Pride of Place Learning Hub: Phase One
Pride of Place Learning Hub: Phase One
In Phase One, you can explore the fundamentals of placemaking and identify where you want to drive change. This Learning Hub is sponsored by Aviva, Strategic Partner of the Business in the Community (BITC) Pride of Place programme.
Before You Start
Welcome to ‘Before You Start’, the very first place module and the starting point of your Pride of Place journey. This module is intended to provide everyone involved in a place-based partnership with foundational knowledge of what is meant by ‘placemaking’. It will also introduce BITC’s definition of place-based approaches, which can serve as grounding principles to guide you through your own process.
The journey of establishing place-based partnerships is rarely simple and linear. It is a process of co-creating, exploring, facilitating, inspiring, leading, and navigating.
Pride of Place in action: The King’s Seeing is Believing programme
This recent video highlights some of the life-changing connections and partnerships made possible by the people and organisations involved in Pride of Place in Coventry. Featuring interviews with business and community leaders, the footage showcases the powerful impact of a community-led, connected, long-term approach to placemaking.
Some of the people featured in the film were recent attendees and hosts of a visit to Coventry as part of The King’s Seeing is Believing Programme, a unique programme, kindly supported by Salesforce and Linklaters, that brings together Chief Executives and senior business leaders in small groups to connect with communities across the UK.
Places that are part of the BITC Pride of Place programme can become prime candidates for The King’s Seeing is Believing visits. Watch this video for some early inspiration on where your placemaking journey might lead.
What is a Place-Based Approach?
While we all understand what a place is, the terms ‘place’ and ‘placemaking’ are increasingly used to describe a way of working collaboratively and collectively in and with a geographically bounded community. Often, people think of it as ‘doing good things in places’ or ‘delivering programmes’, and while these may form part of the process of placemaking, they are not the totality. For BITC, placemaking is a process which always puts the ambitions and concerns of local communities and residents at the centre of plans, and is characterised as being:
Why are place-based approaches needed?
When making the social and business case for place-based work, it can be helpful to zoom out and look at regional inequalities across the country.
High Inequality
The UK has some of the highest inequality in Europe. This hasn’t improved and, for many, has worsened since the 1990s.1
Rising Poverty
Over 14 million people, including nearly three out of every ten children, are living in poverty in the UK.3
Economic Barriers
Limited access to skilled workers, affluent customers, and stable supply chains is holding back economic and social prosperity.2
Investment Needed
Long-term neglect and economic instability require sustained investment, collaboration, and leadership to drive change.
The problems faced by places that have been left behind are complex and vary significantly.4 The variety of places include underperforming major cities, post-industrial towns, declining coastal communities, or isolated settlements in a rural setting. It is because of this complexity that place is becoming increasingly central to attempts to correct disadvantage and a recognised cornerstone of the approaches of business, government, and the voluntary sector to drive lasting change.
Place-based initiatives are multifaceted and require multiyear timelines and consideration of complex local contexts.5 Collaborations of cross-sector actors can help address the variety and complexity of problems in a place, as well as strengthen the leadership and organisational capacity of the place.
Taking a place-based approach can bring distinct advantages to the employees, leaders, and stakeholders of participating businesses, enabling tangible, lasting engagement with the communities, neighbourhoods, and social amenities in which they are located. Crucially, place-based approaches can help ensure that underrepresented communities become active participants in the future of their place, by putting their expertise and experiences at the centre of plans and activities.
How do place-based approaches work in practice?
Place-based partnerships involve breaking down barriers that impact access to education and employment, improving housing and local facilities, and tackling wider inequalities facing individuals throughout the UK.
Local and national advocacy and leadership are required to address challenges in any place, because not all problems can be solved at the purely local level. Being involved in a place partnership enables local actors to influence nationwide policy and practice.
Action plans and strategies are developed in the place, with the place, and by the people and organisations of that place, helping to ensure that activities meaningfully address local needs and take advantage of local strengths and existing opportunities.
Before you start: FAQs
Resources
The resources below will support you in starting your placemaking journey and help provide an overview of best practice. More resources will be added to the modules as this Learning Hub is developed and improved, so keep in touch with your main BITC contact to learn more about the latest content as it launches:
Summary and next steps
This module has served as an introduction to the fundamentals of place-based partnership working and is one you can refer back to on your placemaking journey.
