Professors Gerry Stoker & Peter John were contracted by the Civil Renewal Unit at the Home Office (now Department for Communities and Local Government) to co-ordinate their Civil Renewal Research Programme. Civil Renewal is about the active engagement of people in their communities, about how they are able to define the problems they face and tackle them together, in partnership with government and other public bodies. It is at the heart of the Government's vision for communities, and is seen by the government as an effective way of bringing about sustainable change and of improving the quality of people's lives.
The Home Office / DCLG has set up range of civil renewal activities - the Civil Renewal Unit, the Active Citizenship Centre, the expert steering group, the civil renewal network, the website, and research projects and seminars. In addition to its existing work, the Home Office allocated £250,000 for a programme of research in 2004/5. The idea was to foster research that informs development of policy in this area. Whilst there are many case studies and much advocacy arguing for the positive impacts of greater community engagement, there is little hard evidence on what is the most effective practice. The Civil Renewal Unit is particularly interested in how community engagement can best be supported so it can make an impact on public service outcomes, including increased confidence and trust in services by citizens.
Further details about the Civil Renewal agenda may be found at the web addresses below:
Projects
Following a competitive tendering process, the following projects were selected for funding:
- 'Incentives for Citizenship Behaviour'
LSE Housing / CASE - London School of Economics - 'Examining the Involvement in Community Involvement: A Case Study of Referral Order Volunteers in One Youth Offending Team'
Centre for Criminology - University of Oxford - 'Promoting Community Involvement through Regeneration: Exploring the Configurational Comparative Approach'
CRESR, Sheffield Hallam University - 'Renewing Civil Society through Interventions to Tackle Anti-Social Behaviour'
Institute of Applied Social Studies, University of Birmingham - 'The True Costs of Community Engagement'
Involve - 'Faith, Hope & Clarity: Developing and Testing a Model of Faith Group Involvement in Civil Renewal'
DeMontfort University - 'Government-Citizens Partnership and Community Safety'
Dept of Law, University of Sheffield
The projects began in February 2005 and concluded in September 2005. The reports of the projects can be found at www.togetherwecan.info/acc/
An article summarising the findings of the research was published in Urban Studies:
- Brannan, T., John, P. & Stoker, G. (2006) ' Active citizenship and effective public services: How can we know what really works? ' Urban Studies , Vol. 43, Nos. 5/6, pp 993-1008
An edited book drawing on this research has been published - link to Re-energizing Citizenship book details. A launch event is planned for early 2007.
For further details about the research programme, please contact Tessa Brannan at Tessa.Brannan@manchester.ac.uk.
