Blog
Levelling up and achieving an Upswing – Part III
22 April 2021
Matthew Flinders explains how a journey-based approach to youth engagement can have transformative potential.
Levelling up and achieving an Upswing – Part II
15 April 2021
Matthew Flinders calls for a ‘civic journey’ that’s focused on nurturing and understanding how and why people move in and out of civic spaces throughout their lives.
Meet our Inaugural Civic Scholars
8 April 2021
Meet the Scholars: Alice Lemkes Alice is a PhD student at the University of Leeds and is looking at the powerful role of narratives in regulating the lives and livelihoods of people experiencing ‘severe and multiple disadvantage’. Before starting the
Levelling up and achieving an Upswing – Part I
8 April 2021
For all its sweeping prose and upbeat analysis, Robert Putnam’s ‘The Upswing’ left Matthew Flinders downbeat. What’s needed, he suggests, is an ambitious vision for a new ‘civic journey’.
Re-building trust for the COVID decade
26 March 2021
Public trust in national government has declined over the last year, amid a perceived mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic across the UK. Britons have instead looked to experts and local leaders for information and advice about the virus, with trust
The UpSwing: The Young Foundation in conversation with Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett
12 March 2021
You can now watch The Young Foundation and The Institute for Community Studies’s event with the ‘poet laureate of civil society’ Robert D. Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett.
Understanding local patterns of volunteer activity during COVID-19: three ways to contribute your perspective
3 March 2021
Together with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), The Young Foundation and The Institute for Community Studies are conducting new research to understand the various ways in which volunteers have been (and continue to be) active within local authority
Doc Brown’s dream and the launch of ARIA
19 February 2021 | Authors: Helen Goulden OBE,
Today we saw the announcement of the long-awaited Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), the new blue skies research agency to develop high-risk, high-reward technologies in the UK. As explained in the .gov website, ARIA will be “led by scientists who will
Undisciplined Spaces
5 February 2021 | Authors: Emily Morrison,
Students have been partnered with community researchers drawn from across the UK and together, are identifying issues of marginalisation or exclusion in a local area to tackle, deploying creative research approaches (e.g. digital diaries, visual arts, storytelling etc) to do
Welcome to the Museum of 2020
28 January 2021
In December last year, we asked you: What object sums up your experiences of 2020? What object will most remind you of 2020 in years to come? What ‘thing’ couldn’t you have coped without? Or has kept your spirits up?
The Need for Digital Skills
19 January 2021
Inevitably the current health crisis has dramatically increased the importance of us all being digitally connected. How we work, learn, play and connect with friends, family and our communities, relies on us being digitally included. 2020 will forever be the
A quick note on incentivising collaboration for social change
3 December 2020 | Authors: Helen Goulden OBE,
In the last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about how and when great collaboration happens, and the rising desire for more systemic forms of change.