. (1965) ‘Developmental sequence in small groups’, Psychological Bulletin, 63(6): 384–99. Twelvetrees, A. and Todd, R. with Pearce, S. (2022, forthcoming) Community development, social action and social planning: A practical guide, Bristol: Policy Press. United Nations (1955) Social progress through community development, New York: United Nations. Unwin, J. (2018) Kindness, emotions and human relationships: The blind spot in public policy, Dunfermline: Carnegie Trust. Vromen, A., Xenos, M. and Loader, B. (2015) ‘Young people, social media and connective action: from organisational maintenance to everyday political talk’, Journal of Youth Studies, 18(1): 80–100. Wainwright, O. (2020) ‘A Kafkaesque nightmare’: the survival guide helping condemned estates beat the bulldozers’, The Guardian, 22 May. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/ artanddesign/2020/may/22/a-kafkaesque-nightmare-the-survivalguide-helping-condemned-estates-beat-the-bulldozers Waldrop, M. (1994) Complexity: The emerging science at the edge of chaos, London: Penguin. Warburton, D. (2021) ‘Sustainable communities for the future’ in H. Tam (ed) Tomorrow’s communities, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 215–32. Warhurst, P. and Dobson, J. (2014) Incredible! Plant veg and grow a revolution, Kibworth Beauchamp: Matador. Wellman, B. (1979) ‘The community question: the intimate networks of East Yorkers’, American Journal of Sociology, 84(5): 1201–31. Westoby, P. (2019) ‘Concluding reflections: philosophical reflections on community and community development’, in S. Banks and Westoby, P. (eds) Ethics, equity and community development, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 209–19. Westoby, P. (2021) ‘“A community development yet-to-come”: Jacques Derrida and re-constructing community development praxis’, Community Development Journal, 56(3): 375–90.

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Index References to tables and boxes are in italics

7 Es 17, 139

A accountability 101–3, 145–7 ACORN 28, 111, 156, 165, 169 action learning sets 94 action research 84, 100 active citizenship 30, 38, 69, 146, 152 activists 95–6 advocacy coalitions 66 affirmative action 141–2 ageism 81, 112, 128 see also intersectionality agency organisation of 73–5 and power 70–1, 73 Aiken, M. 117 Alinsky model 26, 27, 67 appreciative enquiry 30 Armstrong, T. 172 Arnstein, S. 71–2 asset-based community development (ABCD) 19, 29–30, 34, 38, 84 austerity 39, 41, 43, 48, 114, 164

B Bandura, A. 58 Bangladesh 120 Banks, S. 9, 82 Bartos, M. 69 Beck, D. 33, 157 Beider, H. 62 Berkeley, R. 131 Big Local 40, 99–100 Big Lottery Community Fund 115 Big Lottery Foundation 40 Big Lunch 168 Big Society 38, 39 Big Society Capital 115 Black and minority ethnic communities community allegiance 141 and COVID-19 pandemic 41, 124 early community development 35–6 and health 124 and identity 169 immigration 168, 169 terminology 8 see also inequalities, racism bottom-up approach 83 201

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Bourdieu, P. 56, 69–70, 71 Brazil 40 Brexit 5, 45, 62, 132, 164, 168 Butcher, H. 1, 31

C Cameron, David 38 capacity building 93–5 capitalism Marxist theories 63–4 neoliberalism 37, 70–1, 169–70 carbon levels 119, 120, 121, 172–3 Carnegie Trust 122 Castells, M. 76 Chahal, K. 62 challenges for practice 137–59 accountability 145–7 coherence and infrastructure 137–8 community allegiance 139–41 demonstrating impact 153–4 equality and diversity 141–3 formal and informal working 148–9 leadership and representation 143–5 multifaceted expectations 145–8 role boundaries and power dynamics 138–9 scale and sustainability 155–6 uncertainty and disruption 156–7 Chanan, G. 125 change agents 155–6 charitable incorporated organisations (CIO) 88 charitable status 88–9 Chorianopoulos, I. 65 citizen organising 27

