Neighbourhood Management for Community Benefit

In essence, this project will enable the university, the local CVS, the local authority and local community groups to all work together to strengthen the local community. Eastbourne is introducing a Neighbourhood Management initiative to 3 areas of the town to enable the local community to have a greater say in what happens, to support each other, and over time take on projects and community activities of their own.

This project aims to strengthen this important initiative as follows:

• Capture key findings from evaluations of Neighbourhood Management schemes with a view to informing local community groups and statutory partners in Eastbourne;
• Highlight recognised models of good practice in Neighbourhood Management to inform the development of Neighbourhood Management in Eastbourne;
• Provide academic credibility to approaches, calling on researcher's expertise in the field of community participation and empowerment;
• Ensure that the lessons of the Devonshire project (a local pilot of a neighbourhood management approach) are embedded into the developing Neighbourhood Management programme. i.e. ensure the community is able to be active partners in the initiatives;
• Strengthen links between local community groups, the Local Strategic Partnership and the University;
• Develop activities that will promote an exchange between the university and its neighbouring communities.  An example would be student volunteers to assist with the event and the university researcher working with local groups, and looking together at how to build capacity within the community.

Skill sets from partners are complimentary and present opportunities for knowledge exchange.  These include the opportunity for the University to share the wide range of emerging information they have access to with 3VA and their partners, thereby ensuring new knowledge in relevant areas is made available 'in the field' quickly.   Similarly, the University will have the opportunity to learn from activity taking place within the community, in particular the chance to co-design and participate in an event using participatory methods with a wide range of stakeholders.

What the project hopes to achieve

A partnership approach to helping people to help themselves, as this will deliver the stronger communities that will benefit all in Eastbourne.

A package of support for local community groups which includes ways of enabling groups to identify for themselves what their training, support and development needs are and secondly expert support from us to help them to achieve this.

Embed a stronger ongoing relationship between the university and these local community activists, which has the potential to develop in a number of different ways due to the diversity of work that is happening in communities in Eastbourne.

Bring lasting benefit to the university through seminar activity and building project learning into teaching materials. 

Who the project will work with

The project will be led by 3VA and the University of Brighton and we will work with:

• Local Neighbourhood Panels
• Eastbourne Homes
• Places for People
• Eastbourne Borough Council
• Eastbourne Local Strategic Partnership

How the project links to the idea of neighbourliness

Neighbourliness will be developed by knowledge exchange between the academic expertise of the university and the practical experience of the community groups e.g. via a dissemination event which will, by the nature of its design, be underpinned by the notions of mutuality, reciprocity and the facilitation of focused communication between a diverse range of people.  An ongoing reciprocal relationship will be fostered between the university and representatives of the community by, for example, exploration of volunteering opportunities for university staff and students or perhaps by development of joint research funding bids.

The themes and ideas of neighbourliness will also come from

• working with groups geographically close to the university in Devonshire, Old Town and Willingdon Trees;
• working together on issues around neighbourhood and development of local communities;
• working with other local providers (that are taking responsibility for the three NM pilots) to build neighbourly, mutual relationships to support local communities – positioning the university as a partner in the general response to community need in line with other providers in Eastbourne. 

Project Partners

Adam Chugg, Chief Officer (3VA)

Bob Granville, Director of Housing Services (Eastbourne Homes Ltd)

Ian Fitzpatrick, Senior Head of Community (Eastbourne Borough Council)

School of Applied Social Sciences (University of Brighton)