Local Trust is a place-based funder supporting communities to achieve their ambitions.
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< Back to main menuBig Local is an exciting opportunity for residents in 150 areas to create lasting change in their communities.
About the programmeEssential guidance, information and ideas for Big Local partnerships, to help you deliver change in your community.
Visit the support centreFind out how the principles of Big Local have inspired other programmes creating change in local communities.
Community Leadership Academy
Supporting volunteers involved in Big Local projects to develop their skills and knowledge.
Find out moreCreative Civic Change
This new approach to funding enabled communities to use art and creativity to make positive local change.
Find out moreThe latest news and stories from Big Local areas and beyond, exploring community power and resident-led change.
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Voices of Big Local
Inspiring stories from the people making change happen in their communities.
Read moreLocal Trust is a place-based funder supporting communities to achieve their ambitions.
Find out moreGo straight to…
< Back to main menuBig Local is an exciting opportunity for residents in 150 areas to create lasting change in their communities.
About the programmeEssential guidance, information and ideas for Big Local partnerships, to help you deliver change in your community.
Visit the support centreFind out how the principles of Big Local have inspired other programmes creating change in local communities.
Community Leadership Academy
Supporting volunteers involved in Big Local projects to develop their skills and knowledge.
Find out moreCreative Civic Change
This new approach to funding enabled communities to use art and creativity to make positive local change.
Find out moreThe latest news and stories from Big Local areas and beyond, exploring community power and resident-led change.
ExploreGo straight to…
Voices of Big Local
Inspiring stories from the people making change happen in their communities.
Read moreLearn about the hypothesis that underpins our research and evaluation
Research at Local Trust is integral to our work and this strategy sets out what we plan to do up to the end of the Big Local programme. This ambitious direction will allow us to develop our learning and understanding about community-led change and how to bring it about, not just in Big Local areas, but in disadvantaged and ‘left behind’ areas across England.
This work includes:
Set out below is the Big Local hypothesis which underpins our approach to research and evaluation.
Three categories sit underneath the hypothesis which each include lines of inquiry that will be explored over the coming years. These lines of inquiry are questions that will underpin all our research projects, ensuring that all the work we do relates back to at least one of these key questions.
Our approach to research is to test and explore the Big Local hypothesis. A hypothesis approach is suitable for researching complex and emergent work such as Big Local and other place-based programmes; it helps develop a collaborative approach to learning that also focuses on the themes most important within the Big Local programme. The Big Local hypothesis is:
Long term funding and support to build capacity gives residents in hyper-local areas agency to take decisions and to act to create positive and lasting change
Residents involved in Big Local communities continue to build their capacity and have demonstrated in the consultation to this strategy their more advanced and strategic thinking about community-led work. We seek to understand in detail the funding and support structures that are required to enable community power and control over resources by answering the following lines of inquiry:
Projects planned
Delivering a significant, ongoing project recording each Big Local area’s story of change and achievements, and supporting areas to articulate their outcomes in relation to their place and people; bringing together what we know about the support needed to effectively develop and maintain community-led change; evaluating our new support to Big Local areas, introduced as they enter the final years of the Big Local programme; and researching the role of the money within the programme to understand how it gives power to Big Local areas and whether this power remains when the funding is spent.
Local Trust wants to ensure the principles underlying Big Local are well evidenced and provide a persuasive argument for more power in communities, and in particular, ‘left behind’ areas where power and resources are most lacking. We also see community leadership as integral to the programme and something that will leave a lasting legacy in Big Local areas. As a result, we want to understand what enables the development of community leaders. Finally, we want to understand how Big Local areas have developed relationships and changed perceptions of community-led change with other power holders.
Our three lines of inquiry within this section reflect these drivers.
Projects planned
Continuing our evaluation of the Community Leadership Academy, assessing the success of the academy and drawing out learning about community leadership and how community leaders are developed in a place; researching how some Big Local areas, identified as illustrations of community-led change in action, have achieved the model in their communities so that we can share what enabled them and the support they needed; and continuing to develop the Community Needs Index (CNI), including updating the index with new data from the 2021 Census.
By answering the above lines of inquiry, we are building our evidence base on the impact of Big Local, but this final section explores how that impact will be sustained in the long term. Local Trust wants to understand the impact of the Big Local programme in addressing systemic issues that communities prioritise. It will also look at how Big Local influences funders and agencies to work in a more community-led way and how that is sustained in the future.
The lines of inquiry we will be addressing are:
Projects planned
Continuing our research that applies systems change thinking to Big Local, and exploring the extent to which the programme is creating systems change within Big Local areas; and gathering evidence of the initial set up phase of the programme to draw out learning that would be useful for funders, policy makers and practitioners on setting up community-led initiatives