Pride of Place: Coventry
Business in the Community’s Place Programme brings together business, civic leadership and communities to create long-term, transformational change in communities. We work with places to build and deliver a vision for their future that serves everyone. We provide sustained resource, advice and support to motivate and empower local stakeholders so that each place can identify its own challenges & innovate its own solutions.
Since 2021, we have been empowering, advising and working with local stakeholders to build and deliver transformation in Coventry that benefits its people.
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.
Strategic Priorities
End food poverty in Foleshill and Longford.
Ensure every resident in Foleshill and Longford can breathe clean air and access safe green spaces.
Support all secondary school children to reach their full potential and progress into employment, education, or training.
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:
- We brokered £200k in capital funding, along with skills training and support
- Provided opportunities for young people to engage with major employers
- Launched Business in the Community’s Climate Fund in Coventry, support community-led climate action
- We have facilitated the donation of thousands of books, technology resources and food to schools and community centres
“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 CoventryCase 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.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
See our current locations here.
Each BITC Place location has a Pride of Place Board. Through joining a Pride of Place Board, you will contribute to the strategic direction of the place, collaborating with other leaders and leveraging expertise and resource from within your organisation.
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.
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