These Fellowships can take the form of a placement or collaboration which aim to focus developing evidence-led interventions and/or policy development and include engagement with community and/or regional beneficiaries where possible and appropriate.
The Heseltine Institute have been awarded a Fellowship, which will enable a Research Associate to work with Liverpool Citizens, a developing local chapter of Citizens UK for a period of 11 months with a start date of the 1st of October 2024 and an end date of the 31st August 2025.
Who are Citizens UK?
Citizens UK are a national charity using community organising for social change on the issues that matter to communities. Their work is underpinned by the principle that ‘everyday people have power’ and by bringing people together across their differences, common ground may be found and change achieved. Over the last 30 years, this approach has had a range of local, regional and national impacts, including securing over £2 billion for low paid workers through the Real Living Wage and an amnesty of ‘legacy cases’ for 160 000 asylum applicants. Their social change projects are dedicated to creating long-term change, borne from local listening and campaigns. The largest of these is the Living Wage Foundation, which now accredits a network of over 15 000 employers who pay the real Living Wage. Other Citizens UK campaigns have gone on to become independent organisations, such as Safe Passage and the London Community Land Trust.
Citizens UK is organised through a series of local chapters, each bringing together local people and organisations to build a better and fairer society. Over the last two years, Citizens UK have been organising around building a 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. Liverpool Citizens will be publicly launched at a Founding Assembly in November 2024, with key local decision-makers joining member institutions.
The aim is then to continue to build the chapter through nurturing relationships between member institutions and listening to the issues that matter to them and their communities and acting together to bring about change.
The member institutions have been organised into five action groups on issues related to cost of living, housing, transport, community services and health reflecting community priorities. The COLIF Fellow will work with the action groups and Liverpool Citizens’ Organiser to achieve local impact on these issues.
Fellowship aims
The Fellowship will support the expansion and strengthening of the membership of Liverpool Citizens along with providing relationships and reach for the University into local communities and building an agenda for action around key areas of alignment.
The work of the Fellowship will include research and engagement with decision-makers, communications and publicity, development of partnership working with public agencies. A legacy of the Fellowship will be the development of a wider collaboration between Liverpool Citizens and the University of Liverpool, across student experience, widening participation and research.
Further outputs will include a Heseltine Institute policy briefing on community organising as a means of social change and community organiser training for University of Liverpool staff. A series of blogs on the work of the Followship and the collaboration with Liverpool Citizens can be found on the Heseltine Institute blog.
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