Pride of Place: Coventry
Pride of Place: Coventry
In communities across the UK that have long endured hardship, BITC’s Pride of Place programme unites people from all walks of life around a vision for a better future, nurturing collaboration, sustained investment and self-belief to drive action so that millions can thrive in a place they call home.
Our work in Covnetry
Business in the Community’s Coventry Pride of Place programme brings together businesses, local council, and community organisations to drive inclusive growth and opportunity across the city. Established in 2021, Coventry Pride of Place celebrates the city’s industrial heritage and cultural diversity while addressing the deep-rooted challenges that face its people. Coventry Pride of Place empowers, advises, and works with local stakeholders to build and deliver transformation in Coventry that benefits its people, supporting its transition into an emerging centre of innovation.
Why Coventry?
Coventry was once the thriving heart of the UK’s automotive sector. The sector has declined in recent decades, leaving local communities facing significant economic challenges. This shift has led to job losses, skill gaps and overall, reduced opportunities for Coventry’s young people.
However, Coventry is a dynamic city, known for its cultural diversity, historical significance and leading educational institutions. Pride of Place seeks to support the city’s growth as an emerging centre of innovation, particularly around its advanced manufacturing expertise and growing digital and creative sector.
pride of place: Coventry
Our strategic priorities
Food Poverty
End prevalent food poverty in the Foleshill and Longford communities.
Clean Air
Ensure every resident in Foleshill and Longford can breathe clean air and access safe green spaces.
Youth Support
Support all secondary school children to reach their full potential and progress into employment, education, or training.
Digital Skills
Elevate digital skills in Coventry, positioning it as the leading hub for digitally-skilled workers outside of London.
Our impact to date
Our Coventry Leaders’ Network has had a key role to play in driving innovative change in Coventry. Over the past five years:
“Our Coventry Leaders’ Network brings together local business, community groups and government leaders to create meaningful connections and work collaboratively on the shared vision for Coventry, focussed on using business skills to reset economic ambitions and bring about long-term transformative impact on communities. We help drive action to achieve progress on a small set of agreed critical issues or opportunities for Coventry, based on our vision, with the goal of contributing to significant positive change in the region.”
Steve Hughes, Chief Executive Officer, Coventry Building Society
“Prior to last year’s visit I was feeling very isolated, I felt at the visit that the organisations involved genuinely cared and were listening to the work we do and how difficult that is with such limited resources. After the event lots of organisations came forward and offered financial support which enabled our kitchen and cafe to be built alongside practical support drawing on the skills and expertise of organisations. I will be forever grateful for the support shown to us during this time.“
Helen Needham, Former Chief Executive Officer, Feeding Coventry
Case studies from Coventry
Feeding Coventry
When business partners visited Feeding Coventry in May 2022, they were in dire needs of funds to support their central operations. The charity had just been successful in a bid for over £100k capital funding to have a commercial kitchen and café space fitted but needed to provide £10k of match funding in order to access this. Businesses collaborated to meet the need for this match funding, with contributions made from Salesforce, Coventry Building Society, Linklaters and National Grid. This meant Feeding Coventry were able to develop their café, which now provides warm meals to local residents as well as an income stream for the community centre.
In additional to the charity’s financial needs, there was also a number of skills gaps identified from within the charity’s staff and volunteers which it was felt business could help to support with. Coventry Building Society has since been helping Feeding Coventry with business planning and supporting them to build a sustainable funding model. Salesforce are supporting in creating a CRM system which can be used to track food supplies and manage the social supermarket customers. They hope to ultimately be able to create a system which can be embedded into other similar charities and can help manage food supply demands across the city’s wider Coventry Food Network.
Positive Youth Foundation
Following the formal Seeing is Believing visit in May 2022, some of the businesses involved made immediate commitments to Positive Youth Foundation (PYF), a registered charity that supports young people in the Coventry area and supports the national youth work sector to thrive. These businesses included the City & Guilds Foundation, who funded a programme to support newly arrived young people run by PYF.
Two businesses, Tesco and Salesforce, chose to bring their teams back to PYF later in the year for a more in-depth session to learn more what they do as an organisation and how their businesses can best support young people at PYF rather than just retrofitting their already existing youth outreach programmes.
For Salesforce, this has developed into a long-term partnership which benefits both organisations. PYF have received support from Salesforce including funding, business planning and exposure their wider business network and Salesforce have been able to gain insights from the team at PYF and their service users on about how they can make their employment opportunities more accessible to young people and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Coventry Leadership Board
Our work is led by our local Pride of Place Partnerships – a cross-sector senior leadership board which sets the strategic direction for our work, mobilises their workforce to support with delivery of activities and acts as an advocate for the programme both regionally and locally. The Coventry Leadership Board is chaired by Steve Hughes.
Steve Hughes
Chief Executive Officer of Coventry Building Society and Board Chair
Phil Andrew
Chief Group Executive,
Orbit
Ranjit Blythe
Managing Director,
Cadent Foundation
Joe Carroll
General Manager, Amazon Web Services
Steph Cawley
Operations Director, Severn Trent Water
Paul O’Sullivan
SVP Solution Engineering and Salesforce UKI CTO, Salesforce
FAQs
Businesses can get involved by joining the Coventry Leadership Board, supporting local projects, volunteering expertise, mentoring young people and collaborating with local organisations to drive long-term social and economic impact across Coventry.
The Coventry Leaders’ Network has played an important role in driving collaboration and innovative change across the city. Through partnerships with businesses, community groups and civic leaders, the programme continues to support projects focused on social mobility, environmental sustainability and economic inclusion.
BITC defines place-making as long-term and transformational change in a particular geographic location. For us, it is underpinned by some core principles:
- Collaboration – bringing together business, public and VCSE sectors
- Business leadership – senior business leaders working together on a shared agenda
- Community-needs-led: based on the priorities and needs of the Place, as defined by the people in the place.