Today we release our first annual snapshot of the community wealth building movement – community wealth building 2019. You can get your copy by clicking here.
Community wealth building is an intentional reorganisation of the local economy in order to tackle the inequalities and disadvantages that are today, more than ever, so acutely felt in our homes and communities across the UK.
On the 5th of September 2019, the Office for National Statistics released the latest GDP figures for UK regions and countries. The figures highlighted in the graph below demonstrate that whilst the British economy as a whole has avoided a technical recession since 2015, this masks wide variation between regions, particularly those in the North, who have spent a significant proportion of the time since the creation of the Northern Powerhouse either stagnating or contracting in size. This is why CLES is calling for a fundamental regeneration and devolution rethink.
This year CLES will be hosting events and speaking at the Liberal Democrat, Labour, Conservative and Green party conferences, and at The World Transformed.
Find all the details below and watch out for our coverage of the events and other happenings at the conferences.
Building community wealth (in partnership with ALDC)
Sunday 15th September, 6.15pm
Details →
Organised by the Sino-Euro Think Tank Communication Association (SETTCA), the symposium welcomed nearly twenty researchers, policy advisers and practitioners from China. We were able to share our views on new local economics and it was a brilliant opportunity to share the UK and Chinese perspective on think tank management and purpose. Tellingly, we collectively identified a number of similarities between the challenges faced by think tanks in the UK and China, including:
This was a decision we struggled with: Birkenhead Town Hall is a stunning venue and our friends at Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council have been extremely accommodating. In the end it came down to a matter of wanting as many people as possible to join us in building the Community Wealth Building movement.
The Charter has been collaboratively developed by CLES and DTNI and supported by Community Foundation for Northern Ireland and Friends Provident Foundation and it is the cornerstone of a new DTNI project ‘Creating Resilient Local Economies’
