“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”
This is a debrief on the Design Workshop which is a pivotal part of the Community Climate Resilience project being organised by the Network for Social Change: see project overview here. It was an exciting, intense, empowering event which added a lot of clarity and momentum to the project.
This was a 48-hour residential workshop with ambitious aims. Raising the resilience and adaptation capacity of local communities in response to climate change and the many crises of our times is really urgent, but… there are probably tens of thousands of local community groups across the UK, and it’s an undefined sector. Of these, a small minority are deeply engaged with the systemic disruptions we’re facing, most are not.
The overall aims of the Workshop were to form a collective view of the major issues, needs and opportunities in this sector, and from this to guide the priorities for this specific project. The participants came from several long-established, forward-facing community groups, such as Kingston Hive and Southmead in England, Galgael in Scotland, Canolfan Maerdy in Wales, and from relevant NGOs such as Tipping Point, plus the core team from Network for Social Change.
Design Workshop participants
In Spring 2024, the core team commissioned a scoping study, which highlighted the need for a gathering like this. Most community groups felt that they were working in isolation, missing a collective view, and sharing support and resources. The feedback at the end of this gathering was outstandingly positive: it had met these needs, and given depleted front-line workers a renewed sense of nourishment and purpose.
As we explored the outlook to 2035, many concerns emerged, but a few stood out:
- Further shifts towards authoritarianism, coupled with support for right-wing parties, even among young people. There was a strong sense that community groups need to connect and step up to provide a counterweight.
- Food shortages: see blog on Tim Lang’s major report here. Many projects are already engaged with this, by growing more food, and setting up affordable cafes.
- The need to connect with a much bigger proportion of the community. A couple of the well-rooted projects estimated that they have contact with only a few per cent of the local population.
- Big potential to draw on excellent community resilience projects and public sector policies elsewhere, such as New Zealand’s Community Emergency Hubs.
- The need to find positive ways to engage more people in resilience, even though we’re preparing for alarming threats. Several projects said their focus is on addressing local people’s immediate concerns, and progress with these forms a connection.
Whatever next?
The next phase of the Community Climate Resilience project will hopefully involve most of those involved in the Workshop, fulfilling the core group’s hopes of steering the project and allocating funds on a partnership basis with local community groups.
Overall, this project will run for 3 to 6 years, and our first year of funding ends in September 2025. The broad aim is to trial a number of pilot initiatives in Years 1 and 2, and to propagate the more fruitful ones thereafter.
The flow of the Workshop
By the end of the Design Workshop, we identified several criteria to guide the creation of pilot initiatives. These included: diversity of locations (England – Scotland – Wales, urban – rural); connecting across generations; leaning towards radical innovation, even if that raises the risk of failure.
Small working groups are forming to develop specific proposals: these will typically include people from front-line community groups, from the NGOs involved, and the core group. Key aims of these proposals include:
- Ways to build a resilience coalition including diverse groups within a given community (e.g. ethnic and faith groups).
- Expanding overall participation level, as mentioned earlier.
- Forming a UK community of practice to share know-how between members and from other sources.
There will be occasional email updates as we progress, so if you’d like to stay informed, contact us on .