What were the outcomes?
Plans for neighbourhood centre are now advanced, with models and timetables in place. Residents are being informed of the changes and consulted around a limited range of options. However, there appears to be less progress in terms of developing a working group of partners from all the sectors involved in taking the plans forward. The neighbourhood centre development group has been suspended since October 2006. This is due largely to key staff changes and certain political decisions have yet to be made. Significant tension has arisen in that no single overarching co-ordinator/accountable person or “project sponsor” has emerged. Staff are now reluctant to undertake much more of the learning activity until there is further development of the centre.
Consequently, the work undertaken by the Learning Laboratory has mainly centred on the diagnosis phase, but aims to merge learning and evaluation activities into the diagnostics. Ongoing contacts with the project, preliminary discussions and skill identification with key staff have taken place: follow-up one-to-one sessions with three interviewees; there have been team working sessions with Inspire East, as well as attendance at development group meetings. This activity has helped to alter the course of the project, which has moved from identifying skills, to a greater concern about the structure of the regeneration project.
The Learning Laboratory has now specifically identified issues related to developing, writing, commissioning and monitoring a brief for the neighbourhood centre as the key to developing learning. Such issues will enable key local staff, in the absence of a project sponsor, to see where their aspect of the overall project fits in to the whole, and how to empower them to become responsible (and accountable) for crucial decisions that may affect the whole.
What is special about this project?
The key learning lessons from the diagnostic study are also seen to be of potential benefit to similar projects facing similar issues elsewhere. As the Learning Programme itself is expected to have much wider interest, the diagnostic study report is expected to be produced with that audience in mind. The Learning Laboratory is also hoping to disseminate the outcomes of the programme through appropriate websites, in particular Inspire East’s.
Topics associated with this project
Communication, Community-led, East England, Neighbourhood, Regeneration, Skills