Local Government

Yesterday the government announced the latest of its localism initiatives: a programme called ‘Our Place‘ which aims to work with at least 100 communities to ‘design and deliver local services that focus on local priorities’.

Finding new sources of funding as the public sector retreats is a key challenge for local economies. The beginnings of a shift towards localised sources of finance is driving change across the UK. Here’s ten of the best ideas for ensuring that finance works harder for local areas:

1. FUNDING RADICAL CHANGE: The Edge Fund
The recently launched Edge Fund aims to turn traditional approaches to philanthropy on their head. Rather than funding charities or identifying need, it aims to take Oscar Wilde’s lead and ‘try to reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible’. Thus the focus of its funding is organisations working for systemic change and those challenging injustices. The projects it supported in its first round of funding include the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh, a self-managed social resource centre for those trying to make a better society and the Brighton and Hove Unemployed Workers Centre.
http://edgefund.org.uk/