If you are comfortable and confident that you now have a better grasp of what place-based approaches are all about, the next module (Getting to know your potential place) will help you understand the criteria used by Aviva & BITC to determine whether the right conditions for a Pride of Place partnership are present in your place.
If you’d like a bit more information on place-based approaches, please consult the links in the above list of ‘Resources’. You can alsoget in touch with our Place Team to arrange an introductory call.
Getting to Know Your Potential Place
Welcome to ‘Getting to Know Your Potential Place’, the second Pride of Place module and an essential step in helping you to decide where your place journey will happen. This module is intended to provide the initial Place Lead and funders involved in a place-based partnership with the tools to get a better understanding of the places they seek to work in, and progress to a robust shortlist that can inform a final decision.
Whilst it is unlikely that you will be reading this with no prior discussions on your desired place (or places) of focus, this module is written to help people just starting out.
Below we will introduce you to the Pride of Place criteria, guiding you through what is involved in gaining an initial understanding of opportunities and risks that are present in your chosen place(s) and helping you to lay the foundations for developing a business case for supporting your chosen place.
Pride of Place in Newport: Driving change alongside communities
This recent video highlights how the work of the Pride of Place partnership in Newport, South Wales, is grounded in an understanding of the lived experience of the city’s communities.
Getting to know the place(s) you plan to focus on will be a continual and dynamic process that doesn’t end at this early, scoping phase of your placemaking journey. However, seeing how connected local business, community, and public sector leaders are with the BITC team in Newport provides an exciting glimpse of the inspiring people, assets, skills, and expertise that is present in every community across the UK.
Some of the people featured in the film were recent attendees and hosts of a visit to Newport as part of The King’s Seeing is Believing programme, a unique programme, kindly supported by Salesforce and Linklaters, that brings together Chief Executives and senior business leaders in small groups to connect with communities across the UK.
What role do I need to play in getting to know a place, and how will this feel?
Naturally, this early in the process, there will be a lot of unknowns and a lot of information to take in, so this phase will require you to bring an open mind and open ears, ready to listen and learn as much as you can quite quickly. The understanding you gain during this phase will be crucial to the success of your place. You will also need to be discerning and consultative when gathering information and in working with any other key stakeholders who may be involved at this stage of the process.
Whilst it is natural to feel a bit daunted by the path in front of you, this should be a really exciting part of the process. Identifying where you will focus, and justifying why, are the first steps on your placemaking journey. If you have not already done so, it can be helpful to ensure you understand and feel equipped to talk about place-based approaches at these early stages, so take a look at the previous module (Before you start) to understand what is meant by place-based approaches, who they involve, how long things might take, and how they work in practice.
Identifying your place using the Pride of Place criteria
Determining the right place is worth taking time over. While there are many places across the UK that are in need, this alone will not make a place successful. BITC recommends assessing the suitability of a place based on the Place Criteria summarised below:
Whilst BITC does not prescribe a scoring matrix for assessing a place’s suitability against these criteria, its Place Team can provide a helpful framework to support you in your decision-making and help you to identify the place in which a new partnership could enable most impact.
Building an understanding of evidence of need (place criteria #1)
The best approaches to gaining evidence of need combines data with insights from local stakeholders in communities. This equips you with both numbers and stories to engage and persuade internal stakeholders that your chosen place is the right one to focus on.
Collecting data
There is a wide range of publicly available data. Commonly, the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) are used, as these allow for the assessment of need relative to other areas. The IMD combines several indicators into a single deprivation score for each small area in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. These small areas are then ranked from most to least deprived.
There are online mapping tools which can help visualise this data such as the Consumer Data Research Centre – Indices of Multiple Deprivation Map. Keep in mind that some data sources rely on census data – collected every 10 years. A significant change in the local context (such as the closure of a major employer) can have a huge impact on a local area but could take up to 10 years to show up in data.
Gathering insights
Engagement with local stakeholders adds depth and context to needs analysis findings, further understanding local needs, and building a network of community leaders. When undertaking stakeholder engagement, you will often find stakeholders say things that bring to life their experience. If appropriate, consider recording meetings and asking for permission to use their quote or story.
At this stage of the process, you will not be in a position to produce a detailed analysis of local community needs, as this involves having access to diverse partner organisations who can provide data, insights, and open doors to enable consultation with communities. Further guidance on planning and running an effective community consultation is provided in the module Community Conversations & Business Roundtables.
