Plymouth visit notes

What works well?

  • POP brought coherence and voice to the sector - stopped it being crabs in a bucket.
  • Difference about Plymouth is collaborative approach and the focus on end goal
  • Feels supportive - discussion about how things can be done better. Closeness of Plymouth helps this to happen (as opposed to Cornwall)
  • 4-5 years ago the sector felt stagnant. Now a buzz and an energy.
  • What made it happen? Necessity. POP big contributors, refreshed the city. Networks actually being listened to - transformational. City council understanding that, recognising own deficits.
  • Difference - change in key personalities - people who have a lot more vision, looking at whole system and VCS part in it. Optimism that people didn't have 5 years ago when running things or commissioning things.
  • POP done a great job at being collaborative. More transparent. Feeling part of the solution. (How do you make everyone part of it - part of the social impact stuff across the city that the council were talking about)
  • SE network been around since 2011 - member led network, 70+. No paid staff. Motivating idea of what is SE city and how do you put SE at centre of the economy? Now been officially recognised as SE city - good badge.
  • Clear mission, for membership, lean and nimble - having no fixed staff etc means don't end up seeking funding and 'cannabalising' members to survive. Relies on a lot of good will though.

Identified challenges

  • Lot of ghettoising in communities. Need to address integration at early stages. Lack of resources lead outcomes. Pioneer things that haven't happened elsewhere.
  • Talent development - talent drained from city because there isn't the structure to keep them here.
  • Invisible barriers for BAME individuals.
  • Reduction in structures expressing voice of vulnerable to power
  • Mayflower - arts sector isn't that interested, it is coming too top down, being forced in, money from central govt. More interested in sector coming together. Shame happening behind closed doors. Make more democratic?
  • People who don't come in to the city centre - need to turn this around, not just coming in and spending money.
  • Recovering from history of being three towns, dockyard port - challenge in making Plymouth feel and act like one.
  • Growing a positivity, a can do attitude. Has been missing. Things happening elsewhere 20 years ago now seen as revolutionary in Plymouth. Need to move LA from a more authoritarian space.
  • Concerned about the fat cats of the sector taking the lions share of the money.
  • Momentum has been built on a false capacity - everyone putting in more time than should. Creative risk taking valuable but need to facilitate it to draw those ideas out.
  • Networks woolly round the edges - coming together but without a clear plan as to what happens next. Greater definition.
  • Something lacking in terms of voice from BME sector - need to move something to move beyond paternalistic.

Opportunities - what needs to be done?

  • Getting people ready for further shrinking of public sector eg what if all green space handed over in 5 years?
  • How does LA re-engage with local communities? Leader has stated he wants this.
  • Get communities to come up with sustainable solutions - taking good relationship across whole of council and make best practice egs of talking to communities the norm. Support from Jacky et al to support the delivery of that.
  • Align business community better with VCSE.
  • Telling story of a city.
  • Going beyond individual casework to create more sustainable services linked in to the wider community rather than just an org. Important for refugee/asylum orgs - integration in to communities. Don't always need staff in each org to capacity build - can do it by working with other orgs. Moving people one day a week to work with one another.
  • Opportunity to test and pilot some initiatives around early action. Early stage stuff - pump prime. Only people who really need it get to acute stuff.
  • Safe spaces, crash pads to prevent crisis situations in mental health.
  • Support needed to develop Plymouth mental health network - funding infrastructure. The go to for the voluntary sector - develop pilots.
  • Turn the pyramid upside down - not exclusive. Newer faces on boards, not the old guard. Possible for people to work together now.
  • Connectivity - lifting all boats.
  • Positivity, strategic approach, dismantling silos - look across the Plymouth Plan which is in silos - environment cuts across all this. Take risk of passing things over to the community.
  • Bring Plymouth Plan alive as currently just on paper.
  • Civic pride - how do you get people to celebrate all the little things that are going on? Local press don't do this.
  • Empowerment. Social justice. Common ownership. Long term investment for people.
  • Learn from other cities. Vision is very important - otherwise gets too local, too connected to a particular project. Don't reinvent the wheel - export good ideas from elsewhere. Establish good partnerships - with police for example.
  • Neighbourhood forums and plans. Getting people who live together together. Community development work in old language.
  • All need to know what we're all doing - connectivity, not preciousness, being aware. Plymouth can feel like Australia sometimes. Talk to the people you want to work with. Speak to them about what they need. Teach to teach. Pass it on models.
  • Finding ways to keep money circling in the local economy.
  • Huge potential to unlock from the private sector. Whatever initiative should not forget the opportunity to bring private sector in to play. Get everyone to invest in the idea of social impact/good citizenry. Huge skills to hive off from the private sector.

