About Us
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What we do
Meaningful change is impossible to achieve without taking time to assess the impact of your work – especially when it’s complex, long-term, and highly collaborative. Are you heading in the right direction? What lessons have you learnt along the way?
How we can help you
We have been at the forefront of developing the field of place-based change and using learning to drive change and understand the intersecting and complex nature of social challenges.
We care about making big ideas accessible. Not only have we helped others to do their work better – we are equally dedicated to bringing about change ourselves.
- Research, learning, training and evaluation – to enable social sector organisations, including charities, funders, local and central government improve their impact on people and places.
- Place-based and systemic change – place-based evaluation and learning support, learning resources, a community of practice, and expert strategic support to deliver lasting, equitable change.
Our approach
We believe in collaboration, we care about making big ideas accessible and sharing what we learn. Our history of providing person-centred support for marginalised communities also gives us a deep understanding of the biggest issues and aspirations local authorities, charities, funders and practitioners face. We understand both theory and practice.
Our approach is ‘hands on’, working with partners to understand what works, and why, and where value is created, to support learning and improvement. Alongside more ‘traditional’ research and evaluation work, we use creative, visual, developmental, participatory, and learning approaches. As a learning partner we help organisations to develop ways to embed learning, make better-informed decisions so they can adapt, innovate and develop best practice.
We can help you if:
- Your work is complex, messy and highly collaborative, and the outcomes of your work feel intangible and difficult to measure. You want to know the difference you’ve made and get clarity on your next steps.
- You’d like insights on a topic to inform your future programmes and strategies. You’d benefit from having an independent researcher to capture the views of all stakeholders in equitable ways
- You want to work with colleagues, communities, and partner organisations to problem-solve the big issues and share lessons learned along the way
- You want to grow your capacity to conduct research, evaluate and learn.
We often partner with other organisations to create additional capacity and expertise for their work. We relish the opportunity to hear new perspectives that challenge us to think differently. Find out more about our partners here.
Our history
Renaisi was founded by Hackney Council in 1998 to regenerate deprived neighbourhoods in Hackney, East London.
On becoming an independent social enterprise, we went on to deliver large-scale neighbourhood regeneration programmes like the Single Regeneration Budget, New Deal for Communities and Neighbourhood Renewal Funding.
In 2011 Renaisi was part of the consortium that set up the Big Local programme. Our role managing the ‘reps’ took us beyond London and allowed us to bring together the two halves of our expertise; supporting communities and social research. Alongside that national work we delivered services in Islington, Haringey and Hackney that helped migrant communities get the most out of the local school system.
While the policy and funding landscape has changed a lot in the last 20+ years, ‘place’ has remained the lens we use to consider our work. We’re constantly learning from the different perspectives we see from working directly with communities, with the providers of services and the investors in communities. It gives us a unique perspective on how systems work and how to improve places fairly.
Our partnership with TSIP
In June 2024, Renaisi and TSIP (The Social Innovation Partnership) came together in a new impact collaborative. Both organisations continue to offer our unique services and support to the sector separately, in addition to working together to build on our 38-year history of driving innovation and impact locally and nationally.
Our focus
•Sharing resources and bringing together multiple complementary skillsets in place-based change and evaluation, co-design, participatory research methods and learning partnerships.
•Strengthening our collective practice, to continue to enable systemic change through our work with our partners
• Advocating for the important role social sector research and learning organisations play in improving impact, enabling collaboration across the ecosystem, and championing the role of learning in driving deep social change.
We will be sharing more about our joint work in March 2025.
Find out more about TSIP‘s work here.
Our history of place-based working
A timeline of some of the place-based work and projects Renaisi has been involved in.
Urban regeneration and the start of Renaisi
City Challenge
Much New Labour era thinking on investing in was linked to social and economic concerns about urban areas. The Government invited local authorities to draw up programmes of action to tackle their key neighbourhoods. Authorities expected to draw upon the wealth of talent and expertise within their cities. Renaisi founders were involved in the City Challenge in Dalston, North London and this work helped shape the creation of Renaisi in 1998.
Collaborating to improve a place
Single Regeneration Budget
Renaisi was involved in the management of many Single Regeneration Budgets across East London, which pulled together different government programmes and funding streams to try and simplify funding to better support local regeneration projects.
These years taught us a great deal about the challenges of investing in place and working in partnership and about the importance of local diversity.