Recognising and capitalising on levers for change (place criteria #2)
Selecting the right place is often a matter of timing. Identifying changes taking place in an area can help in galvanising people to engage. These can include, but are not limited to:
These can help in creating impetus for change and a receptiveness to ‘doing things differently’. Therefore, when you have one or more places in mind as potential locations of a Pride of Place partnership, sometimes the presence of an extrinsic ‘lever for change’ can help you make a compelling case for choosing to work in one place over another.
Assessing existing business leadership and engagement (place criteria #3)
Businesses will often play a leading role in the selection of a place, whether by being an early advocate for a place-based approach to be established or by providing tangible resource, such as staff time, to support the pre-activation phase.
If a business is leading on the selection of a place, it should have some wider strategic importance, for example, the location of current or future operations, opportunities for business development, clustering of existing employees, customers, or clients, as well as opportunities to develop a current or future talent pipeline.
There should also be a high level of potential for inter-business collaboration, ranging from a readiness and willingness for different businesses to work together towards a common aim, to the presence of businesses and other organisations with existing arrangements or partnerships, such as being members of a supply chain, local chambers of commerce, or fellow members of an industry or trade body.
For a place to become an ‘active’ place-based partnership, there needs to be evidence that businesses interested in being involved can demonstrate drive, commitment, and an availability of expertise and resources. This is measured by the number and size of businesses located in the area, the extent to which businesses’ operations cover or rely on the area and/or its population, and the willingness of leaders to commit to a place.
Measuring local and regional capacity for change (place criteria #4)
Local governments and communities are critical stakeholders in long-term transformational change in a place. Assessing a place’s capacity for change requires understanding of a location’s political and social will for change, together with the broader infrastructure of the place. This may encompass a range of factors, including the willingness of the Combined/Local Authority to work in new and innovative ways with partners and businesses:
Once you have gathered sufficient information to give you a good overview of how the Place Criteria apply to your chosen place(s), you may want to arrange your research within a shortlisting table, helping you to quickly compare your findings.
Proceeding towards a decision
At this point, you may find it useful to get an external perspective on your recommendations, or sense check some of your thinking. Get in touch with your main contact at BITC, who can help with this.
You may find it helpful to translate the findings of the above process into a decision-making tool used within your business. This helps ensure that due consideration of the risks has been made and this decision is treated in the same way as all major business decisions.
Sometimes there will be more than one place up for consideration to become home to a place partnership. This is natural at this stage in the process, and ‘Establishing Your Place‘ explains how you can progress from a shortlist of places to land on one place of interest in which to launch your partnership.
Addressing risk
Before you move on, however, it makes sense to complete a full risk analysis using the risk model and oversight that you use for all major business decisions. Some risks to consider include:
Pride of Place: Coventry
Working with BITC’s Place Team, BITC’s West Midlands Regional Leadership Board decided to identify a place within their region. Regional boards include a range of businesses and other stakeholders from across the region, so choosing a single place of interest to all is challenging.
BITC’s Place Team provided the place criteria and explained how it works and what was needed for BITC to go ahead and put a resource on the ground. The West Midlands Board identified a shortlist of 5 places and the BITC Place Team undertook an analysis of each against the place criteria, supported by a university which sits on the Board. Coventry was the front runner against all elements.
Working with BITC membership colleagues, BITC’s Place Team identified interested businesses and one particular business leader who stood out as a potential Chair. A roundtable discussion was held with all relevant businesses and the group agreed to do some additional development work to understand the issues they might address. Over the course of a year the group met four times, with a subgroup of business and the Local Authority agreeing to fund a resource, employed by BITC.
Resources
Before you start: FAQs
Summary and next steps
This module has introduced you to the Place Criteria used by BITC to assess whether chosen place(s) have the right conditions, stakeholders, and appetite to succeed as a Pride of Place partnership.
If you are comfortable and confident that you now have enough information to help you make an informed decision about where to work, the next steps to take are outlined in Phase Two, which starts with ’Establishing Your Place.’ That module will help you understand the steps you need to take to formalise your decision to work in a place and make the move to include it as part of the Pride of Place programme, supported by Aviva and BITC.
