Birmingham's Community Development Practice Hub

Things are progressing well with the setting up of a Community Development Practice Hub in Birmingham. 

The project is tasked with creating a resource to address disparate and disjointed approaches to community development in Birmingham to enable more confident, connected and capable local community development practitioners, leading to better outcomes for communities.

Firstly, we have drawn together a steering group of community development practitioners to form an advisory panel who offer a wealth of experience and practical support through task and finish groups for specific project elements such as the website, supervision guidance and setting up a community of practice. We are currently developing the following elements:

Knowledge Bank
This will be an open-access resource to share best practices from Birmingham and beyond, including free practical tools such as supervising practice guidance for frontline delivery. It will launch in September. We are currently creating content for the bank and gathering together resource materials.

Training
A series of courses and workshops aimed at community development practitioners will be delivered from September onwards, including Active Listening, Appreciative Inquiry, Communication Skills and Workplace Reflective Practice. These are off-the-shelf courses adapted to the audience and online delivery. We have also commissioned a bespoke two-day training course on Asset-Based Community Development.

Community of Practice
For Birmingham-based workers, this will provide opportunities for learning, networking and professional development. We are currently developing a programme of talks, workshops, and guided peer problem-solving groups. This activity will launch in September 2021.

We had planned to hold some networking activity in person, but we will most likely hold all activity online due to the ongoing pandemic.

Once launched, we'll share a brand new website where you can find out how to get involved!

If you have any questions or would like to find out more about this work, please get in touch with David Coffin at DavidC@bvsc.org