citizens’ juries 121 Citizens UK 27, 39, 46, 156, 165 City Challenge programme 37 civic model 30 class 41–2, 46, 62, 63–4, 124 Clegg, S. 73 climate crisis 4, 118–22, 172–3 co-operation 20, 91 co-production 44, 71, 84, 91, 122, 126, 171 Coalition government (2010–15) 38–9, 49, 110–11, 161 Coleman, J. 56 collaborative working 20, 85, 86–7, 90–1 collective action 21–2, 46, 163 social movement theory 75–7 collective efficacy 59 collective identity 76, 169 collective leadership 59–60, 143 colonialism 6, 35–6 commons, the 116 communication 97–8 communicative action 65 communitarian models 26, 29–30, 46–7, 55 communities of practice 95 community allegiance 139–41 community benefit society (BenCom) 88 community cohesion 47 community contested nature 55–6 definition of 9, 54–5 future prospects 168–9 knowledge of 83–5 restoring 46–8 theories of 54–7 community development finance institutions (CDFIs) 115, 117

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community development (overview) 13–34 ambivalence of 145 community practice 31–2 core values 19–20 definition/concept 1–3, 6–7 future prospects 174 historically 3–4, 35–7 in-between stance of 147–8 international frameworks 14–15 lack of recognition 152–3 loss of infrastructure 137–8 models and approaches 25–30 practices and processes 16–19 providing help 24–5 recent changes 4–6, 161–2 strategies of 21–4 strengths-based model 18–19 terminology 1 see also policy context Community Development Project (CDP) 3, 6–7, 37, 49, 63–4 community development worker role 16, 17, 24–5, 137–9 characteristics of workforce 17–18 community education 23–4, 40, 64, 93–5 Community Empowerment Act 2015 45 community engagement 28–9, 123, 146 community enterprise 89, 116–17, 118, 164 community health partnerships 124 community interest company (CIC) 88 community land trust 88, 110, 164 Community Organisers [organisation] 27–8, 156

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Community Organisers Programme 27–8, 39 Community Planning Partnerships 45 community practice 31–2, 82 community rights 38, 110, 113, 120 community safety strategies 107–8 complexity theory 74–5 Conservative-led governments 37, 38–9, 170 see also Coalition government (2010–15) constitutive power 71 contracting out of public services 170 Cornwall, A. 46 coronavirus pandemic see COVID-19 pandemic cosmopolitanism 62 Cottam, H. 125 COVID-19 pandemic community response to 5–6, 31–2, 41, 48, 91–2, 96, 166, 167, 172 impact of 4, 5, 41–2, 48, 114, 164, 167, 170, 171, 172 Cox, Jo 168 Crenshaw, K. 61 critical digital literacy 167 critical pedagogy 64 Crossley, N. 71 cultural capital 71 customer participation 28–9, 37, 125–6 see also public participation

D data protection 97 Davidson, S. 122

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Davies, J. 65, 69 De Angelis, M. 116 decentralisation 162–3 DeFilippis, J. 7 democracy 44–6 changing nature of 162–3 theories 63–7 deprivation see inequalities; leftbehind neighbourhoods Derickson, K. 48 difficult conversations 131 digital exclusion 166, 167 digital world 165–7 disability discrimination 128–9, 132, 167 see also intersectionality Disability Rights UK 129 disadvantage see inequalities; leftbehind neighbourhoods discourse 69, 70, 76 diversity 14, 61, 62, 86 challenges of promoting 141–3 definition of 127–8 see also inequalities Durkheim, E. 55 Durose, C. 71

E ecological approaches 74–5 economy economic responses to poverty 113–18 future prospects 164–5 Eden Project 168 education addressing underachievement 108 for community development workers 93–5, 151–2 critical pedagogy 64

learning together 20 popular/informal education 23–4, 40, 64, 93–5 effective community development 81–105 communication and knowledge management 97–8 dealing with differences and difficulties 86–7 evaluation 99–101 formal organisations 87–9 integrity and accountability 101–3 learning opportunities 93–5 networking and engagement 89–91 resources and support 91–3 understanding the community 83–5 using and influencing policy 98–9 volunteers and activists 95–6 working with people 85–6 emancipatory approaches 26 empowerment 19–20, 24, 28, 29, 31, 71–2, 146 energy production 119, 120 enquiry-led learning 94 environmental action 118–22, 172–3 equality 19, 141–3 meaning of 127, 141 see also inequalities Equality Act 2010 128 Equality and Human Rights Commission. 128 ESB 17–18 ethics 101–3 Etzioni, A. 55 European Community Development Network (ECDN) 15 European Union 15, 40

