Community Building: Workshops

Workshop format

Each Workshop will have two morning sessions with papers from academics: one historical the other on contemporary policy.
The afternoon session will include four speakers/practitioners who will provide an outline reply, to both the questions and the morning papers, based on their experiences. This will be followed by an open debate with the audience.

Community building, or community development, has been a concern of the state, local government and voluntary agencies since the 1960s and the ‘rediscovery’ of poverty. From the late-1960s and throughout the 1970s, successive governments initiated a number of action-research pilot projects, such as the Education Priority Areas, Community Development Projects, Neighbourhood Schemes, Quality of Life programmes, Six Town Studies and Comprehensive Communities Programme. The problem was defined in terms of ‘individual pathologies’ and ‘transmitted deprivation’. Community development focused on creating self-help and mutual aid groups to address what was perceived as problem from within certain largely urban areas. However, these projects were fraught with problems, not least of which was the profound structural economic problems facing old industrial areas, rural and urban.

Governments were accused of little more than tokenism. Increasingly, under Labour and then Conservative governments, community development became centred on the fundamental need for economic regeneration. This, however, did not necessarily lead to the type of community development needed for the poor and disadvantaged. Since the late-1990s, the state, local authorities and devolved assemblies and a range of voluntary organisations have attempted to redress the balance in policy and approaches to community development.

Following the Communities Conference, held at Bangor on 13 September 2012, we will be holding two workshops to explore the key issues concerning community stability.

Workshop 1: Friday 10 May 2013

Community Building and Governance

This workshop will discuss some of the key aspects in community building, in what undermines social cohesion and which policies and institutions have created stable communities. It will focus on governance, public institutions and policies.

Workshop 2: Friday 17 May 2013

Community Building & the Third Sector: Civil Society and a Sustainable Community

These workshops are of interest to anyone involved in communities, governance & the third sector: academics, practitioners, students and especially members of the public.

Register now!

If you would like to attend please complete the registration form.

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