Civic Trust

In 2025 we are launching the Shoreditch and City Civic Trust.

civictrust Shoreditch Trust has reached a significant moment in its journey as a community anchor. The Trust was established in 1999, as part of the New Deal for Communities programme. Shoreditch Trust has exemplified one of the key learnings from that programme, that by investing in community assets, a community presence in neighbourhoods can be established, securing the long-term impact. The fact that Shoreditch Trust is here over a decade after the end of the NDC programme and achieving huge benefits for local people is testament to this.  

Shoreditch Trust plans to radically reconnect with our mission identified by our resident board back in 2000 and focus our energy and resources on four innovation solutions:

Launch the Shoreditch & City Civic Trust joining with key partners to form a stronger consortia approach (to funding and commissioning), and invest in existing and new projects and community initiatives, led by residents
Release asset income to realise significant infrastructure investment into communities and draw in further match investment: Shoreditch Trust holds over £7m in property assets, including a Health Centre, office space rented to a large national charity, an office block which also houses the Trust’s headquarters and is rented at commercial rates, and a restaurant hub for community meals and group cooking
Recognise our privilege as an anchor organisation which has received investment and developed significant capacity over the years and support local initiatives and organisations to strengthen their capacity to do good work with us
Provide a legacy for the next generation
Bring key stakeholders together to design, test and scale new solutions, working directly with communities to identify priorities and to design solutions

We know from years of experience, underlined by the covid and cost of living crisis, that only community driven service provision can fully meet the range and complexity of need. Equally, we know that such community level work needs support and co-ordination.

We believe resident’s lived experiences bring deep insight in understanding and addressing social issues. We believe that building the capacity of individuals and communities, enabling them to develop and deliver services and undertake relevant research is the most effective mechanism for impactful community-based initiatives. The current system benefits some more than others, and if we want to change that, we acknowledge that we need to reimagine the role that communities play, including decisions around funding and local services, and how we recognise, and value lived experience.

We believe better coordination of our various projects involving community-level working across Shoreditch Park and the City will:

Widen the opportunity to work with statutory partners, reach a range of health needs and residents who have previously been missed
Work with the council and the City as they develop their policies to widen delivery of their services at neighbourhood level and involve residents
Strengthen and build our existing community-building projects, we know these have great potential to open doors to information and participation in other activities.

We are driving a partnership model that will deliver local initiatives in community settings. Shoreditch Trust has engaged Locality to support the development of the Shoreditch and City Civic Trust, providing a critical friend approach as well as a framework for research and development. This work has included:

A review of the assets and enterprise/community “anchor” organisation theory of change
An evaluation of how this model has fared in light of the recent challenges of Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis
Lessons from the New Deal for Communities Programme
Keep it Local and the ongoing challenges in the commissioning landscape

Following this we identified key questions to discuss at a facilitated workshop with peers to take into the next stage – a steering group:

1. Community control: how can the strategic plan seize the opportunity to radically re-connect with local people and enhance community control? What are the risks? In particular, how will equity be enhanced, with people from marginalised and minoritised communities at the forefront of decision-making? In a highly diverse borough, how can Shoreditch and City Civic Trust represent a radical, leading-edge model of community accountability and control that adapts and updates the community anchor model for a new generation?
2. Long-term: how can the strategic plan ensure assets are deployed for the long-term benefit of the area and ensure a lasting legacy that develops the next generation community leaders?
3. Community power: How can the Shoreditch and City Civic Trust put the community in charge of its own destiny, rather than responding to public sector priorities? Can this model more effectively build independence for the community than an ongoing community enterprise approach?

The long-term impacts of this work are three-fold:   

1. Influencing approaches to research toward being more people and community centred  

2. Increasing participants’ agency over managing their health and what is available to them  

3. A codified methodology for community-led research underpinned by academic rigour  

We aim to achieve the following outcomes through the Civic Trust:   

New and innovative approaches engaging with the health needs of individuals and increasing the voice of residents in developing services and designing what works  
Harnessing and improving the capacity of local people to manage their own health and conduct research

Shoreditch Trust has formed a steering group with agreed terms of reference to serve as an initial way of engaging stakeholders. This speaks to the comments in the Locality review around local engagement, community leadership and the need for robust governance.