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evaluation 99–101, 153–4 experiential learning 23–4, 93–5

F FCDL 150–1 feminism 61, 76 see also gender inequalities finance see funding Fine, R. 62 Fisher, B. 125 flatpack democracy 163 formal and informal working 148–9 formal organisations 87–9 Foucault, M. 68–9, 70 framing issues 76–7 Freire, P. 40, 64, 79, 94 Frome 163 funding alternative sources of 40 community development finance institutions (CDFIs) 115, 117 community workers’ role 92–3 COVID-19 pandemic 41, 170 cuts to/loss of 32, 39–40, 43, 137–8, 153, 171 demonstrating impact 154 from European Union 40 future prospects 171 grants 32, 40, 41, 92–3, 117 left behind neighbourhoods 114–18 procurement practices 43 future prospects 161–75 changing politics 162–4 climate crisis 172–3 digital world 165–7 poverty and the economy 164–5 public sphere and places 169–72 redefining community 168–9

G Gaventa, J. 70 gender inequalities 118 Germany 54–5 global warming 4, 118–22, 172–3 globalisation 4, 40–1 Goggin, N. 117 governance 45, 70, 79, 87–8 theories 65–6 governmentality 69, 70–1 Gramsci, A. 64, 70, 79 grants 32, 40, 41, 92–3, 117 Great Get Together, The 168 green issues 118–22, 172–3 Grenfell Tower 110 group dynamics 59–60 group work 85–6

H Habermas, J. 65 habitus 69–70, 71 Harris, V. 167 health and social care 122–7 challenges 126–7 community development’s role 125–6 patient/public involvement 28, 125–6 social and economic determinants of health 122, 124, 126 health literacy 123–4 Healthy Living Centres 126 hegemony 64, 70 hierarchy of needs 58 homelessness 109 hooks, b. 61 housing 109–13 alternative forms of tenure 110 challenges 112–13

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housing (continued) community development’s role 111–12 nature of the market 47, 109–10, 112 and origins of community development 36 planning 49, 110–11, 112, 113 and transience 47, 112–13, 169 hubs 42, 93, 126, 156–7, 172 human rights model 141

I identity 60–2, 169 ill health see health and social care immigration 168, 169 impact 99–101, 153–4 inclusion 14, 86, 112, 128, 131, 135, 141–2 see also inequalities incorporation 88–9 Index of Multiple Deprivation 9 Industrial Areas Foundation (US) 27 inequalities 127–32 challenges of 131–2, 141–3 and collective efficacy 59 community development’s role 130–1 future prospects 164–5 gender inequalities 118 and health 124 impact of COVID-19 pandemic 41–2 increasing 4–5, 113–14, 164 left behind neighbourhoods 113–18

National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (NSNR) 37–8 oppression 61, 86, 87, 129, 131, 132 protected characteristics 128–9 and social identity 61–2 structural 19, 26, 59, 61, 129, 131–2 informal and formal working 148–9 informal education 23–4, 40, 64, 93–5 information management 97–8 Institute for Development Studies 72 Institute for Global Change 41 institutional theory 73–5 instrumental rationality 65 integrity 101–3, 145–6 interculturalism 129–30 International Association for Community Development (IACD) 2, 2, 6, 14 international perspectives, policy context 40–1 internet 4, 42, 76, 97, 166–7 intersectionality 61, 129, 169

J Jessop, B. 66

K Kahneman, D. 23 Kenny, S. 24–5, 62, 67 Klein, N. 42, 166 knowledge management 97–8 Kretzmann, J. 30 Kruger, D. 43–4, 172

