By Rebecca Mear, Voscur CEO:
What do we mean by the concept of ‘place-based’? I’ve been trying to pinpoint whether we have a common definition of this buzz-word term. It’s hard for those of us that have always worked in the part of the VCSE sector that is ‘local’ – i.e. inherently embedded in the place from which the organisation has sprung – to work out whether the concept is anything different to what we already do.
At Voscur we work with multiple different institutions, organisations and sectors to enable the VCSE sector to be at the forefront of driving change. We’ve seen ‘place-based’ used to mean the whole region, and also the city, and we’ve heard it applied to sub-sections of the city and to hyper-local neighbourhoods.
Is there a risk for the VCSE sector about the use of a ‘place-based’ approach? If place is defined at micro level, which communities does this leave outside of any ringfence – whether conceptual or physical? Certainly, we see community organisations that are equalities-led operate at wider levels than many more localised definitions of ‘place’. Our VCSE organisations that are practice-focused – experts in a certain service delivery area such as mental health or age – may operate at city or region level but usually not at more micro ‘place’ levels. So there is potentially a risk – but only if the definition of ‘place’ is a cordon. And there is a vast amount of expertise the VCSE sector can offer from its place-rooted, community-driven nature, as ‘place-based’ concepts and approaches take shape and are evolved.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about leadership, and re-evaluating a bunch of stuff that only ever surfaces when you get the time and privilege of CPD training. On the Common Purpose Senior Leaders programme, I’ve benefited from an eclectic range of people from, quite literally, all over the UK and different sectors, bringing varied professional and lived experiences.
Within the senior leaders programme, they took us to each of the capital cities in the UK – first London in January, then Cardiff in March, onto Belfast in April, and Edinburgh this week. In each city, we visited or heard from people in a host of varied businesses or organisations, who shared their own leadership insights. From the towering KPMG in Canary Wharf, to the riverside FSA in Belfast, or hearing from the High Sheriff of Glamorgan and a head nurse who’d led medical settings in war zones for the forces, or sitting in the parliamentary rooms of Stormont hearing from an MLA on how to navigate complexity … each place and person offered their own deep insights, given generously to aid us in our development.
And so, our leadership programme showed us the absolute defining feature that is the context of a place. Each city was wildly different, and each person shaped by the places – at multiple levels – in which they’d led teams and organisations. Places shape leaders and leaders shape places, I’ve realised. That’s the exciting bit.
