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This paper evaluates critically the socioeconomic and spatial implications of conceptualizing the different forms of community involvement as a hierarchy rather than a spectrum. Drawing upon evidence from the UK, where government policy views participation in community-based groups as a ‘mature’ form of involvement and one-to-one aid as ‘simple’ and ‘immature’, such a hierarchical representation is revealed to privilege the participatory cultures of affluent over deprived populations. Based on this recognition of how participatory cultures differ, the paper thus concludes by calling for the different forms of community involvement to be reconceptualized as a spectrum and the adoption of a variegated policy approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy language of recent UK governments in relation to 'activating' communities has drawn on images of 'community' as coherent constructions - communities of place - recognizable to their members who are capable of concerted action. From this conceptual basis, localities identified as 'ineffective' are encouraged to become 'successful, integrated communities' through government action such as New Labour's Working Together neighbourhood policies and the more recent Big Society initiatives of the Conservative-led Coalition Government. The shared fallacy is that individuals are policy-receptive actors with the potential to engage in community life 'successfully' (consensually) once 'empowered' to do so. This paper questions the efficacy of applying politically neutralized values of empowerment, community and participation in government policy to 'real world' communities by applying the lessons of a case study of the lived experience of community action in the late 1990s, during an arguably golden policy era of government sponsored community participation. In this study, the work of Georg Simmel was used to highlight the dynamism of human associations and the co-presence of apparently contradictory currents of conflict and co-operation. Qualitative network analysis illustrated the webbed intricacies of participating in 'community' and the importance of recognizing conflict as an element of the whole process of participation - which should not be elided by policy makers. The paper concludes that conflict has a positive role to play in sustainable community processes: it is both an undeniably inherent element of participation and a democratic imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK ‘New’ Labour Government has introduced a number of regional, local and neighbourhood initiatives. These claim to share similar characteristics based upon the concepts of ‘partnership’ and ‘multi-agency’ cooperation. New structures to ensure the accountability and the delivery of these new forms of governance and service delivery have been established. Local Strategic Partnerships, with an emphasis on community ‘capacity’ building are the latest policy response. This paper, drawing upon research in Manchester and Glasgow, suggests that whilst these initiatives use a new language, they are steeped in old practices. Changing structures does not, of itself, alter the power differences inherent in local neighbourhoods where community groups are cast as ‘dependent’ by regeneration managers seeking to meet performance targets. The paper seeks to identify ways in which this relationship can be altered to enable local groups to negotiate a new agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the way in which service providers in East Anglia, a region of the United Kingdom, in 2002–2003 represent asylum seekers as problematic, isolated, and largely vulnerable dependents. In doing so, support organizations assume an exclusive position of expertise and knowledge of asylum seekers' predicaments. This exclusivity can be understood as the ‘official explanation’ [Spivak, G. C. (1987) In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, Methuen, New York/London, p. 114] put forth by organizations in order to ensure that they maintain a degree of influence in government policy, as well as to ensure a competitive edge in the arena of service provision, and to lobby and advocate the needs of asylum seekers. This paper explores the paradox of an organized system of support that works to assist asylum seekers to be independent and yet in doing so represents asylum seekers as dependent and excludes them from decision-making processes. However, by considering asylum seekers' speech-acts, we can recognize that what they talk about is in itself a strategy employed to push the boundaries of their predicament and to negotiate a possible future. In doing so, the development of an active dialogue between asylum seekers and the services that assist them can be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Internationally, storytelling has been used with many diverse communities. This paper compares the use of storytelling as a participatory art form within a community development project and a community and healthy living centre in the United Kingdom. Both the project and the centre regard storytelling activities as ‘inclusionary’ forms of intervention. However, the discourse of social inclusion rarely acknowledges the subtle psychosocial processes that are involved in participatory storytelling. This paper discusses such processes and examines some methodological implications of researching storytelling. It asks what contribution storytelling can make towards authentic representation of individual and community voices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the main findings of a major survey of UK community development workers. The authors also point to some serious weaknesses facing the community development profession in the United Kingdom that are preventing it from gaining greater recognition. Following a review of community development in the United Kingdom in recent years, its activities and strategic contexts, the paper