Repository
A curated and searchable collection of community-related research reports, case studies and publications
Community Shops – A better form of business 2022
Published: 2022
This comprehensive publication looks at the community shop sector in the UK. It was first published in 2011 and has grown with additional information year on year. The report can now be used as a startup guide for new groups, a benchmarking tool for existing community shops, and is used by funders and support organisations to futureproof servic…
Empowering Places: Impact on the community and wider place
Published: 2022
Empowering Places aims to build more resilient and prosperous communities by building the capacity of local organisations to catalyse and support the growth of new community businesses. It funds locally rooted ‘catalyst’ organisations in six areas of high deprivation. Each catalyst receives up to £1 million (July 2017–December 2022)…
Homes in Community Hands: Year Three Evaluation
Published: 2022
In 2017 Power to Change launched its Homes in Community Hands programme, which sought to boost the development of community led housing (CLH). This would focus primarily on five urban areas across the country. The programme has provided funding to help plan and develop affordable housing projects to meet community needs. It has also provided gr…
Volunteering Journeys
Published: 2022
A rapid evidence review from the Institute for Community Studies, commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to explore young people’s experiences of, and attitudes to, volunteering.
Volunteering Journeys examines how young people perceive and experience the UK’s current volunteering ‘offer’, and how it cou…
The role of paid workers in supporting a community-led programme
Published: 2022
The Big Local programme aims to put more power, resource and decision-making in the hands of local communities. Most Big Local partnerships have chosen to hire paid staff, who support the delivery of Big Local in a huge variety of different ways.
This briefing is part of Local Trust’s research paper series, originally shared internally with st…
Valuing and enabling citizen science: Lessons from the Citizen Science Exploration Grant programme
Published: 2022
In 2019, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded 28 Citizen Science Exploration Grant projects. This was part of its ongoing work to explore how researchers can work with diverse groups to participate with, and collaborate in, the research and innovation process – and to test opportunities for building citizen science methodologies into resear…
An equitable future for research and innovation: Building sustained community involvement in knowledge production
Published: 2022
This summary report shares the results of discussions with community representatives about how we can improve the ways in which knowledge is produced, used and communicated across the UK. These discussions focused on how formal institutions such as government, research funders and universities – which is typically called ‘the…
Community empowerment and mental wellbeing: longitudinal findings from a survey of people actively involved in the Big Local place-based initiative in England
Published: 2022
Community empowerment initiatives are receiving increased interest as ways of improving health and reducing health inequalities. This research examines longitudinal associations between collective control, social-cohesion and mental wellbeing amongst participants in the Big Local community empowerment initiative across 150 disadvantaged areas o…
One pandemic, many responses
Published: 2022
This is the third report from Local Trust’s research study exploring how 26 communities across England responded to the COVID-19 crisis.
It follows Strong than anyone thought, published in September 2020, which looked at the initial lockdown period and Now they see us, published in August 2021, which saw the communities adapting to a…
Understanding impact for community businesses – Challenges and good practices for community businesses and funders
Published: 2022
This paper explores what community businesses can do to understand their social impact, reflecting on the challenges and building on some of the good practices identified through three Power to Change-funded programmes (Bright Ideas, Trade Up and the Community Business Fund). This is presented following the three main elements that community bu…
People shaping places, places shaping people: Community asset ownership
Published: 2022
More than 6,300 assets are in community ownership in England today. This model plays an essential role in ensuring places are built on resilient entities and benefit those living locally. As well as improving service delivery and financial sustainability, community asset ownership has been found to reduce vacancy rates, enable ‘bottom-up’ r…
Rural as a region: the hidden challenge for Levelling Up
Published: 2022
The report finds that the Government’s Levelling Up White Paper metrics – used to identify the regions most in need of levelling up – are too urban-focused and do not account for disadvantage in rural economies within regions, often linked to limited local employment prospects, poor transport networks and weak connectivity.
It calls for the …