In some cases, even though you may have a real desire to work in a particular place, it may not have sufficient conditions to give enough of a grounding to satisfy the Place Criteria at this point in time. If you feel like you may need to pivot your attention to another place but have already engaged some stakeholders and done some research, the next module (Managing delays and changes) can help you manage this in a sensitive way.
Managing Delays and Changes
Welcome to ‘Managing Delays and Changes’, the Pride of Place module that is designed to support you when you have started the thinking around establishing a partnership, but things do not progress as planned or unforeseen challenges arise.
Bringing diverse, and sometimes distant, stakeholders together to help inform where and when you establish a Pride of Place partnership can be a complex task. But a slow, delayed, or provisionally cancelled start to a partnership does not need to spell a permanent end for your ambitions in a place.
This module will provide top-level guidance to support you to maintain good relationships and harness any existing progress, which could all be useful in driving you to establish a different place or to establish your place at a different time.
Why are some places not yet ready for a Pride of Place partnership?
The first two modules in this phase of the Learning Hub outline the processes and considerations required to move from having an idea of a location to deciding to establish a Pride of Place partnership.
Sometimes, in your initial research and meetings, it can feel like a particular location is not yet ready to host a partnership. Enthusiasm might be lacking, finding the right people to speak to might have been difficult, and barriers to progress might seem to have arisen at each step. There are many reasons why this might be the case, and most can be helpfully categorised under the headings of the Place Criteria, introduced in ‘Getting to Know Your Potential Place.’
Action plans and strategies are developed in the place, with the place, and by the people and organisations of that place, helping to ensure that activities meaningfully address local needs and take advantage of local strengths and existing opportunities.
1. Evidence of need
Given the freely and widely accessible resources, research, and expertise regarding the socioeconomic profile of UK towns, cities, and regions, challenges around evidence of need are usually less about the amount of data available. However, these challenges could perhaps be due to research being out of date, high degrees of change in local circumstances, or more granular, local information being available.
More regularly, potential places do not meet the criteria around evidence of need because the case for support is harder to make than in other places, such as those with higher levels of deprivation, or those which are more isolated or disadvantaged. Sometimes it can be difficult to justify working in one place when the needs of other communities – statistically speaking, ‘on the ground’, and in people’s perspectives – seem to be more important.
These potential challenges point to the importance of always seeking to understand your shortlisted places in their wider context. It can be helpful to compare any data, metrics, or insights on your chosen places with national, regional, and local averages. Similarly, ‘zooming in’ on the available evidence to construct a more detailed picture of particular neighbourhoods, communities, or districts within a town, city, or local authority area can help ensure you have quality, purposeful information to hand when making your decisions.
2. ‘Levers for change’
As outlined in ‘Getting to Know Your Potential Place,’ selecting the right place to work in is often a matter of timing. Sometimes, certain locations may have been presented as useful opportunities due to major infrastructure investment or development projects, changes to national or regional policy, or aligned private or public investment priorities.
The Oxford-Cambridge Growth Arc
Policy announcements in January 2025 by the relatively new Labour Government have revived focus on the Oxford-Cambridge Growth Arc. Initially published under the previous Conservative Government in 2021, ‘The Arc’ signalled a significant infrastructure and investment strategy designed to unlock the potential of the thriving hubs of tech and innovation to London’s north-east. Within these plans, cities such as Milton Keynes, towns such as Bedford, and the counties of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Northamptonshire may stand to benefit from improved transit connections, warehouse and lab space, and international investment.
Whilst businesses and local governments within the Oxford-Cambridge Arc may have celebrated the renewed prioritisation of their region, leaders in the North West and North East of England have expressed regret that much needed investment may be diverted south over the coming years.
The above example provides a valuable lesson in the critical, and often difficult to control, importance of timing in supporting a place decision process. Both sides of the coin present significant opportunities: a chance to benefit from renewed focus on Oxford and Cambridge via the Arc and a chance to raise the profile and drive lasting transformation in parts of the country that have suffered from inadequate infrastructure investment in the North West and North East of England. However, the absence of a unifying, driving change lever can sometimes undermine efforts to get a place-based partnership up and running.
3. Business leadership and engagement
The types and sizes of businesses that operate in different locations can be vastly different, with some places more well-represented in the services sectors, such as finance, legal, and IT, and others more replete with small- or large-scale goods producers, such as manufacturers, food producers, and engineering firms. Some parts of the UK are comparative ‘blind spots’ when it comes to playing host to major headquarters or substantive operations of large, multinational businesses. Other places may be well-served with larger businesses, or out-of-town innovation clusters, but have gaps in their networks of the vital SMEs, sole traders, and family-run businesses that contribute to economic diversity and employment opportunities.
