Practical guide 05 · Available
Putting your work in context
How do we make sense of the wider landscape of devolution and neighbourhood programmes?
It is easy to read Pride in Place as a self-contained programme: a pot of money, a Board, an investment and delivery plan, and a ten year timeframe. Really, PiP cannot operate in isolation, and today this is more true than ever. The work now sits in the middle of a radical push towards devolution, alongside a host of other decentralising programmes - neighbourhood health, the Community Power Pilots, Test, Learn and Grow, among others.
A successful local Pride in Place area will at minimum have this wider context in its field of view. Mapping this context can be a useful early activity, helping to get people on the same page. This can be held by a Neighbourhood Board but it is also useful to bring in a range of other local actors.
Since this is an especially practical challenge, here we have included a range of tools you can use to situate PiP in your local context.
The numbers after each item show which of the five dimensions of ambition it speaks to most directly: (1) Shift the story · (2) Cultivate agency · (3) Strengthen relationships · (4) Crowd in capital · (5) Shape the system.
Useful tools
7 items-
Tool
A guide to power analysis in community organising (opens in a new tab)
FreeCreative Commons
A ten-step method for mapping who holds power locally, with templates covering elected representatives, the public sector, the voluntary sector, business, media and residents.
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Tool
Net-Map (opens in a new tab)
A mapping method designed to surface the links between organisations and the influence each organisation holds.
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Tool
Power mapping (opens in a new tab)
FreeCreative Commons
A nine-step method for plotting decision-makers on a grid of power and agreement, in order to identify where leverage sits.
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Tool
The Powercube (opens in a new tab)
Free
A framework to understand and name different forms of power - visible, hidden, and invisible - and different ways power plays out in a space.
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Tool
Participatory systems mapping (opens in a new tab)
Free
A toolkit for participatory mapping, in which people working or living in a system work together to map its links and power dynamics.
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Tool
Asset mapping guidesheets (opens in a new tab)
Free
Guidesheets for hosting a walk around a neighbourhood to map its assets and prompt conversations.
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Tool
The Place Standard tool (opens in a new tab)
Free
Fourteen prompts for conversation, covering the physical and social qualities of a place, producing a visual profile that can then be compared over time.