Connecting at the edges for collective change

Tomorrow’s communities need to be resilient and optimistic. Yet many of today’s most challenged communities are operating ‘at the edge’: socially, economically and geographically. In many ways, this puts them at a disadvantage - vulnerable and fragmented, as described in Chapter 1. Tomorrow’s communities must find ways to overcome these fringe ‘dis-benefits’, using internal resourcefulness and crosscutting connections to become resilient and more integrated despite a manifestly uneven distribution of wealth, power and life chances. A decade of austerity cuts in public spending, coupled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent recession, has further exposed inequalities, leaving many feeling ‘left behind’ compared with others;just about surviving but certainly not thriving (Baldwin et al, 2020). Left-behind areas are characterised by Oxford Consultants for Social Inclusion as having ‘high levels of need, multiple deprivation and socio-economic challenges’, along with ‘poor community and civic infrastructure, relative isolation and low levels of participation’ (OCSI, 2019). © Bristol University Press 2021.