Investing in Hackney
Invest in Hackney
In our early years, Renaisi did a great deal of work supporting Hackney Council and the borough of Hackney. One of our proudest and most important programmes of that time was the running of the inward investment agency, Invest in Hackney. It taught us a great deal about the borough, about the role of the private sector in a place, and about how local economies change.
Managing significant, long term government investment in a place
EC1 New Deal for Communities
The government experimentation in place-based investment, which started with City Challenge, ended with the enormous New Deal for Communities programme.
NDC ran across 39 neighbourhoods in England and Renaisi did a wide variety of work with many of those neighbourhoods. We ran the EC1 NDC from start to finish, managing all aspects of that £52million investment in one neighbourhood in South Islington.
What we learnt in that time shaped a great deal of how Renaisi thinks about place now.
Developing a learning community of regeneration practitioners
Renewal Academy
For four years Renaisi managed the DCLG’s national learning programme to equip practitioners with the tools and knowledge to improve quality of life in neighbourhoods.
Running the Academy taught us a lot about how to run communities of practice and learning events.
Being ambitious about community-led change
Big Local
We were part of the consortium that helped establish the Big Local programme in 2011, which established Local Trust and has gone on to do much more than Big Local.
Big Local gave 150 communities at least £1m with no strings attached to use as they see fit. Renaisi managed the professional advisors to the 150 areas, developing learning, support and collaboration for those individuals and the places. We continue to work with Local Trust on projects like Measuring Change.
Bringing together private, charitable and social enterprise sectors
Our Parklife
Renaisi helped establish Our Parklife in partnership with charity and private sector partners, and we still sit on the board. The CIC was designed to help lock in the employment, volunteering and social benefit of the Olympic Games into the park, which straddles four North London boroughs, post 2012.
Unlocking the capacity of communities to take a lead in their neighbourhoods
DCLG Neighbourhood Planning & Capacity Building Evaluation
In 2015/16 when the Conservative government wanted communities to become more self-reliant and to take advantage of new powers available to them to improve their local areas, Renaisi worked in partnership to design and deliver the DCLG’s Neighbourhood Planning & Capacity Building programme. The programme was delivered in six deprived areas of the country.
This programme emphasised to us that neighbourhood planning is not a linear process and neither is community engagement. It is messy, iterative and opportunistic, and literacy or language issues serve as additional barriers to engagement in many communities.
Helping social sector organisations to design, appraise, evaluate and learn.
Impact and Evaluation team formed
Applying our experience of programmes like the EC1 New Deal for Communities, we began supporting charities to design, appraise, evaluate and learn about the impact of their services. Over the last 10 years, this research and evaluation service has grown and become an integral part of what we do.
The movement from significant Government investment into austerity, has taught us a great deal about questions of value, impact, implementation, how organisations learn, build strategy and make decisions. Read more about our research and learning consultancy
Working in and with communities in South and North London
Work Programme
In Hackney and Lewisham, we ran numerous locally commissioned employability programmes so in 2010 we invested heavily in scaling our support for economically excluded people with the new Work Programme.
This work meant we developed roots in Lambeth and Southwark and deepened our knowledge of the needs of people in East London. It also taught us a lot about the strengths (and weaknesses) of payments-by-results as a mechanism of public policy funding.
Understanding and supporting marginalised communities
Community inclusion work
In 2016 we took on a small service in Islington to support families who did not speak English engage with their child’s school. We grew that work beyond Islington and beyond schools to support families with their English, understanding of local services and social issues like parenting, wellbeing.
It taught us lots about the role of language and refugees in community development, and directly led to us developing a highly successful programme for refugees and migrants. Read more about RISE
Addressing local priorities through social action
Place Based Social Action
The Place Based Social Action is jointly funded DCMS and the National Lottery Community Fund. It provides approximately £4.5 million funding to enable people, communities, local non-statutory organisations and the statutory sector to work collaboratively to create and take action on a shared vision for the future of their place.
This programme was the first time Renaisi combined evaluation expertise to our place-based experiences, exploring new methods and new insights. Renaisi is the evaluation and learning partner for the programme to 2024.
Shaping place-based systemic change work
Place Based Systems Change Community
Building on our long-term interest in place, we worked with Save the Children UK and partners to explore how to best manage funds to support place-based systemic change.
Shaping how place-based working is understood and implemented across the UK is a significant strategic direction for us in the coming years.
