Power to Change Research Award
Dr Alan Southern, Co-Director Heseltine Institute and Senior Lecturer in the Management School, has been awarded a research grant from Power to Change to examine growth and sustainability in the community business market across the Liverpool City Region. Alan explained that the research will provide a detailed analysis of community businesses operating within the city region and builds on recent work on the social economy and with the TUC on a Liverpool City Region industrial strategy.
He said “Power to Change are a really interesting organisation, a charitable trust who provide support for local community businesses such as Homebaked the bakers cooperative in Anfield, the award winning community land trust Granby 4 Streets, and Can Cook the food poverty organisation in South Liverpool. They have a specific Research Institute to promote rigorous, high-quality research that scrutinise the role and purpose of community businesses, their impact and overall role in local communities.
We have a good relationship with the social economy here, we are active in the city region Social Economy Panel and have already influenced the Metro Mayor in his ideas about policy for the city region economy. The work will add to this providing a deep data-driven analysis into the community business sector in the city region, one that will corroborate knowledge about the size of the sector and further inform policy and practice.”
The work is expected to begin later this month and will last until next summer. For further details on this work or on any aspects of the social economy research underway led by Alan through the Heseltine Institute, please contact alan.southern@liverpool.ac.uk