How can community organising support universities’ connection to place?

Posted on: 5 November 2024 by Belinda Tyrrell in Blog

Over recent years, there has been an enhanced acknowledgement of the role of universities as anchor institutions ‘rooted in place’ and able to support local priorities.

For example, a recent report for the University of Liverpool calculated that:
the University of Liverpool’s activities (in 2022/23) are estimated to have generated up to £1.2billion and 15,870 jobs in the Liverpool City Region (LCR). This equates to a contribution of more than 3% of the total LCR economy and creates 1 in every 50 jobs. 

As Lord Kerslake reflected in his Foreword to the 2019 report for the Civic University Commission, ‘Universities have an irreplaceable and unique role in helping their host communities thrive and their own success is bound up with the success of the places that gave birth to them’.

Reflecting this acknowledged significance of universities’ relationships to place and community, here I will focus on how community organising can deepen these relationships and help to ensure that they work to uplift local communities.

Community organising is all about people, power, and change. I have previously written about working with Citizens UK, a national charity organised in local chapters who use community organising for social change on the issues that matter to communities. Their approach is premised on building relationships across difference within communities to find common ground to build change. Development of people and communities is central to their work, including identifying and training community leaders.

Many UK universities are members of Citizens UK’s chapters, including Queen Mary University of London, and the Universities of Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Birmingham. Membership of Citizens UK provides these institutions with a valuable means of delivering on a range of their priorities, from widening participation, employability, community-based research, civic engagement, and learning and impact. Staff and students  working with their local chapters have achieved successes in reducing  gaps in mental health service provision for young people, winning pay rises for low paid workers and supporting parents to ask for social and educational change via parent power.

Over the last two years, Citizens UK have been building a local chapter in Liverpool. To date, over 18 local organisations have joined in membership, including faith institutions, universities, schools, NHS organisations, community groups and housing associations. The membership of Liverpool Citizens will come together with local decision makers, including the leader of Liverpool City Council at a Founding Assembly on the 18^{th of} November. The Assembly provides the opportunity for Liverpool Citizens to raise issues of community concern to decision-makers and secure commitments to work together for change.

The Heseltine Institute has secured a Creating Opportunities Through Innovation Fellowship (COLIF) from the Economic and Social Research Council to work with Liverpool Citizens over the next year. The Fellowship will provide the opportunity to develop relationships and reach for the University into local communities and identify and build an agenda for action around key areas of alignment with Liverpool Citizens member organisations.

The work of the fellowship will include research to inform action on key areas of shared concern, engagement with decision-makers, communications and publicity, development of partnership working with public agencies and opportunities for cocreation with communities. In these different ways, the Fellowship will contribute towards the achievement of the aims articulated in the Place and Innovation pillar of the University of  Liverpool 2031 strategy.  

As my own life has been positively impacted by community organising, I hope that the Fellowship will generate a legacy of change which really means something to our neighbours in the local community.