Over the course of the last 30 years, cities across Europe have adopted a relatively orthodox approach to regeneration. By developing their city centres physically and by seeking to attract inward investment, cities have assumed that the benefit of such activities will ‘trickle-down’ to neighbourhoods and communities and will contribute towards addressing local economic, social and environmental challenges. However, this approach has not always worked – whilst city economies have continued to grow in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) terms, levels of inequality within cities have increased, and poverty has also continued to grow. This is not what regeneration should be about.
In 2016, the City of Birmingham (UK) started to think differently to the orthodox approach outlined above and inspired by a desire to change Birmingham’s approach to regeneration and make it more innovative, a small number of individuals came together to develop a successful bid for Urban Innovative Actions (UIA) funding, through a project called USE-IT!. To understand more about USE-IT! and its aims, activities, and impacts, I spoke to some of these key individuals. I also wanted to understand the scope for transfer of USE-IT! to 3 other cities over the coming 18 months as part of the URBACT/UIA USE-IT! Transfer Mechanism (USE-IT! UTM).
Aims and principles of USE-IT!
Karolina Medwecka has been the Programme Manager for USE-IT! and started the conversation by describing herself as ‘not your normal regeneration practitioner’. Karolina has spent 20 years in both a UK and Polish context challenging the orthodoxy of regeneration – for Karolina, regeneration is not about building loads of infrastructure; instead, it is about the existing community of people that live, work and play in the area. Karolina worked closely on the design of USE-IT! with Conrad Parke, a regeneration practitioner who has seen the pitfalls of the UK Government approach to regeneration over the last 30 years and who has vast experience of working in Birmingham and the wider West Midlands seeking to change the way in which regeneration is undertaken.
Karolina and Conrad explained the 5 key aims and founding principles of USE-IT!. “The first thing we wanted to do was to bring together the key relevant individuals and organisations with a stake in the regeneration of West Birmingham and Smethwick and form a coherent partnership. In particular, there was a desire to link the top-down approach to regeneration (driven by inward investment) to the ‘bottom-up’ (driven by the community of West Birmingham and Smethwick) to ensure a collaborative approach.”
“The second thing we wanted to do was to understand the organisations already active in delivering economic, social, environmental, and community benefits in West Birmingham and Smethwick. In particular, there was a desire to understand and link macro and micro assets. By macro assets, this meant the large of public sector Anchor Institutions based in the area which created lots of jobs, spent lots of money buying goods and services, owned lots of land and assets, and which were unlikely to leave to go elsewhere. By micro assets, they meant local voluntary community and social enterprise organisations, community activists and residents of West Birmingham and Smethwick.”
“The third thing we wanted to do was understand the complex challenges facing the community of West Birmingham and Smethwick in more depth and use this intelligence to develop projects and activities. In particular, there was a desire to use community research to understand challenges around unemployment, poor business sustainability, low air quality, community cohesion, crime and disorder, and poor health (amongst many other things).”
“The fourth thing we wanted to do was to take advantage of the range of public and private sector development activities happening in the West Birmingham and Smethwick area and build bridges between the macro and micro assets. These included the construction of the new Midland Metropolitan Hospital and the Urban Splash led development at Port Loop. By taking advantage, this meant ensuring that the local West Birmingham and Smethwick communities benefited through accessing new employment opportunities, through linking existing community organisations and social enterprises to procurement opportunities associated with the developments and ensuring more generally that the local community was involved in the development.”
“The fifth thing we wanted to do was to deliver upon the aims, objectives and activities of existing strategic documentation, but in a slightly different manner. In the case of USE-IT!, the key existing strategic document was the Greater Icknield Masterplan which set out a series of physical and economic regeneration activities. In addition, we also wanted to ensure that the USE-IT! approach was not restricted to the West Birmingham and Smethwick area, but through learning and evaluation explore how it could be rolled out to other neighbourhoods in the city and inspire political and economic change within Birmingham City Council and the emerging West Midlands Combined Authority.”
The activities of the USE-IT! project
The above aims and principles shaped the activities of USE-IT! over the course of the period 2016 to 2020. As such they were used to inform the focus of activities which were both general in their nature and overseen by Karolina and broken down into four specific work packages of activity, with these led by particular individuals and organisations. The key activities of USE-IT! were as follows:
The first activity undertaken was to develop a coherent steering group of partner organisations to deliver on the requirements of the USE-IT! project in the short term and stimulate a new approach to regeneration in the longer term. The steering group included a range of public sector, private sector, and voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations with these organisations sitting on the overarching steering group, and also on relevant individual work package steering groups, as detailed further below.
