Social justice network, LocalMotion, recently announced it has secured a £18.4 million investment from within its original collaborative group of funders. The sustained investment of expertise and resources until 2031 will ensure LocalMotion’s six places can continue their work to realise the untapped, under-resourced potential of local people to influence what happens where they live.
Since its inception four years ago, LocalMotion has made significant progress devolving power to communities to tackle local social, environmental, and economic injustices. It started as the collective endeavour of six UK funders (City Bridge Foundation, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, Lankelly Chase Foundation, Lloyds Bank Foundation and Tudor Trust, alongside Paul Hamlyn Foundation), united by the goal of working in new ways to create community-led change and radically shift typical top-down power structures.
Their focus was to bring people, organisations and institutions together, so that communities in six places (Carmarthen, Enfield, Lincoln, Middlesbrough, Oldham and Torbay) could benefit from joined up thinking, pooled resources and long-term collaboration and planning with the UK funding community.
LocalMotion is not about traditional grant making, it’s about changing people’s mindsets so they can shift power dynamics, more honestly learn from mistakes, and change deep-rooted structural challenges. Funders’ continued involvement recognises the power of working together and using strong community ties to help drive change.
Kathleen continued: “It’s an opportunity to celebrate how much we’ve learnt and to continue the steps each place has taken towards realising their vision. I’m looking forward excitedly to the next phase of work and how our plans develop.”
While each place has unique visions for addressing the diverse social, environmental and economic challenges in their community, common themes, including tackling poverty, upskilling local people and devolving decision-making underpin their shared commitment to transformative change. After a four-year period of building relationships and listening to communities, their work will now be to act on the changes set out in their longer-term eight-year plans.
A Flourish mapCharlotte Brooks from LocalMotion Lincoln said on behalf of the six places: “We are thrilled to secure the next chapter of investment for our communities that puts our local people in the driving seat on a really exciting and collaborative journey. We are only just scratching the surface of what is possible and now with this long-term commitment to continue we, as a network of coordinators, are ready to take place-based community-led transformation to the next level.”
Dame Caroline Mason, CBE, CEO at Esmée Fairbairn and chair of the LocalMotion Sponsoring Group, which brings together the CEOs of the six funding foundations said: “LocalMotion is challenging the funding system and exploring how we can collectively re-imagine place-based philanthropy. Over the past four years it’s been very energising to witness six very different places being proactive and clear about what they want and we’re delighted to continue collaborating so they can realise their roadmaps over the next few years.”
Visit the LocalMotion website or view the LocalMotion Story, a film about the network.