highlights three key themes: occupational instability and employment, equality issues, training and support. Given the UK policy context, in which considerable emphasis is being given to the importance of involving communities, the article argues that policymakers and community development organizations have a responsibility to find ways of ensuring that the knowledge, skills, and techniques of community development are better understood and supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the discourse and practice of regeneration in the UK there is a growing recognition that communities that define themselves primarily in relation to their faith have been ignored. This paper constructs a research agenda on faith communities, regeneration and social exclusion. It indicates the potential significance of research in this area as an aid to the development of conceptual frameworks for regeneration, to policy development and to better practice in neighbourhood renewal. There is a growing governmental concern to engage with faith communities. This should be informed by research to provide critical reflection on purposes and outcomes and to illuminate the practicalities of involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are of growing importance, and emerging community economic development policies and practice have begun to recognize this in their support of a wide range of projects. This paper argues that whilst community-oriented initiatives have a great potential to address the many issues associated with local regeneration, any benefits will have to go beyond a belief that such projects will automatically secure some form of competitive advantage or modernization. The paper argues for the policy discourses of integration, identity and power to be fully considered in the design and implementation of projects and strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article introduces a themed section of the Community Development Journal that re-evaluates the British Community Development Project (CDP) of the 1970s, with particular reference to three local 'radical' CDPs. It sets the national Community Development Project in context, as an experimental programme of action-research in twelve 'deprived' areas, set up in response to the rediscovery of poverty in the late 1960s. It explains the rationale for revisiting the CDPs from the vantage point of the second decade of the twenty-first century, when the structural problems of neoliberal capitalism (especially deindustrialization and globalization), identified as emergent by the CDP teams in the 1970s, continue to impact on disadvantaged neighbourhoods in negative ways. While some commentators have criticized CDPs for focussing more on political analyses than community development practice, this article argues that the long-standing significance of CDPs lies in the way their issue-focussed research informed their radical practice in local neighbourhoods. The article introduces three following papers in the themed section, which illustrate this through case studies of local CDPs in Coventry, Newcastle and North Tyneside, largely based on research conducted during 2014-2016 as part of an Economic and Social Research Council-funded project, Imagine - connecting communities through research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last three decades have seen social enterprises in the United Kingdom pushed to the forefront of welfare delivery, workfare and areabased regeneration. For critics, this is repositioning the sector around a neoliberal politics that privileges marketization, state roll-back and disciplining community groups to become more self-reliant. Successive governments have developed bespoke products, fiscal instruments and intermediaries to enable and extend the social finance market. Such assemblages are critical to roll-out tactics, but they are also necessary and useful for more reformist understandings of economic alterity. The issue is not social finance itself but how it is used, which inevitably entangles social enterprises in a form of legitimation crises between the need to satisfy financial returns and at the same time keep community interests on board. This paper argues that social finance, how it is used, politically domesticated and achieves re-distributional outcomes is a necessary component of counter-hegemonic strategies. Such assemblages are as important to radical community development as they are to neoliberalism and the analysis concludes by highlighting the need to develop a better understanding of finance, the ethics of its use and tactical compromises in scaling it as an alternative to public and private markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The capabilities approach (CA) developed by Amartya Sen and others has been extremely influential as an approach to evaluation, social assessment and policy analysis and development. In the context of the current UK policy arena, this paper outlines Sen's CA and argues for its utility as a theoretical framework for understanding and evaluating the relevance of adult community learning to mental health. It shows how the CA can be employed for this purpose and discusses the relevance of gender and other social inequalities for understanding in this area, thereby contributing to a growing body of literature on developing a social model of mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the United Kingdom, the role of the active citizen is often understood in terms of the importance and value attached to community-based citizen involvement. However, the structural issues that prevent people from participating are often ignored. Drawing on in-depth interviews with twenty young mothers living in Greater Pilton, Edinburgh, this paper argues that the involvement of young mothers in their community must be viewed as existing along a ‘continuum of active citizenship’ that highlights the factors that influence how and when young mothers participate in their