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What is the Living Places Network?
The Living Places Network is a peer learning and support network for practitioners and community organisers across the UK working to lead social, economic and environmental change in their communities. We want to learn, gather and grow together.
Who we are?
We are a small and organically growing group of:
- 20+ UK place-based practitioners and community organisers
- Working alongside our neighbours and communities, not at a distance
- Leading CICs and community organisations
- Focusing on inclusive, participatory methods
- With a focus on systems, regenerative change and community agency
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Why does the network exist?
Place-based work is often under-supported and underfunded. Working hyper-locally can be isolating, and time to learn from other communities and places is a luxury. The polycrisis is affecting our communities in a multitude of ways, and it's never been more important for resilient community-led change.
Having a network where we can connect, sensemake, share our experiences, exchange knowledge and learn from each other is essential to ensuring we navigate these turbulent times collectively and effectively. This network aims to provide mutual support, potential collaboration, and amplification of our impact as a collective.
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What we do
We are currently:
- Forming relationships - getting to know each other across the network
- Hosting monthly knowledge sharing sessions - exploring different aspects of our place-based work. Recent sessions have included river guardianship, place-based systems change and community building approaches. Scroll down to see the Substack articles.
- Forming opportunities for in-person gatherings - ideas are forming around study visits, an annual gathering and attending conferences and each other's events.
- Sharing information - via a Whatsapp group and a regular newsletter.
In the future, we want to explore:
- Collaborative Funding Opportunities - e.g. regional and national funding opportunities that would resource many folks within the network
- Co-ordinated campaigns and projects - we could pilot projects in various locations
- Upskilling - we could invite in learning partners to offer us training as a network.
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Our Aims
- Foster solidarity and trusted relationships between practitioners
- Share practical learning from our place-based work, so we build on each other’s progress rather than duplicating effort
- Create a collective, shared body of open source knowledge
- Strengthen our inclusive, equitable and representative practice
- Understand and evidence the transformative impact of our collective work locally and systemically
- Ensure participation in the network strengthens, rather than distracts from, real work in place
- Make place-based work more visible, viable and valued.
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Our Values
We gather together guided by the following values:
- Connection: connecting people, ideas and places
- Reciprocity: generous exchange of knowledge, held with sensitivity and confidentiality
- Collaboration: holding open possibilities for local, regional and national collaboration
- Practical: action-oriented with inspirational real-life examples and inspiration
- Supportive: a network of care and compassion for each other, moving at the speed of trust
- Inclusivity: welcoming diversity and giving space to everyone equally.
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