Communities and neighbourhood renewal

Making a difference in neighbourhoods through learning opportunities
A presentation to staff who work in neighbourhoods around the key messages about making a difference through learning.

Neighbourhood Renewal Thematic Strategy - Learning Theme statements for 2006-2008 (2006)
Neighbourhood Renewal aims to close the gaps between the most disadvantaged, underachieving areas and the city average. It does this across a number of themes (learning; health; housing; safety; worklessness; environment). This statement outlines the work to be undertaken via the learning theme across the 2 year period to 2008.

Literacy, numeracy and language developments built into Birmingham’s community strategy for neighbourhood renewal, January 2005 (52k)
Each area of England has to produce a community strategy. This describes how literacy and numeracy developments have been built into the long-term community strategy for Birmingham; and how literacy and numeracy developments are crucial to closing the gaps between neighbourhoods.

Use of aspirational floor targets to drive change in levels of adult basic skills, June 2004 (24k)
Related graphs, June 2004 (64k) One part of the ‘toolkit’, being used to bring about a progressive closing of the gaps between the most flourishing neighbourhoods and the least flourishing ones, is the use of targets.
‘Floor targets’ are minimum levels below which no area or organisation will remain by an agree date.
There were, in 2002, no plans to establish national floor targets for adult basic skills. Following from the Adult Basic Skills Review, organisations across Birmingham and Solihull saw value in agreeing some aspirational floor targets for localities across the area. Using the levels of skills in each ward at the moment, and the overall planned levels of skill for the whole area for 2005 and 2010, it was possible to set aspirational minimum levels for 2005 (levels below which no local ward area will remain by that time.

The contribution of learning to flourishing neighbourhoods, June 2004 (48k)
A key concern in the regeneration of Birmingham is that of creating economic prosperity for residents whilst also creating ‘flourishing neighbourhoods’. These are neighbourhoods where people are relatively happy to live; where public and private services are well delivered; where there is a strong network of activity and were residents feel that they have some degree of influence over their lives. A number of managers from different agencies, with a concern for neighbourhood renewal in Birmingham explored what a flourishing neighbourhood might look like in terms of learning, and established what data might be needed to substantiate this. This framework has been used to direct renewal investment in localities.

Neighbourhood renewal - making the difference through learning (2004)

This set of ‘tools’ was developed as part of Birmingham’s range of activities under the ‘2003 Year of Lifelong Learning’ focus. It was constructed from a range of local, national and international thinking and practice re learning cities, learning communities, learning organisations.

It attempts to capture the very wide set of perspectives on learning cities, learning communities, learning organisations that have been worked up in many different places i.e. rather than adding to an already long list of features of learning cities, it is more of an attempt to bring these together into a framework that can be used for three different purposes:

  • to aid discussion, debate and insight
  • to aid assessing the extent to which a locality is a learning city
  • to aid the production of the development steps to be taken if a city wishes to move further towards being fully a learning city

There are sections here covering:

  • Some early analysis, in 2003, of what was meant by the concept of a learning city. This arose in response to concerns that Birmingham’s tradition of asking questions of itself and being innovative in terms of bringing about change in the lives of citizens was being replaced by ‘events’ that did little to change main practices. At the very time when it was doing most to promote itself as a Learning City, it had ceased to be learning about how it learned. One challenge was to establish a set of criteria by which the city could assess its progress on the long-term journey towards being an ever-more-learning city.
    This thinking was shared with the Learning City Network and with partners in this country and abroad. We were encouraged to take it further and to develop a simplified tool that could be used for regular assessment of progress.
  • The Learning City Survey documents were sent out by email to key intermediaries within the learning infrastructure of Birmingham. Results were collated and gave reliable and consistent overall scores for the extent to which Birmingham could consider itself to be a learning city (just over 50% on these measures in 2004); the strengths and weaknesses of the five key components; and which of the 33 elements were our best features and those aspects that needed further work if Birmingham was to become more of a learning city.
  • The outcomes of this first survey (2004)