Description
You might have heard us referring to Halifax Opportunities Trust as a Community Anchor in some of the reports and articles we’ve shared recently. And, if you don’t work with the Trust or within the sector, it might not be clear exactly what we mean by this. So, we’ve caught up with our CEO, Alison Haskins, to explain what a Community Anchor is and why they are so important for the first in a long series of HOT Topic articles.
Civil society is a vital component of the UK. It is the manifestation of people coming together around common interests of place, belief or topic and often leads to the creation of informal or constituted community, faith and social action groups. Civil society compliments the business and public sectors and is, I believe, one of the really positive aspects of our country and one which is often forgotten about when we try to define ‘Britishness’.
In countries with a weak or oppressed civil society, people are unable to gather together for social action purposes. They cannot lobby or campaign. The state or private enterprise is the substitute and provides a poor imitation of what true citizen-led collective action is all about.
What are community anchors?
The term ‘civil society’ covers a huge range of activity and organisations from trade unions to faith groups to charities to peer-led support groups. For many years I’ve been really interested in a very specific ‘sub-set’ of civil society organisation, which sits within the charitable sphere.
These organisations are often called ‘community anchors’. They are based in local residential neighbourhoods which have distinct identities (might be a housing estate, a village or a council ward). Community anchors are initiated and developed by the community and reflect this in terms of governance, staffing and volunteers. They are multi-purpose, providing a range of activities, services and facilities in the local community. They are usually multi-generational and open to everyone living in the area.
Many operate from more than one building and are fairly entrepreneurial – always open to new ideas and developing new projects that add value to the place they are based. Some have started to buy or build houses, for instance, to address the housing shortage. Others have taken on neglected buildings and now run them as community centres, enterprise centres or arts/sports centres. They are key regeneration catalysts, both for ‘soft’ issues such as improving health, employment and learning and also ‘hard’ development of neglected buildings or new build.
The key is that they are an integral part of the place where they are based and are accountable to the local community. They do not have ambitions to grow far beyond their core community and are in their neighbourhoods for the long haul and through good and bad times. Covid was a perfect example of this when many anchors struggled with loss of funding and protecting their staff and volunteers but still set up support groups in a matter of days. They were able to tap into long-standing networks and relationships and coordinate what was immediately needed in their local area. In this way they are the crucial ‘place-makers’ in civil society.