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L labour market 49, 62, 113–14, 115 ladder of participation 71–2 leadership 60, 143–5 learning opportunities see education left-behind neighbourhoods challenges 116–18 community development’s role 116 economic responses to 113–18 future prospects 164–5, 173 and health 124   and radical models 26 regeneration 48–9 statistical sources 85 targeted initiatives 114–15 terminology 9 see also inequalities legal incorporation 88–9 listening 84, 131 Local Insight 85 local knowledge 97, 116 Localis 112 localism 38, 43, 44–6, 146, 169 Localism Act 2011 38, 43 Lorde, A. 143 Lukes, S. 68, 69, 70, 72

M MacKinnon, D. 48 managerialism 70 markets 37, 43–4, 47, 48, 65, 116 Marmot, M. 124 Marsh Farm, Luton 117 Marxist theories 63–4 Maslow, A. 58 Mayo, M. 35–6, 62, 165 McCulloch, A. 56 McKnight, J. 30

207

media skills 98 Meekosha, H. 61 meetings 86, 148–9, 167 Melucci, A. 76 mental health 124, 126 migration 168, 169 motivation 58 Murtagh, B. 117 mutual aid 31, 48, 92, 152, 165, 173

N National Academy of Community Organising 27–8 National Community Development Project 36, 37 National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal (NSNR) 37–8 needs, hierarchy of 58 neoliberalism 37, 70–1, 169–70 networks/networking 21, 59 skills/practices 89–91 new institutionalists 73 New Labour 37–8 New Local 124 NHS Long Term Plan 123 see also health and social care NIMBYism 140 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 40 Northern Ireland 123, 151

O occupational standards 2, 13–15, 103, 104–5, 150–1 oppression 61, 86, 87, 129, 131, 132 organisational behaviour 73–5

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organisational development 22, 88–9 organisations, establishing 87–9 Organization Workshop model 117 Ostrom, E. 116 othering 55, 130, 142 outcomes 99–101, 153–4 Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion 85

P pandemic see COVID-19 pandemic Parry, K. 55 participation see public participation; user participation participation, ladder of 71–2 participatory action research 84 participatory appraisal 100 participatory governance 45 partnership working 45, 46 people skills 85–6 People’s Health Trust 123 planning 49, 110–11, 112, 113 Plant, R. 54–5 pluralist models and theories 26, 28–9, 64–5 policy context 35–52 continuing themes 42–50 COVID-19 pandemic 41–2 democracy 44–6 influencing 98–9 international perspectives 40–1 localism 43, 44–6 new direction 38–40 origins and early applications 35–7 public service reform 43–4 recent developments 41–2 regeneration programmes 48–9

renaissance of community 37–8 restoring community 46–8 policy making 66, 98–9 politics as balancing act 155–6 future trends 162–4 and technology 76 see also populism Popple, K. 64 popular education 23–4, 40, 64, 93–5 populism 5, 45, 62, 66–7, 70, 71, 163 positive action 129, 141–2 postmodernism 68–9 poverty early community development 36 economic responses to 113–18 future prospects 164–5 and health 124 intersectionality 61 see also inequalities; left-behind neighbourhoods poverty premium 114 Powell, W.W. 74 power and agency 70–1 challenges for practice 138–9 communitarian models 29–30 governance theories 65 how it works 68–71 and inequalities 131–2 levels and dimensions of 68, 71–3 pluralist models 28–9, 64–5 radical models 26–8 theories of 68–73 power cube 72, 75 Power to Change 40, 115, 134 Preston model 115, 163

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private tenancies 109, 111, 112–13 privatisation 41, 43, 47–8, 170 privilege 142 procurement practices 43 professional status 2, 17, 150–3 protected characteristics 128–9 protest 26–7, 71, 163 psychosocial concepts and theories 57–62 Public Health England 119 public participation 28–9, 45, 46, 49 ladder of participation 71–2 public service reform 43–4, 169–72 public spaces 47–8, 171–2 Purcell, R. 157 Putnam, R. 46–7, 56

Q qualifications 17, 151–2 quasi-markets 43–4

R race/racism 5, 8, 36, 129, 132, 141 see also Black and minority ethnic communities; inequalities; intersectionality radical listening 84, 131 radical models 25, 26–8, 39, 67 Recovery Colleges 126 regeneration programmes 37–8, 48–9, 114 regulation 170 representation 141–2, 143–5 resilience 48, 70, 156–7, 173 resistance 70–1 resourcefulness 24, 48

