Emergent Community Governance; A model of socially sustainable transformation in New Wortley

Following the 2009 Community Plan’s (Graham et al, 2015) lack of impact in Leeds’ most deprived area New Wortley, community leaders rethought their approach to achieving change. The Community Plan had been guided by a physical masterplan, a conventional approach that could not deliver the necessary social transformation. A new method subsequently developed, termed here as emergent community governance. A bottom up process evolved through a ground swell of mutual action. Empowerment of a diverse collective formed a series of relationships informing a cohesive, fluid and inclusive community strategy, embedding a feeling of mutuality throughout the community stakeholders. The paper reflects on a transformation within this community as a result of shifting change processes. Project Office, Leeds Beckett University’s (LBU) ‘design and research collaboration of staff and students’ (Warren & Stott, 2014) is embedded in the collective, using skills across a range of disciplines to design the physical environment in tune with the community’s strategy. Part of the refocusing is the construction of New Wortley Community Centre, a 7-year co-design live project completed May 2016. As John Thackara (cited in Hyde, R. 2012) asserts ‘Critic and environmentalist similarly calls for designers to evolve from being the individual authors of objects or buildings, to being the facilitators of change among large groups of people’, thus this paper demonstrates how developing mutual relationships amongst the community and the so called ‘professional team’ can have a significant impact on the creation of socially and economically sustainable environments. The evidence in support of this model is multifaceted; £759,497 BIG Lottery funding to construct the building, Our Place grants to support the new strategy through an Our Place plan, an NHS pilot scheme to create a Health & Wellbeing Centre with Project Office as co-design coordinator. This paper demonstrates that there is a shift from masterplan led models to models such as emergent community governance as an appropriate means to deliver desired transformations in deprived communities.