« Back

The Community Cohesion Programme

Community Engagement and Cohesion schemes 2008:

The following are examples of the kinds of projects that Urban Living is supporting to help foster Community Cohesion:

• Supporting Young People
  
  

  Youth Train & Build: Allowing young people to refurbish empty void properties for training into construction jobs.

  Ex- Groundwork building: This involves the refurbishment of a landmark; Grade ll listed building so that it acts as a community hub.

• Creating a Sense of Belonging
  
  

  Sense of Place: Based upon a model piloted in Manchester, this is a tool to encourage people to think about their place and space, what they want and what’s important to them.

  Embedding Community Cohesion: Developing a series of community cohesion criteria for interrogating Urban Living project proposals during appraisal and applying the Community Engagement Planning Checklist to the consultation and engagement process around each initiative.

• Meaningful Interaction
  
  

  Arts Project: Bring local artists together to work on 6 different art based projects using photography, music, poetry, short films or any other artistic means to convey ideas/vision.
  Click here for information regarding 1mile² project

  Uniting through Sports: Use football and other sports activities to get people from different background and areas to engage with each other. UL sponsors existing local sporting events. Utilise both Villa & WBA to extend the ‘KICKZ’ programme to the wider pathfinder areas.

  Changing Rooms: This project will involve people from one organisation going into another voluntary organisation and help with decorating/refurbishing a specific area bearing in mind host organisations client group etc

  Annual Food Festival: We plan to arrange an annual food festival whereby all local communities can share their food with neighbours/other communities.

• Improving access to opportunities
  
  

  Construction: Incorporate in our mainstream briefs to developers to employ local Pathfinder residents in construction jobs. This could be an excellent opportunity to work with the NEET, Hard to reach and vulnerable and indeed new groups.

  Build: using one of our sites for a self-build project. Feasibility studies are ongoing.

  Eat Inn: Using ex-public houses as training facilities for young chefs, providing a restaurant for the community.

  Community Interpreters: Equip people from the Pathfinder area to become interpreters.

  Social Enterprise: Exploring the setting up of a social enterprise vehicle (similar to a holding company) to allow small social businesses to compete for and win contracting opportunities.

• Engagement, Communication, Empowerment and Leadership

  Empowering the Community: The idea is that a group of local residents are trained and supported to challenge and influence the master planning processes. The project could have wider benefits in that residents could be accredited, they could help articulate the findings of the master planning process to Board members and other stake holders and the group could form the basis of a longer term sounding panel to comment on other projects and interventions as they are developed.

  UL News in Local Magazines: Publicise UL’s news/achievements/forthcoming events in community magazines so our residents can be kept informed.

  Community Chest: To have a fixed budget over the next 3 years that can be accessed by Pathfinder resident young people via small project proposals/ideas submitted to UL.

  Community Organisations Funding: This would entail voluntary/community organisations submitting applications to UL to develop small-scale ideas that would involve working with local communities. The administration of this process will be managed by the Birmingham Foundation.

For further information on any of the above please contact Mashkura Begum on 0121 565 6540 or Email: mashkura_begum@sandwell.gov.uk