Current activities:
- Support for communities – Low Carbon Economy Programme
- Solving fuel poverty: opportunities from Green Deal & Localisation
- Community Land Trust training – and Digbeth CLT
- Fair Deal for UK farmers
- Managing environmental change in the rural urban fringe – research project with Birmingham City University & partners
- Regional prosperity agenda:
- West Midlands Green New Deal and Birmingham Green New Deal
- Extending Localisation
- Level 4 Courses on Local Food and Engaging Communities in Climate Change for Aston University’s Lifelong Learning Centre
- Retail planning activities – with Planners Network UK
See also our consultancy page and LWM 14001 consultancy site.
Past projects:
- Sustainability and Resilience for Herefordshire – planning workshops 2011
- Birmingham Procurement 2009
- Report back from the TUC’s Beyond Crisis conference 2009
- Decentralised Energy for Birmingham 2007
- Retail: report on Shirley proposals 2006
- Local finance for social housing 2004
- Earlier LWM activities
Summary
LWM undertakes the following sorts of work on localisation:
- Provide and publicise information, ideas and examples of good practice
- Facilitate or undertake demonstration projects
- Provide consultancy and other support to groups who are developing localist approaches
- Create supportive networks for localist action
- Challenge the barriers to localisation
- Link with similar projects outside the region and worldwide
Our work fits mainly into the following five themes:
Regeneration – Working with communities to develop solutions to local needs that use local resources. LWM chaired the Eastside Sustainability Advisory Group for some years.
Local food, local production and supply chains – aiming to catalyse an essential shift from the niche status of local food to become part of mainstream supply, particularly through public procurement and regional support activities.
Retail – supporting independent retail in accessible local centres, and developing tools for strengthening local shopping; combating food and service ‘deserts’; and localising supply chain links.
Energy – looking at the feasibility of more decentralised energy networks to combat economic, peak oil and climate change issues.
Housing and Finance – Working with tenant organisations and housing providers to promote local management and financing for social housing; supporting the development of localised mechanisms to provide sustainable, stable financing that benefits real people.