CWB Summit 2023: Programme
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8.45am: registration and breakfast
9.15am: opening plenary
Building community wealth in the cracks of a broken economy
The opening session of this year’s Summit will set the context for the day with a thought-provoking challenge on the role of local economies and the forces that drive them. CLES’s Chief Executive, Sarah Longlands, will kick off the day by reflecting on a turbulent year for our places and looking ahead to how they will fare after next year’s elections. Our keynote address will come in the form of a video provocation from world renowned economist, author and speaker, Ann Pettifor. Ann will lay down the gauntlet to a panel of place leaders and thinkers who will discuss the implications of her remarks for local economies before we move into our breakout sessions for the morning. Read more about this session and the speakers →
11.10am: morning breakouts
Manchester, a place in flux
In a break from traditional conference style, we are taking our first set of breakout sessions to the streets. Departing from our venue, you will be guided on a bespoke walking tour – developed for the Summit by place researcher and critical thinking tour guide Hayley Flynn – by tour guides from CLES and the Institute of Place Management. Read more about the walking tours and our guides →
12.15pm: lunch
Lunch will be served by Open Kitchen, a sustainable Manchester-based caterer who source the majority of their ingredients by intercepting food that would otherwise go to waste.
1pm: afternoon plenary and breakouts
Building community wealth and power: a new vision for local economies
Following lunch, CLES’s Director of Policy and Practice, Tom Lloyd Goodwin, will talk through the findings of his forthcoming paper, which will argue that we need a new commitment to building wealth and power in our communities. For this paper we spoke with local authorities and their partners across the country to determine the state of local economic development in 2023, the challenges being faced, the opportunities arising and the best practice happening on the ground. Following Tom’s session, we will break out into groups to discuss some of the key themes in the paper with specially invited panels of experts. Learn more about the paper and the breakout sessions →
2.45pm: closing keynote panel
Shared interests?
The Summit will close with a discussion of the frontiers we are yet to cross: what can and should be the interface between the private, charity and public sectors in community wealth building? Our panel will hear an international perspective before we move into a debate into what can be learned for the UK and what this means for practice on the ground. Read more about this session and the speakers →
