Harborough's community magic

A stranger in your own neighbourhood

Community Magic is the fun, motivation, sense of achievement and enthusiasm created by completing something worthwhile together from the ground up. It is created by friends of friend’s networks using their local knowledge to find win-win opportunities that excite our communities’ landowners and the specialists. This excitement and enthusiasm is contagious. It creates more opportunities for mutually beneficial, tangible results by restoring local communities and promoting a can-do culture. These communities are made up of the networks of friends and neighbours who currently feel divorced from each-other, their locality and the wider impacts of greater forces on their life. The state of the modern world has left many people adrift. We are treated as economic units, voters, homeowners or residents. We are rarely treated as people. As families. As neighbours or as a community. This isolation is further hardened by economic hardship, excessive workload, health problems, flooding, social media, online communities or headline grabbing newspapers. There is so much that seeks to divide us.

Building trust and hope

The lack of respect of people and trust can result in a sense of helplessness and a loss of hope in the face of the very real challenges that the 21st century is presenting. Most people are frightened about climate change and want to take action to protect their children’s future. Whether from lack of specialist capacity, migration and integration, or extreme weather events, loss of habitat and biodiversity or loneliness, these challenges continue to capture people and leave them isolated. This can often present itself in the politics of resentment, mutinous actions and even violence.

To build stronger, more resilient communities, we need to find opportunities for shared projects, shared goals and bring a sense of authority and ownership back to our communities as it’s our risk. The risk is owned by our communities include our residents, landowners, farmers and other businesses and their employees. Community Magic is highly customer focused, builds trust and recognises that nothing happens without landowner approval and proactive engagement of the specialists. The underfunded specialists who juggle excessive workload, budgets, bureaucracy, trustee or shareholder pressure, legislation and project management while recognising that communities should be involved. Communities as part of nature are not restricted by budgets, borders or bureaucracy. There is no “they” there’s only “us” and the opportunity for Community Magic.

Projects for forging long-term friendships

Community magic motivates and help draw a community together. Free planting of trees litter picking and flood risk reduction are example of numerous projects the community can get behind. These projects can also allow specialist providers, both public and private, real wins in engagements and long-term positive relationships to achieve important national goals such as Local Nature Recovery Strategy.

Innovation and valuable capacity comes from communities and business as we own the risk

In a changing world, we can look to the expertise in our own neighbourhoods by sharing best practice that find opportunities and drive local change. Communities possess an abundance of highly skilled volunteers with local knowledge to add valuable capacity to underfunded government agencies and charities grappling with dwindling budgets, recruitment hurdles, and escalating climate workload.

Practical Examples of Community Magic include Harborough Woodland Community Volunteers. Planting nearly 42,000 free trees in schools and farms and instigating 15 large area natural flood management schemes by engaging our specialists and learning from UK best practice. www.harboroughwoodland.com and Harborough Town Hub CIC and its four Statutory Neighbourhood Forums.

Stroud District Council. Innovative flood risk management. Community inspired, community involved, partners engaged, community built: www.stroud.gov.uk/environment/projects/stroud-valleys-natural-flood-management-project

Calderdale “Slow the Flow” – Born of the severe flooding of the Calder valley. Slow The Flow has proven an exceptional example of creating, demonstrating and sharing best practice across the country. www.slowtheflow.net