communities as well as the barriers that young mothers experience regarding their inclusion in community based participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1997, area-based regeneration initiatives in Britain have focused upon the development of Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) involving public authorities, statutory agencies and community and voluntary organizations in order to address the problems faced by deprived areas. In particular, the UK government’s National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal outlines a key role for community and voluntary sector groups in facilitating effective regeneration strategies in the eighty-eight Priority Areas identified by the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund. This paper draws upon a series of interviews with a range of participants involved in the development of the West Cornwall Neighbourhood Renewal partnership in order to explore the challenges and obstacles to effective voluntary and community sector involvement in regeneration initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both in its ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and in its policies on urban renewal, the UK Government has committed itself to realizing children’s participation in decision-making. Critically reflecting on the author’s experience as a secondee from an NGO to a government regeneration project, this paper investigates the politics of childhood in urban renewal, illustrating the gap between rhetoric and reality and examining what needs to change to ensure that children really benefit. It highlights the double exclusion from regeneration processes and outcomes that children on neighbourhood estates experience in terms of social class and ‘generation’. While noting the qualified progress made in tackling class-based exclusion of adults through the development of local accountability, it suggests how this can be complemented by extending accountability to children. Lastly, it asks what roles the big UK children’s charities can play in supporting this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community work is not easily captured in a diagram, and any attempt to visually represent the complex nature of community development is a ready target for criticism. While the Department for International Development's (DFID) sustainable livelihoods framework can be strung up on the same charges of enticing people into simplicity and rigidity, this paper argues that, used flexibly, it can be an effective tool for organizing and analysing ideas. Using a UK community energy scheme as a case example, it demonstrates how, by stirring in an individual project's needs, a little creativity, and a staunch lack of respect for rigid diagrams, the sustainable livelihoods framework and its accompanying approach can cook up an excellent stock for a community development toolkit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1998, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, launched New Labour's policy on neighbourhood renewal. New Labour has argued for a central role for the community based on notions of community leadership and community self‐help. In this paper, we will argue that this new approach may only amount to a re‐working of old polices and practices and could result in another costly long‐term failure. We argue for further dialogue around a number of proposals that seek to enable residents to initiate and shape their own debate as a prelude to new forms of local and area regeneration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article argues that community development work, in the form of feminist pedagogy and community radio, can engage more women in technological roles, aid women's confidence and mental health and possibly, improve diversity in mainstream media. In UK media, corporations are heavily criticized for their under and misrepresentation of women and, in general, their inability to engage with excluded groups. The BBC's strategic aim is to improve inclusion and diversity by 2020. The article asserts the value of community development methods in efforts to address this. It explores concepts of voice poverty and empowerment through analysis of the narratives of twelve female community radio volunteers in Northern England. Using Freire's (1972) notion of 'culture of silence' and against the backdrop of gender inequality, the article clarifies the nature of community radio and employs a variety of literatures to understand how a feminist pedagogy (hooks, 1994) and an intersectional approach (Crenshaw, 1989) might be useful in media. It builds from Stuart Hall's contention that media and cultural spaces can be powerful sites of social action. Analysis of participant accounts indicates that community radio is a site of diverse identities, laughter, dialogue, raised consciousness, and conflict. This confronts not only the orthodoxy of young white, male-dominated media but also challenges romantic notions of community harmony and happiness by recognizing inherent tensions within prevailing conceptions of womanhood and within and between communities. The article foregrounds evidence from the majority world, where community radio is well documented as giving voice to invisiblized women, and concludes with an argument for further exploration of this highly symbolic dimension of empowerment, whereby women overcome technological fears and break their silence by broadcasting diverse voices. The project challenges UK commercial and public broadcasters to learn from the global south that community radio is an effective method of development with potential to enrich the mainstream media world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes the results of a case study, emerging from the authors ten years as community development worker at the Kabin, a project on the Kingsmead Estate in Hackney, East London. Using a reflective practitioner approach, informed by the authors own experience