May 2, 2024

What Community Power can look like in practice – presenting the work of Poverty Truth Commissions in Westmorland and Furness to Council’s Senior Leadership team.

The Community Power work, commissioned by the Council, is unfolding across Westmorland and Furness. It presents a crucial and timely opportunity to introduce practical ways for communities to step into their power.

Taking part in the New Local workshops across Westmorland and Furness alongside local groups and organisations, we witness the incredible commitment of our sector to embedding a people-centred, asset-based approach in our work. Our work on the ground demonstrates what the intentions expressed in the Community Power concept can look like in practice here in Cumbria.

Alongside many amazing initiatives that support Community Resilience on a daily basis, there are numerous projects that represent Community Power in action via participatory and deliberative democracy practices, authentic co-production and building community capacities and skills. Some examples of this practice in Cumbria include Citizens Juries, Citizens Assemblies and Poverty Truth Commissions.

The Poverty Truth Commissions in Barrow in Furness and in South Lakes serve as excellent examples of how community power can manifest in practice, especially within local areas and among residents. Going on for two years now they present specific methods and tools that empower people, build confidence, and encourage the sharing of ideas and suggestions, being in a dialogue, and collective decision-making.

Since 2022, we have followed the Poverty Truth Commission process in Barrow and South Lakes. Both councils declared a Poverty Emergency in 2020, and PTC work has led to empowering individuals, forging deep relationships between Civics and Community Commissioners, and driving cultural change.

In April Tracy Ingham, Assistant Director of Safe and Strong Communities at Westmorland and Furness Council, invited Barrow and South Lakes PTC facilitators and coordinators and Eden representatives to meet the Senior Leadership Team at Council to offer a taster session.

After weeks of planning, our small core team composed of Barrow Poverty Truth Commission facilitators, South Lakes Poverty Truth Commission coordinator and facilitator, was ready to run a short workshop at the Redhills Conference Centre.

During the workshop, Tracey Ingham provided an overview of local Poverty Truth work in Barrow, South Lakes, and Eden. She shared recent data on poverty in Westmorland and Furness, along with insights into the Council’s various poverty-related initiatives. Sam Plum, Chief Executive at Westmorland & Furness Council, further stressed the value and importance of this work.

We then moved to the workshop part that allowed everyone to immerse in the experience and practice of PTC. The short exercise in self-organisation, active listening and collective sense-making was followed by reflection on how embedding this model of work could work in both internal and external processes of the Council.

Our workshop served as an invitation for the Council to consider Poverty Truth Commission work as an ongoing relationship with local people that brings authentic change to communities in Westmorland and Furness. We created a space to think how this work and model could be integrated into Westmorland and Furness. The success of commissions in Leeds, Cheshire West, Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole provides evidence of its effectiveness.

Our hope was that this engagement will foster curiosity and open-mindedness about PTCs’ work and their potential impact.

The session feedback was both positive and reflective of the complexity of the task at hand. We extend our gratitude to the Senior Leadership team, especially Tracy Ingham for enabling the workshop to take place and Carolyn Otley for facilitating the contact.