The second activity undertaken was to map the macro (public and private sector) and micro (voluntary community and social enterprise sector organisations and people) assets operating in the West Birmingham and Smethwick area and seek to understand their contribution and potential contribution to the regeneration of the area. The third activity undertaken was to develop a communications campaign and activities for the USE-IT! project and to promote it to a wider audience both within Birmingham and the West Midlands Combined Authority area, and wider across the UK and Europe.
The first of the four work packages was around community research and developing a network of Community Researchers (there is no particular hierarchy to the work packages). The community research work package was led by the University of Birmingham (Peter Lee). “We recognised that local residents and communities were much more likely to be able to identify and understand the regeneration, poverty and inequality challenges facing West Birmingham and Smethwick than the public sector, and that community research could be used as a way of gathering evidence that would inform the activities and delivery of the other work packages. We therefore looked to develop research and analytical skills in the local community.”
The second of the four work packages was around jobs and skills and particularly seeking to match residents of West Birmingham and Smethwick with employment opportunities at a key anchor institution in the area, namely the NHS. The Matching Jobs and Skills work package was led by the
Sandwell and West Birmingham NHS Trust (Lawrence Kelly and Nav Sharma). “We sought in particular to support overseas nationals moving to the UK and resident in West Birmingham and Smethwick into employment opportunity in the NHS. The emphasis was not placed on lower-level employment around cleaning and catering, for example, but upon harnessing the existing higher-level medical skills of the overseas nationals, who included doctors and pharmacists.”
The third of the four work packages was around Social Enterprise and was led by the Initiative for Social Entrepreneurs (iSE) (Sarah Crawley). “We sought to support existing Social Enterprises based in West Birmingham and Smethwick to grow, to create new Social Enterprises, to develop a network or ‘eco-system’ of Social Enterprises in West Birmingham and Smethwick, and to develop relationships between Social Enterprises and wider macro assets and organisations.”
The fourth of the four work packages was around Community Assets and Finance. It was largely led by Birmingham City Council (Karolina Medwecka) and the community of West Birmingham and Smethwick itself. “We sought to develop and deliver a range of community driven projects and activities, implement the process of Community Economic Development Planning, and develop new community businesses and cooperatives in the area.”
Impacts of USE-IT! (so far)
Each of the interviewees talked about the range of outputs, outcomes and impacts that had been delivered by the USE-IT! project during the period 2016 to 2020. These included;
· 5 new partnerships were created within communities during the USE-IT! projects;
· 9 macro assets/Anchor Institutions were engaged in the USE-IT! project, including NHS Sandwell and West Birmingham and the Canal and River Trust;
· 80 Community Researchers were trained, with 37 becoming accredited;
· 26 community research projects were commissioned by a range of organisations;
· 250 overseas medical professionals were upskilled and trained and improved their English language skills;
· £2.8Million in recruitment cost savings were generated for the NHS Sandwell and West Birmingham Trust;
· The Soho Social Enterprise Network was created, consisting of 83 organisations;
· 105 existing or new Social Enterprises were provided with business support activities;
· 25 new products and services were created by Social Enterprises and Community Enterprises;
· 3 Community Economic Development Plans were produced for Ladywood, Smethwick and Soho;
· 5 community assets were unlocked and made available for the community, including the Edgbaston Reservoir Playing Field and the Eat Make Play shop;
Indeed USE-IT! was recognised in the independent evaluation, undertaken by the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) as “a new way of thinking and an approach to regeneration that works.”
Towards the transfer of USE-IT!
Whilst the USE-IT! project has clearly been successful, Karolina has a desire to achieve even more both in Birmingham and in transferring the principles and activities of USE-IT! elsewhere, which is why Birmingham City Council applied to lead an URBACT/UIA Transfer Mechanism with the cities of Poznan (Poland), Rotterdam (The Netherlands), and Trapani (Italy). Karolina is however realistic in her quest. “With these USE-IT! activities costing nearly 4Million Euros to date, it will be unrealistic to transfer all of these activities from Birmingham to Poznan, Rotterdam and Trapani during the eighteen-month timeline of the USE-IT! UTM. However, through the UTM, we should certainly be able to transfer the
principles of USE-IT!, some of the activities, and set the foundations for realising other activities in the longer-term through the Investment Plans which each of the partners will produce as the core output of the network.”
As Lead Expert for the USE-IT! UTM, I am incredibly excited to see how regeneration activity can continue to evolve in Birmingham and to see how cultures around regeneration can change in each of Poznan, Rotterdam, and Trapani.
Matthew Baqueriza-Jackson is the Lead Expert for the USE-IT! Transfer Mechanism.
