In Footwork’s second year as a charity, our small team has accomplished a great deal, underpinned by the invaluable knowledge we have gained from supporting and collaborating with our People & Place local social innovators from across the country.
A key moment saw the welcoming of ten additional innovators into our programme of support, doubling our cohort to an impressive twenty-strong group. An essential part of our work has centred around building strategic partnerships and collaborations with like-minded organisations spanning across sectors, united by a determination to bring about lasting positive change for people and places.
As we approach the end of 2023, we invite you to reflect with us on a year marked by innovation, collaboration and growing ambition ...
To kick off the year we …
launched our People & Place 2023 programme of support with a virtual ‘Coffee Break’ to bring together our first 10 People & Place innovators – 5 from London and 5 from as far afield as Bradford and Cardiff
were featured in the Architects Journal, which interviewed People & Place innovators (and architects) Andrew and Ben for their Spring Issue, which looked at innovative ways of practising
held our first peer-to-peer workshop, hosted by Armley Action Team’s Ali & Louise.
welcomed our 2023 Insights Group; nine individuals with first-hand experience of local social innovation, community funding and place-making, who helped us develop our 2024 programme of support
hosted our second Footworking event with the question, ‘What would the world look like if local social innovators had all the resources they needed?’
spoke to Charity Chat about our work to support local innovation in the face of place-based injustice and building community cohesion
Over the summer we…
kicked off our programme of 1-1 support, with the help of our collaborators Take Note, More Diverse Voices, People Powered Retrofit and Shared Assets
shared the ups and downs of community development with innovator Marie in Wolverton, with the People & Place 2023 cohort
travelled across the UK to visit each of our local social innovators for a Learning Day
partnered with Platform Places to convene a roundtable of funders and innovators to take action on closing the glaring gap that exists in support for community-led placemaking at the early stages
sat down with Patrick Scally to discuss how our cities can better facilitate meaningful connections across generations and mutually support our ageing society
supported the young pioneers from My Place, a Footwork-incubated project, at the Festival of Place.
In the Autumn we…
launched our People & Place 2024 programme of support, receiving over 100 applications from social innovators up and down the UK!
deliberated with our Insights Selection Group to decide on a shortlist for our People & Place 2023 programme
hopped on trains - again - to visit all of the short-listed applicants, paying them for the time they spent with us
were joined by Devika part-time, as our first Footwork Researcher
As Winter drew in we…
announced our People & Place 2024 cohort to the world!
delivered a ‘Laboratory Talk’ at Jestico + Whiles, with Naomi discussing all things social innovation and her experiences as a young CEO; and a CPD at Pollard Thomas Edwards, with Clare doing something similar, but as a veteran community advocate!
welcomed many of you to our third Footworking event and live exhibition, to celebrate one year of People & Place, and to address the question ‘What are the essential ingredients to enabling local social innovation?’
We are growing!
We are looking to grow our small Footwork team with the appointment of a full-time People and Place Programme Manager. This is an exciting opportunity for anyone wanting to engage deeply at a grassroots level with the enterprising innovators we support, whilst learning and reimagining the programme for future iterations.
If you know of someone who might be interested, or would like to share this more widely, the deadline for applications is January 15th 2024. Thank you.
Footwork has come so far in such a short period of time, but there is still so much more to do and to learn. We extend heartfelt gratitude to all of you - our forward-thinking and inspiring collaborators, friends, partners and social innovators for being an integral part of our journey thus far. We can’t wait to see what 2024 has in store.
Wishing you a restorative end to this year, and joyful New Year.
The Footwork Team
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