and referring to focus groups and semi-structured interviews, the research identifies the significance of relationship in nurturing a bottom-up approach to community development. Research findings support the need for community development processes to reconnect with community-defined purposes, engaging with how power is utilized to nurture participation and radical social change. The case study is grounded in practitioner knowledge, promoting a more nuanced understanding of how a vital but not easily assimilated area of research can lead to change in the community, while confronting pressures to change and conform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community development (CD) has been argued to be important in challenging discrimination and social exclusion faced by mental health service-users. This article focuses on the experience of Chinese mental health service-users in the United Kingdom and discusses what a CD approach might entail for their recovery. Based on a qualitative research, it was found that Chinese users look for self-determination in living arrangements and community participation as well as economic participation. The barriers that hindered the development of these capabilities suggests the problematic of 'community control' discourses, the importance for practitioners to understand cultural fluidity and the necessity for a transformative CD approach to tackle the intersecting structural inequalities that limit the life chances of Chinese service-users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the experiences of the 1970-1975 Coventry Community Development Project in Hillfields as one of four first wave projects, and charts its avowed three stage shift from a consensual, to a pluralist and finally a class structuralist approach, developing a radical theory and practice that helped to shape the wider UK radical Community Development Project movement. While supporting the main features of the structural approach they developed in their 1975 Final Reports, we also raise critical issues that were of importance at the time, and have continuing relevance for community development in the challenging times we now face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the resurgence of community organizing in Great Britain. The high profile of Citizens UK have attracted the attention of politicians, trades unions and faith organizations. The government that came to power in 2010 made a commitment to train 5000 community organizers through a four-year Community Organizers Program.

The role of faith groups as welfare providers has received notable attention in the past few years as religious groups have become increasingly active in the voluntary sector. Developing Baker's ideas on ‘local performative theologies’, we examine data from semi-structured interviews focusing on Christian interdenominational networks and forms of collaboration which underpin faith-based projects in a city in the South of England. Our particular focus is on the development of a qualitative understanding of city-wide interdenominational networks and their role in sustaining faith-based projects. We find that while there is a discernible shift towards faith through praxis, there has been insufficient attention to virtuous and exclusionary circuits of networks and collaboration which consolidate boundaries of inclusion and exclusion between faith groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The first in a series of case files, this article introduces the Small Change approach to community development and analyses the Making of Stirchley Park (MoSP) initiative. In 2011–2012, the arts led community interest company, Place Prospectors CIC, undertook an arts programme in the south Birmingham neighbourhood of Stirchley in the United Kingdom, one of which was the MoSP, using small-scale artistic interventions to spark long-term improvements in the neighbourhood's underused public park. The project is an example of the Small Change approach pioneered by the UK development practitioner and academic Prof. Hamdi (2004). The work contributes to the Small Change Forum, a UK research and practice initiative created by community arts organization, Multistory, and the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) based at Oxford Brookes University, to investigate small change initiatives worldwide (for more information visit: www.facebook.com/SmallChangeForum). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the role of culture and cultural action as a resource for unlocking assets and reducing vulnerability with the view of building long-term resilience in communities. Contextualized by the Small Change asset-based approach and the United Kingdom-based Small Change Forum (SCF) initiative, this article examines how culture embodies valuable resources for building resilience in community groups and ways in which cultural action can unlock and use existing assets in communities to bring about change. The opportunities and challenges for achieving development through cultural action are outlined and principles developed which aim to add to the debate about the role of culture in community development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The first part of the article examines the impact of neo-liberalism on the third sector in the United Kingdom, focusing in particular on ‘partnership’ and the ‘Big Society’ as key narratives shaping assumptions about the nature of social change and the respective roles of the state, market and third sector. In the second part of the article, ideas associated with political theorists Chantal Mouffe and Hannah Arendt are drawn upon to provide insight into the nature and importance of ‘the political’ in promoting democracy and social change. This provides a conceptual framework for exploring the link between the Big Society and community organizing and the potential for community organizing to provide an effective political approach to working with poor and