Richardson, L. 71 Robinson, D. 41–2, 56, 167, 170

S Saegert, S. 7 Sampson, R. 59 scale 155–6 SCDC 112, 151 Scotland 45, 123, 174 self-actualisation 58 self-efficacy 58–9 self-organisation 31–2 sexual orientation 129–30, 169 terminology 8–9 see also intersectionality Shaw, M. 62, 165 Single Regeneration Budget 37 slow thinking 23 Smock, K. 30 social capital 46–7, 56–7, 59, 124 bonding social capital 47, 57 bridging social capital 47, 57 linking social capital 57 social care see health and social care social economy 118 social enterprise 38, 89, 115, 116–17 social exclusion 113–18, 142 social housing 109–10, 111–12 social identity 60–2 social investment 115, 117, 134, 164 social isolation 48 social justice 19 social media 46, 69, 70, 76, 97, 166–7 social movement theory 75–7 social pedagogy 94 social prescribing 123

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Socratic questioning 131 solidarity 55, 61–2, 131, 168 Somerville, P. 54 spaces and power 72, 75 public spaces 47–8, 171–2 Spicer, A. 65 state, theoretical concepts 63–7 statistics 85 Stoker, G. 67 strengths-based model 18–19, 29–30 structural inequalities 19, 26, 59, 61, 129, 131–2 surveillance 69–70, 166–7 sustainable development 118–22, 172–3 systematic community audits 84 systems models 74–5

T team working 146–7 technology digital exclusion 166, 167 future prospects 165–7 internet 4, 42, 76, 97, 166–7 social media 46, 69, 70, 76, 97, 166–7 and social movement theory 76 tenant management organisations (TMOs) 110 tenants’ movement 36 see also housing terminology 1, 8–9 Thatcher, Margaret 37 theoretical concepts 53–79 power 68–73 psychosocial 57–62 social movement theory 75–7

state, democracy and government 63–7 systems and institutions 73–5 theories of community 54–7 theory of change models 100–1 Thornham, H. 55 Todmorden 120 Tönnies, F. 55 training 94–5, 151–2 transformational approaches 26–8 transience (populations) 47, 112–13, 169 Tuckman, B.W. 59–60

U United Kingdom, break up of 162 United Nations (UN) 1–2 United States 6–7, 27, 35–6, 49, 67 Urban Programme 36–7 user participation 28–9, 37, 123, 125–6

V volunteers 95–6

W Wainwright, O. 111 Waldrop, M. 74 War on Poverty (US) 36, 49 waste management 121 weathering 129 well-being 119, 122, 124 see also health and social care Westoby, P. 55, 167 Wolfe, A. 55 Woolcock, M. 56–7

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“Since 2011 this accessible and compelling little book has been essential reading for all my introductions to community development. This updated version continues to map the key dimensions of community development, dealing eloquently with new challenges and opportunities.” Susan Kenny, Deakin University “This easy-to-read guide packs a punch. It takes a critical and systemic lens to community development and speaks to pressing issues with candour. Indispensable.” Harsha Patel, Doing Social “Essential reading for all students and practitioners of community development from two of the best thinkers in the field.” Jayne Humm, Local Trust The only up-to-date, accessibly written short guide to community development, this third edition offers an invaluable and authoritative introduction. Fully updated to reflect changes in policy, practice, economics and culture, it will equip readers with an understanding of the history and theory of community development, as well as practical guidance on how to do it. This is a key text for all students and practitioners working with communities. It includes: • a broad overview of core themes, concepts, basic practices and key issues in community development; • an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on community life and well-being, along with the implications for longer-term community support;  • additional brand new content on the pressing issues of democratic decline, social fragmentation and isolation, social care pressures, technological developments and climate change. Alison Gilchrist is an independent consultant who has worked in community development for over 40 years as an activist, practitioner, trainer, researcher and manager. Marilyn Taylor, Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for Voluntary Action Research, has a long track record of research in relation to community policy and practice and has published widely in this field.

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