Levelling Up was the centre of discussions at the Conservative Party Conference last week. But what does it actually mean?
At Spacehive, we have been saying for a decade that meaningful regeneration must give communities a direct say and must revitalise our civic spaces. So it was exciting to hear this same message last week from the new Levelling Up team
Neil O’Brien, the parliamentary undersecretary of state for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, said that a key pillar of levelling up is “to restore local pride, whether that is about the way your town centre feels, keeping the streets safe or backing community life.” And that to do this we must get more out of our community assets and heritage facilities.
Danny Kruger, the new PPS at the same department, speaking at an event on community renewal said that the great lesson of lockdown was that neighbours were willing to come together and that we must sustain this. He wants to find ways to make places more liveable and loveable and to create gathering places for older people, younger people and people from different backgrounds where they can have agency.
Spacehive has enabled thousands of people to create positive change in their communities by connecting their ideas with the funding they need. We have seen young people create new meeting places, high streets re-purposed and buildings transformed into busy, bustling hubs of community life.
We’ve also enabled local government to stimulate this activity through a series of exciting crowdfunding programmes that have seen councils, businesses and communities come together to get projects funded. Nesta’s research found that our programmes brought people together from different parts of the community, increased community cohesion and increased the sense of civic pride.
The next step is for the national government to step forward and back the communities that are doing this. Onward, a think tank, reports that “people are overwhelmingly supportive of action from government to intervene to safeguard locally important assets and networks and retain a sense of belonging.”
It was brilliant to hear that there is an appetite to do exactly that.
Michael Havard
Head of Business Development