Where People Meet: Our research process unpacked
Last month, New Local published ‘Where People Meet: How to Celebrate, Sustain and Reimagine Community Centres’. Commissioned by independent grantmaker, the Rayne Trust, the report sets out to explore the distinct and valuable part that community centres play in people’s lives across the UK.
Central to the report is a vision for the future of the community centre. This, of course, couldn’t come from desk research or our removed vantage as researchers. It had to emanate from the centres themselves, the people who work in and with them and whose daily lives are interwoven with these vital places.
So in autumn 2024, we travelled to the Sutton Centre in Bradford, Shenley Court Hall in Birmingham, and the Trinity Rooms Community Hub in Stroud. Each centre is very different in terms of its building, geography, governance and ownership, but all are thinking hard about how to be the most receptive and responsive space they can for the place they are in and for the people they serve.
We spent a day at each centre working alongside their staff, volunteers, local residents, trustees, partner community organisations, public sector teams, and anyone else closely associated with the centre. We talked about what life was like for them now, what was working and what created challenge.
We thought about what life was like 30 years ago and how things have changed since. This prepared us for leaping 15 years into the future and thinking about what might lie in store. That discussion led to an exploration of what each centre would need to stop, start, and change to rise to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. As a culmination of our time together, each centre crafted a ‘Pitch to the Future’ – a love letter to the centre they would become.
“We’ve got parties and funerals and voting and planning with commitment to real democracy. We’ve got bingo and games and art and food and resource sharing, skill sharing, repairing, empowering. And hopefully not too often, disaster response.”
Excerpt from one community centre’s ‘Pitch to the Future’
Through these pitches, some unifying principles and behaviours emerged, which became the backbone of the vision at the heart of our report. This vision – written in the voice of those who know and deeply understand community centres – reinforces the community centre as a place of human connection and a source of local pride; somewhere that offers something inherently preventative and universal, that champions its community and, crucially, is not a ‘nice-to-have’ but a core, dynamic, essential part of their place.
“Where People Meet offers a vision for the future that’s refreshingly grounded. Not utopian. Not flashy. But deeply real. A vision where local people shape their own spaces. Where parks and cafés and community halls aren’t afterthoughts, but priorities. Where neighbourhoods are seen not just as delivery zones, but as places of belonging, care and change.”
Matt Leach, Commissioner, Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods
You can find out more about the centres we worked with in the report, as well as examples of other places across the UK doing visionary work to connect people and support their health and wellbeing, playing a vital role in local ecosystems.
To find out more about our practice work, click here.
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