Understanding your target business audience is critical to informing how you position your plans to explore a potential place. This goes beyond having knowledge of the organisations that operate or are based in a place and involves learning more about the people who make decisions, have access to budgets, or who employ skilled teams.
In some instances, certain locations may find it difficult to agree on who should ‘lead’ or be the figurehead of local business action, perhaps due to historic challenges or a perceived lack of cohesion between market competitors. Access to the right people and organisations can also be a significant challenge. BITC’s Advisory Services Team can help connect you with the right people to take your place idea further—get in touch to discuss the support available.
4. Capacity for change
For a Pride of Place partnership to launch successfully, it is vital that local and/or regional governments and relevant charities and community groups are both willing and able to support long-term strategic action that is business-led. In some parts of the country, local authorities, councils, combined authorities, and unitary authorities are feeling intense fiscal and resourcing pressures. Budget restrictions, staff redundancies and redeployments, and wider political challenges can serve to severely dampen the appetite and ability of stretched teams, with particular implications for long-term planning. Finding the right people, teams, and departments to discuss your ideas and plans with is imperative to getting things moving.
Furthermore, historical successes, failures, and perceptions can also erode the necessary trust, co-operation, and clear-sightedness needed to make a Pride of Place partnership work well. Whilst a partnership may seem an ideal opportunity to improve relationships, rebuild trust, and unite diverse stakeholders, sometimes the challenges and barriers to progression are too deep-rooted to move quickly. Similarly, charities, community organisations, and social services providers can sometimes face significant headwinds to their long-term sustainability, perhaps due to wider economic pressures, skills gaps, or overstretch. Faced with these difficulties, it can sometimes be wise to wait, reflect, and revisit conversations in a location rather than attempting to make things happen in challenging conditions.
When places of interest do not meet the place criteria
In 2020, BITC had identified an opportunity to develop a place-based partnership in a town in the South West of England. The town met the criteria in relation to its level of need. Working with a business volunteer who took on the role of Local ‘Connector’ (or Place Lead), BITC started to develop relationships with businesses, local networks, and the local authority.
The Connector identified several opportunities for projects where business could play a pivotal role, as well as a funding opportunity through the Community Renewal Fund. The Connector engaged the central BITC team to meet with key stakeholders, including the leader of the Council. The BITC Regional Membership Lead engaged the South West Leadership Board and other relevant member businesses.
While the conversations were extremely positive and the Council were prepared to engage and fund, BITC could not raise the business funding required to demonstrate business energy, nor find a suitable business leader to chair the partnership.
After hosting a roundtable event and engaging directly with individual businesses, the decision was made to stop the approach. Whilst disappointing for local partners and the BITC team, the criteria for business energy and leadership or the required funding to put a local resource on the ground more permanently could not be met.
How can I make the most of the work done to date?
If you do make the decision to delay or abort a potential partnership location, your existing work to date should ensure that your efforts will not be wasted. Making the most of the existing work you have done requires a strategic approach:
Resources
Managing delays and changes: FAQs
Next steps
If you have experienced the need to delay or not go ahead with a potential place-based partnership, you may feel inspired and empowered to build on what you have learned in another place. It could, therefore, be worth recapping on the early steps involved in ‘Getting to Know Your Potential Place.’ Or, if you feel you are ready to take the next step, check out the next section, Phase Two, which covers taking your first steps in establishing, funding, and resourcing your Pride of Place partnership, starting with the next module, ‘Establishing Your Place.’
Help us build the Pride of Place Learning Hub
Our modules will be continuously updated. Your experience and feedback can help these tools become richer. Contribute to the conversation of best practices in placemaking by sharing your perspective with our team today. We welcome your feedback, case studies, and reflections on placemaking to help us curate our modules.
Our Pride of Place programme is made possible through partnering with Aviva
Aviva is the first Pride of Place Partner. Working together with BITC, the partnership will build thriving communities by breaking down barriers that impact access to education and employment, improving housing and local facilities, and tackling wider inequalities facing individuals throughout the UK. The work will bring together key local stakeholders in places such as community groups, businesses, and local councils to create a strategic vision for long-term change.