Place-based working

A place could be a housing estate, a neighbourhood, a collection of postcodes, a local authority area or a geographical boundary. It could include a range of different buildings, streets, landscapes and terrains, green and blue spaces, travel infrastructure and much more. Anything that contributes to the identity of your place can be included in your definition, think about what makes sense to your local community, its networks, leaders, decision makers and infrastructure providers.

Creating a common purpose that’s shared amongst all stakeholders – like tackling inactivity and making your area a more active and vibrant place – is critical. Make this purpose bespoke to the unique needs, barriers, enablers and aspirations of your place and its communities. 

Take time to understand your place. Start by using available insight to find out about who lives there, what the common issues are, what exists in terms of services, assets and activities and who the key networks and stakeholders are. The better you understand your place, the more opportunity you’ll have of reaching the right people, building strong relationships and forging collaborations to create change. 

As well as utilising existing insight, there are a few other techniques you can use to support you with this:

Stakeholder mapping:

Get to know which individuals, community organisations and local leaders make things happen in your area.  Mapping them out can help you develop a picture of the networks in your place and who connects them.

Asset mapping:

Map out the assets and resources that people in your place currently have access to. Think about the services, institutions, organisations and physical resources that exist. Be sure to include any leisure centres, parks, open spaces and playing pitches, community centres, religious organisations, waterways, active travel routes, schools and much more. 

Pulling together this list can quickly help you to realise all the assets that are available to support physical activity and be a good starting point to begin identifying what might be missing and where. 

Activity mapping:

Find out what’s already happening in the community to get people active, where it is and who provides it. Doing this will not only help you discover where the gaps are but can be a way of celebrating the fantastic opportunities that are already available.

Involve your community:

Engage with and listen to local people. Find out about their barriers and enablers to activity. Be sure not to treat them as a homogenous group, some, especially those with two or more inequality factors, are significantly more likely to be inactive than others. Ask your stakeholders for their help to make sure they all have a voice, are listened to and engaged throughout the work.

ABCD is an approach to community-driven development popularised by Cormac Russell. It starts with what’s strong in a place, not what’s wrong, and builds on what’s already there (Myron’s Maxim). It requires leaders across a range of organisations and agencies, like local councils, health authorities and others, to listen to and engage meaningfully with their local communities. 

The aim is to break-down barriers, create fit for purpose opportunities with diminishing resources and move from a position of co-existence to co-ownership.

Co-existence: You stay on your turf and I’ll stay on mine.

Co-operation: We’ll lend you a hand when our work is done.

Co-ordination: We need to adjust what we do to avoid overlap and confusion.

Collaboration: We’ll work together on this.

Co-ownership: We’ll feel totally responsible together.

People’s activity habits and behaviours aren’t simply determined by their own motivations and decisions. They’re influenced by lots of interacting factors including their demographics and personal circumstances and the system around them. By this we mean the place they live, the networks, institutions, services, environment and opportunities around them and the policies and regulations that affect them. 

Systems change puts people at the centre and focuses on transforming the whole system around them – rather than looking at different parts in isolation. Systems leadership focusses on a collaborative approach where leaders work with their communities to identify and address the causes of inactivity by transforming the entire system. Find out more on our ‘Whole systems approach’ page.

Place-based working requires leaders to allocate dedicated time, capacity and resources. This will look and feel different in each place and will be largely dependent on its needs, circumstances, challenges, assets and existing networks. Place-based working is most effective when resources are shared, the skills and capacity of the local community are optimised and existing assets are utilised to best effect.