This website was developed as part of Birmingham City Council's Community Asset Transfer Development Programme 2009-10. Here you can find the story of two pilot projects and lessons learnt on asset transfer. There's also information on our new CAT Protocol.
UnLtd and Channel 4 have just launched a simple programme which might help someone prime some work for a community asset transfer. Below is lifted from the Unltd website.
About the Programme
The Spaces 4 Change Awards from UnLtd and Channel 4 provides funding and support to entrepreneurial individuals across the UK. We are looking for innovative ideas that unlock unused or under-utilised spaces for young people aged 16-25. Spaces that can be used to practice their cultural, creative or sporting passions.
What is available?
32 Awards of up to £5,000 for individuals or informal groups to set-up and run their own project and support from a dedicated Development Manager.
What are we looking for?
The Spaces 4 Change Awards will support individuals or informal groups with projects that:
Unlocks unused or under utilised spaces in their communities;
Benefits young people aged 16 -25 years old, and;
Allows young people to practice their cultural, creative or sporting passions.
Your project must not:
Be part of your paid employment;
Involve political or religious campaigning;
Involve activities outside the law or against public policy, or anything that encourages ethnic, religious or commercial disharmony;
Involve employing people other than yourself to carry out most of the project work;
Be used mainly to achieve academic qualifications;
Karen Cheney has been the co-ordinator of the Community Asset Transfer Development Programme as part of her job as Senior Manager – Community Empowerment Projects Lead in the Neighbourhood and Communities Team of Birmingham City Council – Constituency Services… this is what she’s learned:
We did it! We’ve come a long way very quickly, but it’s complex – acknowledge the need to be in it for the long haul, and lots of patience for all partners
AWARENESS – CAT is not resource neutral for either side – time, capacity and finance
LEARNING is key for everyone – Local Authority and other public agencies, not just Third Sector Organisations (TSOs) and learning from our mistakes and change as well as the good practice and success.
HONESTY – CAT is not for everybody – not enough to be a good idea. Needs sound business plan, governance and finance
LINKAGES – importance of joint approach and linking property function and community development process – strategic context and embedding
VALUING not just cost – investment and commitment
FLEXIBILITY – of all partners especially LA
Vision, Innovation and Risk – essential on both sides
Key has been the PARTNERSHIP WORKING, engagement and empowerment with Third Sector Partners and internally with colleagues
COMMUNICATION and use of language – honest robust dialogue and challenge to build mutual trusting mature relationships adult to adult rather than parent/ child – usefulness of neutral facilitators
Importance of Celebrating Success – reward and recognition of largely voluntary input from TSOs
Useful to have a Champions – political and key officer(s) – statutory and voluntary sector
This is new report on co-production in Birmingham’s neighbourhoods which proposes a Neighbourhood Equity Model. (Download as a pdf here). The Model argues that if government works to help communities empower themselves through taking on commissions to provide public services it triggers a virtuous cycle of wealth creaton, particulalrly in poorer neighbourhoods:
The brokerage or commissioning of public services coproduced between agencies and between agencies and communities leads to better outcomes which strengthen social capital. This leads to increased asset values – including the price of housing – and results in greater neighbourhood equity (the equivalent of the ‘share value’ of the neighbourhood). Wealth created in this way could be used to fund further coproduction.
Theresa Mcilkenny recently became a director at Norton hall after years benefiting from the services it provides for her and her son. Here she shares her thoughts on why community run places have particular strengths…
Becoming a director seemed like a natural progression, it allows us to help them understand what users expect from Norton Hall
You can only be as happy as you children, these place allows me to go out and what I want to do, that makes me happy.
The staff here are very committed to the children, to their activities to their education, it feels like a very family atmosphere. If ever you’ve got anything you want to talk about they don’t dismiss it out of hand.
I didn’t want to live on benefits, wanted to be in work. I had misgivings about leaving my son anywhere, but they made me feel very comfortable. In the end Richard was learning so much by being here he sometimes didn’t want to come home.
People don’t understand that places like Norton Hall can be life changing. It was life – changing for me. It allowed me to make things better in my life.
Paul Slatter is the director of Chamberlain forum and has been involved in a number of ways to bring the parties together. Facilitating sessions and using a technique called structured dialogue method, which as the name suggests is a structured way of approaching a dialogue between 2 sides of an issue. For more information on Structured Dialogue see here and for a full report – as a word document – click here.
Nick Booth from Podnosh talks about his role as facilitator on the Community Asset Transfer programme. Nick was asked to start this website to capture the story of the community asset transfer transfer programme and record the learning journey of both officers and community activists involved.
His expectations of simply providing a place for participants in the transfer project to tell their stories changed, as this also became a social reporting project and he has called on his “old media” skills to capture the learning, experiences and journeys too.
Advice to other Local authorities and officers:
Don’t be afraid to tell the truth of your experience as you go through the process. This will be a useful assessment and understanding of how successful the process was for you and others.
This sort of open transparency should be used in all other communication methods too, and should eventually affect your organisations expectations of it self.
Don’t be afraid to be fallible, your humanity will strengthen the process and engagement will be deeper.
Advice for third sector organisations:
Use online tools such as blogs and video as your project progresses because in the end this will help you understand what you’ve achieved and the process. ,
Don’t just limit online tools to telling the story of your asset transfer – they are a great way to tell the everyday story of what you do and who you work with.
At the heart of what Norton Hall does is provide childcare for their local community. It helps the children learn and frees up parents to work or study.
Here three of the staff talk about what it means to work at Norton Hall.
Above are a few photos from yesterday’s open of the the newly refurbished and Community Asset Transferred Perry Common Community Hall. We also have some video which we’ll share as soon as we’ve done some work on it.
Thoroughly enjoyable afternoon following on from a good 9 months of building and two years of other work to get to this stage.
Karen Cheney has been the co-ordinator of the Community Asset Transfer Development Programme as part of her job as Senior Manager – Community Empowerment Projects Lead in the Neighbourhood and Communities Team of Birmingham City Council – Constituency Services. Below she talks very clearly about what the programme has achieved (more…)
Structured dialogue is a technique used by the Chamberlain Forum to encourage open conversation between different partners during the Community Asset Transfer process and this film explains some of the principles behind it. You can find out more on the Chamberlain Forum’s website:
Based on an approach developed in Canada by Ronald Labonte and Joan Feather, it uses peoples’ stories and a structured dialogue around them to evaluate and understand the experience of policies in practice.
Key elements of the approach involve:
A provocative theme – something to generate animated discussion
A diverse storytelling circle of around 10-15 people
Two storytellers willing to share their experience
Active reflection of all participants – not just the storytellers