disadvantaged communities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is growing international interest in community development (CD) approaches to addressing mental distress and promoting mental well-being, generated by major changes in mental health policy, provision and the growing voice of mental health service users. Yet CD practitioners have tended to view these as issues outside their sphere of expertise, interest or influence. This article investigates the ‘parallel worlds’ of CD and mental health with a view to promoting a productive engagement between them. Drawing on primary research in England and also current international debates, it highlights three issues and draws on a local case study: first, a tendency for mental health promotion interventions to be rooted in models of community pathology rather than individual and collective strengths; secondly, the ways in which mental health policies focus on individual determinants and responsibilities for mental health and well-being, and fail to challenge structural inequalities; thirdly, how ‘measures’ of the impact of CD are compromised in a policy environment which stresses brief interventions and outcomes. It concludes by suggesting ways in which such parallel worlds may be brought productively together. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Minority ethnic groups, arriving in the United Kingdom in substantial numbers since the late 1940s, have historically fared poorly in relation to welfare provision in the United Kingdom, with outcomes – even when accessing services – generally much worse than for the UK white population. This is particularly the case for forms of welfare provision such as mental health services which have failed to identify the specific needs of minorities and only recently begun to address them, largely as a result of high profile incidents such as the death of one minority patient while being restrained, and a broader legislative requirement to promote race equality. This article, based on a part-evaluation undertaken by the authors, describes aspects of the UK government's Delivering Race Equality (DRE) programme, which sought, through the employment of community development workers (CDWs) in the field of mental health, to engage with minority populations and encourage more appropriate mental health services. The evaluation suggests that, despite the possibilities for innovative work, CDWs were often located in marginal positions within local health service structures. Notwithstanding some modest gains, the programme appears to have failed to achieve a sustainable shift in the direction of culturally sensitive and accessible services, reflecting a more general and continuing marginalization of ‘race’ within UK welfare provision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the positive contribution that community development (CD) can make to mental well-being by providing close but critical support to individuals and community-led initiatives. The emphasis on self-determination, collective action and empowerment within the CD approach inspires hope and recovery from mental distress. Drawing on a recent study of CD practice across varied UK settings, we demonstrate how practitioners use their skills to break down barriers, build relationships, manage group dynamics and tackle prejudice. They ‘connect and include’ people experiencing mental health difficulties with community activities and mainstream services, increasing opportunity and choice. We note that a skilfully balanced, empathetic but bold CD approach requires professional capabilities, flexible management and participative forms of evaluation. It fits the current UK policy emphasis on empowerment and engagement and responds to the growing evidence that personal networks and social equality correlate with health and well-being. However, its impact tends to be limited by workplace context, insufficient resources and a failure by health providers and others to recognize its potential. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cultural action has been used to promote community development for at least thirty years in the UK, often with good results. During that period, the theories, values, and approaches of professionals have varied and evolved, but there has been a noticeable shift in focus – particularly in cultural policy – from collective to individual outcomes, in line with the growing individualization of policy since the 1980s. Yet the potential of cultural action to bring people together and to build a foundation for lasting community development work remains important. This article considers the processes by which arts-based community projects can lead to the development of both informal and formal collective organization, and their potential in empowerment. Central to this process, it is argued, is cultures focus on peoples strengths and interests, rather than on externally defined problems. The paper draws on two contrasting examples to demonstrate the continuing importance of cultural action in very different social and economic situations: the authors research into voluntary arts development in rural England and Wales, and his experience of community cultural projects in south-east Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to bring the lives of Gypsy–Travellers in line with the sustainable communities' agenda, there is now a duty for local planning authorities in England to assess the accommodation and related needs of Gypsy–Travellers. As such, there has been an increase in research, which aims to ‘find out’ more about these communities. This article explores some of the issues that researchers should consider when carrying out research with Gypsy–Travellers. It focuses specifically on issues around identifying and engaging with members of the Gypsy and Traveller communities, offering some strategies and solutions based on the experiences of the authors and other researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]