In their latest report, Local Heroes: How to sustain community spirit beyond COVID-19, Vidhya Alakeson and Will Brett examine how community businesses can play a key role in harnessing all the goodwill that has been unleashed.
The Covid-19 crisis has been characterised by an extraordinary wave of social solidarity and community action sweeping across the country – epitomised by the organic growth of mutual aid groups and the clap for key workers every Thursday night. But this outpouring of community spirit is not yet well understood, and nor is its potential for defining what type of economy and society emerges from the crisis. This paper is an early attempt to do this work.
The paper presents a set of six insights into the initial community response to the crisis. These are based on a series of conversations with our network of community leaders, local authority leaders, civil servants, small businesses and others with intimate knowledge of what has been happening on the ground.
The insights are:
- Mutual aid works best at the micro level
- Mutual aid at scale needs community organisations
- Community spirit is everywhere, but some places need more support
- Community organisations have changed quickly to meet local need
- Bigger institutions rely on community organisations to respond well
- Trading community organisations are falling through the cracks
To read the report click here