LW Live: Reimagining Neighbourhood Regeneration in GM with Communities

NOTE: Link to the event on Microsoft Teams will be shared via email to those who have booked on the event around a week in advance.

What is Community-led Placemaking?

Everywhere you look - new businesses, construction sites, refurbished parks, street murals - our neighbourhoods, towns and cities are changing. But behind these visible shifts lies a critical question: Who is driving this change, and who are the changes really for?

For decades, place-based regeneration has often been driven from the top down, framed by what’s “wrong” with a place and then “fixed” by adding something new. While many in the regeneration and development sector have long worked to shift this dynamic, traditional approaches have at times overlooked community voices and undervalued existing strengths. This deficit-led approach has too often left residents disconnected from the places they call home.

Community-led placemaking turns this model on its head! Rather than treating residents as passive consultees, it recognises them as active shapers of their neighbourhoods, working in collaboration with volunteers, councils, local organisations, businesses, developers, and others. Therefore, grounded in partnership and an asset-based approach, this way of working builds on local knowledge, lived experience, and collective aspirations.

At its best, community-led placemaking is about more than bricks and mortar. It reimagines connections, belonging, and pride, helping places to flourish. Great places are created not just through urban design and physical structures, but also through the social capital and connections that sustain them. Recent research from Local Trust, 3ni, Shared Intelligence, and OCSI echo this view, evidencing that resident-led neighbourhood-based development can strengthen social capital and local economies, as well as, reduce child poverty and crime. And because no two places are the same, the full journey of placemaking - building social capital, networks and trust - matters just as much as the destination.

Community-led placemaking in GM

In alignment with a growing evidence base, government policy is beginning to move from doing to communities, to working with them.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) recently announced the Pride in Place Programme, investing £150 million across 339 communities across the UK by March 2027. At the heart of this investment is the principle that community voice leads change.

In Greater Manchester, 19 neighbourhoods are receiving investment through the Pride in Place Impact Fund, with a strong focus on:

• Supporting community spaces and local ownership,
• Enhancing public spaces and the wider environment,
• Regenerating high streets and town centres to strengthen local pride and identity.

This momentum offers a unique opportunity for pride in place neighbourhoods across Greater Manchester whilst GM Live Well investment flows into Live Well Centres, Spaces and Offers.

Now is the time for you to join us for this upcoming Live Well Live webinar developed in partnership with GM Moving and GM Ageing Hub, where we’ll showcase and learn from inspiring examples of community-led placemaking already underway in Greater Manchester.

Webinar Speakers Include:

- Ageing in Place Pathfinder Partnerships

- Community Savers & Place-Making in Miles Platting and Wythenshawe

An introduction to Community Savers place-making with St Cuthberts Communities Together and Wythenshawe Central Network

- And MORE!

About Live Well Live’s

As part of GM Live Well’s movement-building events, Live Well Live’s are a series of online webinars that help keep the energy, momentum and visibility of community action, power and wealth live! Each webinar is designed around a specific theme, topic or policy area to showcase the powerful breadth and depth of community-led and system-enabled work already driving positive change across Greater Manchester (GM).

All webinars in the Live Well Live series will be recorded, with the exception of discussion and Q&A segments. The recordings will be shared via our newsletter after each event.

About GM Live Well

GM Live Well is Greater Manchester’s commitment to ensuring great everyday support is available in every neighbourhood by radically changing how public services and VCFSE organisations work differently with communities to ensure everyone:

- Has access to a wide variety of activities, support and information

- Is heard and enabled to contribute

- Has the resources to make change happen

Contact us: GMLiveWell@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk

#GMLiveWell