September 12, 2024

In the wake of Community Power consultations with communities and the VSCFE sector, Westmorland and Furness Council has shared its strategic vision for community empowerment through the “Together We Are Powered by Communities” paper.

This approach is anchored in three core themes: championing community strengths, fostering collaborative partnerships, and ensuring inclusive empowerment. As we delve into our “Beyond the Edge” series, we’ll explore how these strategic aspirations can be transformed into tangible actions, bridging the gap between visionary goals and practical implementation. Join us on this journey of learning, sharing, and celebrating the transformative power of community-driven change.

This approach is broken into three key themes:

1. For the Community, By the Community – Championing the strengths and ‘we can do this’ attitude of communities to improve their own lives and support each other.
2. Getting Alongside Communities – Working together with communities and local organisations as partners to improve the places in which people live and the services they use.
3. Everyone Reaching Out, Everyone Reached – Enabling all communities to feel empowered to change things for the better.

These are great intentions collated through a process of consultation workshops with the sector, setting recommendations, a delivery plan, and measures of success. But how do we put this into practice? How can we move from aspirations to delivery? How do we bridge the strategic and visionary with actual, practical changes?

Accessing and participating in power requires skills, tools, and resources. Westmorland and Furness council commits to resourcing and openness to working differently, to experimenting. Let’s get ready for that role by learning about and practicing the concepts that support community power: tools, methods, and approaches—simple tweaks and workable solutions.

Our “Beyond the Edge – Inspiration and Innovation” series is an attempt at creating a selection of community resources with a practical lens. It will be accompanied by a series of practical offerings that allow the sector to try these different ways of working, methods, and tools that get us ready to use and engage with community power effectively. The series aims to introduce concepts supportive of the community power idea, capture what is happening, tune in, listen, and then share the already existing, or just emerging, good practices.

There are amazing organisations that look beyond the edge of today, transforming themselves, the way they work, organise, and deliver, thus transforming Cumbria. We want these resources to be affirming, to sustain motivation, boost our confidence, and unlock unique opportunities in the sector.

System change is one of the strategic goals of Cumbria CVS. One way this can happen is by sharing, learning together, practicing together, and celebrating what works. The interviews, articles, and events presented in the series are all designed around sharing our hopes and bold ideas about how we can work differently, emerging questions looking into what seems possible, and actions and practices that will help us move forward to the future of community power.
We hope that creating a body of resources will inspire, raise interest, and awareness of new practices, and provide great examples of how community power works.

In the series, three articles will briefly introduce three highly effective practices: participatory leadership, sociocracy, and working with emergence. In addition to that we will host a series of interviews with organisations that choose to work differently, innovate, explore, and learn. We will also be sharing a series of inspirations on social impact and community work from the UK and wider world. Finally, we will run a series of events and training sessions that will enable us to practice these concepts and experience various methods.

Let’s elevate good practices by sharing them widely. If your group operates at the edge of innovation, reach out—I’m eager to learn from you and share insights with the wider sector. Please email me: gabriela.lipska@cumbriacvs.org.uk