WEBINAR - Supporting Local Groups and Activists

This webinar will be held in co-operation with NatCAN (The National Community Activist Network) and three panellists will lead us though a discussion on what is needed for local community groups to be supported and have a say in what is going on within their own community and also nationally. They will look at

(a) Past community empowerment experiences;
(b) Which institutions are a block to allowing change and empowerment and which are working
(c) Which national policies and thinking needs to change to allow activists to get more involved and
(d) Is the whole process designed to stop activists getting involved?

Taking part in this will be,

Nick Beddow has been involved in Community Development for over 30 years, both as a community activist and as a worker in voluntary sector projects. For 22 years he worked as a Community Development Worker in a local authority and from 2002 was Team Leader of Stockport Council CD team. He is CEO of the Community Development Exchange (CDX) and chair of the Community Sector Coalition

Maxine Moar has been a key figure in building local and national Community Cohesion polices for over 10 years after 15 years of youth and community development work with local communities, voluntary agencies, Greater Manchester Police and Local Authorities. She has worked for the Home Office with past and current Governments, as a key advisor to Baroness Newlove and successive Ministers and Home Secretaries and with the Department for Communities and Local Government. She is a community practitioner and national policy maker with extensive frontline experience at the cutting edge of deprived communities and ethnic, racial and cultural segregation. Her extensive policy knowledge and contacts at the national level give her unique insight in this controversial policy area.

Matt Scott is the Director of the Community Sector Coalition. Between 1996 and 2008 he worked in a community development role in South East London, including management of the Lewisham Community Empowerment Network. Prior to this he has worked in the North East and Midlands in a number of roles including as an advice worker, volunteer co-ordinator and manager in several workers co-operatives. He is also a Director of the National Coalition for Independent Action, a founder member of the Community Development Network London and an occasional lecturer at Goldsmiths College where he is completing a PhD on the role of communities in the modernising local government agenda

This is one of several webinars we hope to hold on community development, activism and engagement.