Place & Communities

We believe in the power of place.

After years of austerity and a global pandemic, understanding how to strengthen communities and improve places, so nobody is left behind, is more important than ever. Place can unify people and ambitions. It can free us from systems that stifle change, exclude people, or focus on issues and ‘cohorts’.

We use place as a lens to view individual and societal issues, we use it as a tool to develop solutions that improve people’s lives and strengthen communities. We’re constantly learning from the different perspectives we see from working across places.

Our experience of place

Place has defined most of our 20+ years and we understand the nuances of it better than most. Starting life in Hackney Council, we went on to deliver large-scale neighbourhood regeneration programmes like the Single Regeneration Budget, New Deal for Communities and Neighbourhood Planning funding.

In 2011 Renaisi was part of the consortium that set up the Big Local programme, taking us beyond London and allowing us to bring together the two halves of our expertise; supporting communities and social research.

We’ve delivered services in North, East and South London to help migrant communities get the most out of the local school system and employment programmes for refugees, long-term unemployed people and troubled families.

We’re the learning partner or evaluator for some of the most exciting place-based programmes happening in the UK today, including Place Based Social Action, Empowering Places and Local Trust’s Measuring Change.

In 2019 we launched the City and Hackney Anchor Collaborative and in 2020 we took on the coordination of the Southwark Local Access Partnership.

We’re interested in exploring these questions:

What does it take to improve a place?
How can we support the growth of the social economy through better use of data and insight?
If national organisations can never be truly place-based, how can we help them to bring their assets into local communities?
How can we nurture rich, cooperative relationships between organisations in places?
How can public spend deliver local ambitions while supporting the growth of local organisations that make up the social economy?
What can be done to support communities and local organisations to engage with and deliver locally-led social action on the issues that matter to them?