Combining academic and experiential knowledge from the community, we focus on a ‘place-based’ approach to co-create new solutions to address persistent social challenges. Through our national and international partnerships we draw on their experiences and lessons learned, from a wide range of children’s and community initiatives, and our hope is that we create a more durable model of community and place-based working tailored to the communities we work with, to bring long lasting change.

We launched this initiative with our anchor pilot partner in the Market community with whom we co-designed our first phase of work. The initiative is expanding into other urban, small town and rural settings across Northern Ireland to explore the transferability, sensitivity and suitability of our approach in different geographical and socio-economic contexts.

In our first phase, Communities and Place has embedded a research and evaluation team within the Market community to facilitate, develop and implement a programme of work; some programmes span three years while others are short-term and action research focused in nature to respond to immediate community priorities.