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 Greater Manchester

In alignment with a growing evidence base, national policy is beginning to reflect this shift. Central government has committed to a 10-year programme of community-led regeneration in 25 UK neighbourhoods, including Brinnington (Stockport), Benchill South and Wythenshawe Central (Manchester), and Pendleton (Salford). Each neighbourhood will receive £20 million over 10 years to pioneer community-led placemaking by putting residents at the centre of change.

This momentum offers a unique opportunity for trailblazing neighbourhoods across Greater Manchester. As national ambitions take shape, Greater Manchester’s (GM) Live Well manifesto commitment to working differently with communities becomes vital. This means creating the conditions for communities to thrive through great everyday support, welcoming and inclusive spaces, trusted places to connect and belong, and strengths-based approaches. Community-led placemaking is central to this commitment, bringing communities together in ways that are truly rooted in resident priorities and neighbourhoods.

With evidence and momentum building nationally and locally, and with new investment flowing into Live Well Centres, Spaces and Offers across GM, now is the time for you to join us for this upcoming Live Well Live webinar, where we’ll showcase and learn from inspiring examples of community-led placemaking already underway in Greater Manchester.

We’ll explore how approaches like the Ageing in Place spatial action planning model and local resident-led partnerships are putting community priorities at the centre of creating spaces to Live Well.

Webinar Speakers Include:

- Ageing in Place Pathfinder Partnerships

- Miles Platting Community & Age Friendly Network (MPCAN) and St Cuthberts Communities Together.

- 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