What people want from Esmee funding initiative

  • Don't do stuff as a whole series of pilots - got to be an opportunity to scale in there. Replicability to what has been done in Plymouth to carry elsewhere.
  • Creativity/innovation/doing things money or skills development/capacity building? Emphasis on doing stuff or helping people do stuff? Sense was there had to be some actual doing of stuff within it.
  • Enabling joining up - don't want to duplicate. Brings key orgs together.
  • Needs to be sustainable when grant period ends.
  • R&D for the sector?
  • Need a funded structure that is sustainable beyond the pilot.
  • Challenge of time to do stuff, take it further etc. Fund people to spend time.
  • Nothing about us without us. Not just a group of professionals. Those who use services to deliver it.
  • Funding to evaluate the work too. Always asking what people get out of it.
  • Individual self starters - hundreds of people doing great things - unblock the system.
  • Community connectors idea - commission them in local areas
  • Work with communities and find amazing skills and enthusiasm. VFM.
  • Supporting activists - hasn't been done in Plymouth. Support, mentoring, development for them. Not about getting them in to paid roles necessarily. Community champions model.
  • Youth trainees - taking real risks on who you put in those jobs. A form of planning for succession - not enough YP coming in to the voluntary sector, getting next young people in.
  • Build networks. But not just about people who are already professionals. Need to be taught to look outwards.
  • Pump priming stuff. Scared they'll be let down.
  • Encourage innovation - not just accepting how it has been done. Elements of risk taking. Disempowers community when their ideas are batted down.
  • Costs of time and capacity for that facilitation.
  • Creating space where people come to us as equals - blockage to separate.
  • POP can be the cajoler - hold everyone to account.
  • POP to be single point of contact that everyone comes to.
  • Infrastructure body for the 21st century. Body that is critical to the operation of the city. Dispersal of power.
  • Disconnect in that lots of small orgs doing great work, but resource required to form partnerships. Value to work but can't purchase because it doesn't act system wide. Some funding for small orgs, micro enterprises to explore what working together might look like - outside facilitation.

Other funding stuff

  • UnLtd - working in 20 places, Plymouth may be one, will do a lot more around learning and local economics. Looked at where money flows in and out and what could be changed, by individuals as well as orgs.
  • Power to Change - place based programme in Plymouth. Agreed last week. RIO/SE Network/Millfields partnership - focus on Stonehouse and Devonport. Focus on community business - locally owned SE. Deep dive in to communities to tackle a particular issue. Programme based. Year one about peer connectors, establish one business, stakeholder meetings, 10 £500 grants for events.

Adjectives for Plymouth/hopes for initiative

United we stand. No limits. Coalition of the willing. Cohesive. Social glue. Strong vision. Propulsion. Momentum. Commitment to change. Aspirational. Catalyst. Enabling. Cooperative. Imagination. Codesigned. Coalescence.

Transformational. Inclusiveness. Solidify/underpin the energy/momentum. Revolution. Acceleration. Infrastructure (to hold together ideas). Sustainable. Experimental. Brave. Shared ownership - from the people. Community.