Connecting Communities: Exploring Social Infrastructure in the North East
Insights North East is delighted to be partnering with 3Ni on the region’s first Social Capital Summit. Hosted by 3Ni, this landmark event explores how we can use the power of connection to strengthen our communities and build a stronger North East. As part of our mission to strengthen debate about the big ideas that provide solutions to the region’s long-standing issues, we’re thrilled to be working with 3Ni to raise these vital questions with community leaders, policymakers, and practitioners across the region.
The North East Social Capital Summit brings together diverse voices to explore how strengthening community connections and investing in local networks can address our most pressing issues: from declining trust in institutions and widening inequality to public health and economic growth.
Insights North East has released two outputs that analyse ‘left behind’ places beyond a narrow economic framework, providing actionable insights for regional policymakers exploring ways to direct investment that address wider issues of place, community, and belonging.
The challenge of ‘left behind’ communities has been a growing concern to national and regional policymakers since the political shockwaves of the 2016 EU referendum and the election of Donald Trump. ‘Left behind’ is useful shorthand for understanding geographical inequality and denotes places that have missed out on economic growth since deindustrialisation. However, the phrase is imprecise, potentially pejorative, and obscures the diversity and complexity of problems faced by different communities. Consequently, policy-making fails to meet community needs, contributing to political discontent and the perception that these are ‘places that do not matter.’
Professor Tomaney’s research offers a fundamentally different approach. Rather than viewing these communities solely through an economic lens, his work examines the making, unmaking, and remaking of social infrastructure—the networks, relationships, and organisations that bind communities together. This perspective is central to understanding how we can use the power of connection to strengthen our communities and build a stronger North East. A topic he will be talking about in depth on the plenary panel at the summit.
Social Infrastructure and Left Behind Places is a policy briefing summarising the work of John Tomaney and his team at UCL. Their research uses a deep place study of Sacriston in Durham to examine the making, unmaking, and remaking of social infrastructure in ‘left behind’ communities and elicit a series of policy recommendations.
Building a resilient community network in the former Durham coalfield is a report produced by Insights North East in conjunction with Redhills Durham. The study examines the challenges community organisations face in former mining villages and towns and how these organisations fill the gaps left by the withdrawal of central and local government services.
Both studies point to a range of policy interventions that meet the requirements of specific communities. They demonstrate the need to move beyond a simple range of indicators to rethink and remake the policy model by building new evidence bases that promote a deeper understanding of place and belonging in ‘left behind’ communities.