Urban Forum, Dudley CVS, and Dudley Metropolitan Council secured funding from Barrow Cadbury Trust for an action research project to test awareness of and appetite for the government's new Community Rights in Dudley. Through surveys, focus groups, workshops, and an Our Society Our Solutions working group, they assessed community group perceptions and involved them in planning local implementation. This led to proposals for a holistic Managing Assets and Services Holistically approach presented to Dudley Council, piloting collaboration between community groups and the council.

1. Nick Bird, Urban Forum
Donna Roberts, Dudley MBC
Lorna Prescott, Dudley CVS

2. We secured funding
from Barrow
Cadbury for an
Urban Forum were action research
concerned that the project to take place
government’s new in Dudley in
Community Rights conjunction with
would not be taken Dudley CVS (an Urban
up equally between Forum member)
different
communities

3. Partners:
• Urban Forum
• Dudley CVS
• Dudley Metropolitan
Council Aims:
• Dudley Community • To assess the perceptions
Partnership of Dudley community
groups with regard to
Community Rights
• To involve community
groups in planning how
they could be
implemented locally
• To build better
relationships between the
Approach: local authority and
• Research plus community groups
engagement
• Co-design between
community groups and
Dudley council

4. We carried out surveys at events
and an online survey amongst
community groups in Dudley to test
awareness of, and appetite for,
Community Rights.
We also asked about barriers to
take up and support needs.
Testing the appetite
for Community
Rights
(August & September 2011)
Seven focus groups were held to dig
deeper into issues around services,
assets and neighbourhood planning
and to recruit people into the next Digging deeper
stage of the project (September & October
2011)

5. In two ‘Community Kitchen’ workshops
participants heard inspiring stories of
community projects from across the
world and learned about tools and
techniques for asset led community
development
Getting some
inspiration
(November 2011)
An ‘Our Society Our
Solutions’ group was set up
and met three times to
generate proposals around
assets and service delivery
Coming up with
based on what we had our own recipes
learned from our research (November 2011 to
January 2012)

6. The OSOS group’s proposals were
framed within the concept of MASH
– Managing Assets and Services
Holistically.
This was based around principals of
collaborative working and using ALL
assets more effectively
M.A.S.H
Members of OSOS and the
project steering group met with
members of Dudley Council’s
Corporate Board (including the
Chief Executive) to discuss
proposals and seek agreement
for going forward Tasting session with
decision makers
(February 2012)

7. Testing the appetite: our survey
How much do you feel you know about...
0 25 50 75 100
Right to Build
Right to Challenge
Right to Buy
Neighbourhood Planning
A great deal
The basics
Little or nothing
Appetite was low. Perhaps due to gaps in knowledge.
There was some curiosity and interest, as well as concerns
and suggestions of what barriers might be.

8. Digging deeper: focus groups
“I think the thing is, in Dudley you
won’t have groups that have got
“I’m just wondering
enough money to buy anything by
whether there might be a
themselves. And if the windows of
way of saying, ‘Well, do we
opportunity to buy are quite tight,
have to go as far as a
you’re not going to have enough
challenge?’... how would the
time to form the partnerships or
council feel about working
put in the bids to get funding to
with us to bring that into
enable you to do it. So they might
the community, avoiding the
be giving us a right, but it’s a right
actual process of the
that is not practically workable for
challenge and the tender?’”
groups in Dudley.”

9. Getting some inspiration:
workshops with Tessy Britton

10. Coming up with our own recipes:
Our Society Our Solutions group

11. Checking back: follow up survey
0 25 50 75 100
Right to Challenge
Right to Bid
Aware and am interested in using the opportunity
Aware/heard of
Not aware
Awareness of community rights had increased over
the 8 months, and appetite had increased. The final
survey reinforced the action research discussions -
suggesting that there was a far greater appetite for
involvement in service design, and for using buildings
and land through a whole range of arrangements.

12. MASH Lab Launch event in April
Piloting the restaurant with a tasting menu

13. Fusion cuisine
a whole system approach

14. MASH Lab event in July
Bringing chefs together

15. We are creative:
connecting many new and
existing resources and ideas
to make entirely new things.
We are collaborative:
boosting the potential and
success of our work by
collective and collaborative
ways of working.
We are empowering:
our approach to collaboration
is uses the 5 Community
Empowerment Dimensions.
We are learning:
social learning, whole
systems, reflection and
evaluation are being
embedded in our approach.

16. A moveable feast!
We’re linking our MASH
prompted approach and
projects to related
activity in Dudley which
is using asset based,
whole system,
empowering and
collaborative approaches.
‣East Coseley Big Local
‣Ageing Well
‣Community-led asset
based wellbeing projects
(JNSA/JSAA)

17. Enabling
collaboration
In September 2012 we
bought together people
who could take on roles
as enablers of
collaboration.
We now have enablers
supporting 6 collaborative
projects working towards
our community wellbeing
outcomes.
We’re busy
MASHing!

18. www.communityrightsdudley.wordpress.com
www.creativecollaborationdudley.wordpress.com