Introduction

Real Time Community Change (RTCC) is an action-focused technique that involves getting community groups together to: discuss priorities; agree coordinated action; allocate a small pot of money; and work together to increase social capital. It can be used to assess and develop community capacity in a neighbourhood or within a community of interest.

RTCC was originally devised as a results based small grants programme by the Rensselaerville Institute based in the USA. It has been developed and applied by various organisations in the US and in the UK. In Birmingham, RTCC has been used in neighbourhoods as a way of involving residents in participatory budgeting and coproduction. That is, enabling people and community groups with ideas to get involved in:

  1. making decisions about how small amounts of public funding (up to £10,000 at a time) can be used ‘super-effectively’;
  2. coming up with joint solutions to the pressing local issues that local public services find it hard to tackle;
  3. working together (and with public services) to make real-time improvements in the neighbourhood that are sustainable – ie don’t depend on ongoing grants;
  4. ‘d-i-y community development’ – increasing trust between communities and making it so local people can take action for themselves rather than wait around for professionals to work out what could be done.

The RTCC Programme in Birmingham

Between 2003 and 2006, Birmingham Community Empowerment Network (b:cen) and the Birmingham Strategic Partnership (the successor to BeBirmingham) invested £330,000 of Community Empowerment and Neighbourhood Renewal funding in more than 30 pilot applications of RTCC in the city. The programme aimed to:

  1. target and simplify investment in grassroots groups with the minimum of bureaucracy
  2. to enable the development of neighbourhood community networks
  3. to pilot and ‘prove’ participatory budgeting and co-design
  4. to support the development of neighbourhood and community ‘anchor’ organisations
  5. to catalyse community empowerment and self-confidence
  6. to improve community cohesion and build shared social capital between communities sharing the same neighbourhoods.

Each RTCC pilot was based in a defined neighbourhood or community. For example, RTCC neighbourhoods included: Sparkbrook; Kingstanding; Shard End; Kings Norton; and Handsworth. There were also pilots with non-neighbourhood communities, eg: disabled people; refugee groups; and Mirpuri/Kashmiri community.

Each project was set a ‘question’ by a group of residents and/or representatives of residents drawn from the community including, for example:

  • Community groups
  • Local councillors
  • Neighbourhood workers.

Questions set by these collective bodies included, for example:

  • How can we get young and old people talking to each other?
  • Why do people give up hope in our neighbourhood?
  • What can our community do about global warming?

Each project received £10,000 (made up of a combination of Neighbourhood Renewal Fund and Community Empowerment Funding) to answer the set question. In most cases, £8500 was made available to local community groups and £1500 was paid to a local lead or ‘anchor’ organisation identified by Community Empowerment Network development workers and BCC ward support officers. Local community groups were invited to attend a number (usually two) of workshops to decide who should spend the money and how.

RTCC workshops were run by b:cen development workers and representatives of local lead ‘anchor’ organisations which included, for example:

  • community development trusts
  • church groups
  • community centres.

The funding was allocated by the collective of community groups at the second workshop. Cheques were written on the day by the lead organisation which became the accountable body for the £10000 local pot.

Projects usually had six months to be completed during which time groups could impose whatever evaluation regime they agreed. On completion, lead bodies organised a final workshop session for all groups concerned and other local stakeholders.

pigpound

Survey of the Results

More than 300 small ‘grassroots’ community groups took part in the 33 RTCC projects run in three annual rounds focusing respectively on: community involvement; community cohesion; and neighbourhood management. A survey of 60 participant groups was conducted in 2006/07.

The survey found RTCC was more efficient than comparable small grant regimes in terms of funding distribution (it worked quickly; less of the money was spent on admin – more went to grassroots groups). Nearly all participants wanted to see the approach used again and by a wider range of funders. Grassroots groups liked the process: most felt it worked ‘well’ or ‘excellently’ at every stage; many felt the approach worked excellently at every stage, so that:

  • three quarters of participants felt their part in RTCC had successfully addressed the question posed
  • more than two-thirds felt that RTCC in their neighbourhood had successfully addressed the question posed
  • participants gained knowledge of each other and, in particular, of local anchor organisations.
  • participants and lead ‘anchor’ organisations were more trusted more as a result of taking part in RTCC

Grassroots community groups liked RTCC because:

  • it worked quickly and without much bureaucracy
  • it felt ‘friendly’
  • it helped people build their local networks
  • it was ‘inclusive’
  • it represented an investment in the capacity of their group to get more involved in future

Learning from Case Studies

A set of case studies of RTCC projects in Birmingham found a number of common learning points:

  • that community groups were generally able to cooperate effectively and enjoyed working collaboratively
  • that representatives of public agencies – where they engaged with RTCC projects valued being able to ‘listen in’ on community thinking about real issues facing neighbourhoods
  • that RTCC seemed an effective way of engaging groups that would normally be excluded
  • that RTCC can enable groups to be creative, not overly risk-averse and to tackle controversial issues
  • that the approach works in terms of community network building as well as a small grant fund
  • that RTCC can help community groups gain confidence and think about what they exist to do (rather than distracting them from their mission)
  • that RTCC can cope with the fact that neighbourhood communities are not homogenous
  • that RTCC can be used to change how people feel about a neighbourhood
  • that small grants to community groups can be related to LAA targets without distracting groups form the purposes for which they were set up.

Further Information

Chamberlain Forum www.chamberlainforum.org based in Birmingham includes the people who organised and led the Birmingham RTCC programme.

The Centre for Public Innovation www.publicinnovation.org.uk based in London has used the RTCC approach with young people in Lambeth.

Citizens Planning and Housing Association http://www.cphabaltimore.org based in Baltimore, Maryland, has helped a number of communities use RTCC.

The Participatory Budgeting Unit www.participatorybudgeting.org.uk in Manchester was set up by Church Action on Poverty with support from the Government to support local people to get involved in making decisions on spending and priorities for public budgets.