1. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
Common Vision is an independent think tank specialising in deliberative dialogue, community listening and civic imagination. Our mission is to inspire collaborative action and catalyse collective agency through knowledge, learning and connection. We work with a range of different communities of place, practice, interest and Identity, bringing them together to listen and learn from each other, and helping them find common goals and solutions to work towards together.
The Company’s objects (the Objects) are:
1) to promote education for the public benefit regarding social, economic and public policy matters and to undertake research, discussion and publication in furtherance of such objects;
2) in pursuance of all its objects the Company will be non-partisan, politically unaligned and dedicated to discerning the common good.
2. REVIEW OF THIS YEAR’S ACHIEVEMENTS
This annual report sets out our achievements during the financial year ending 30th June 2022 and later developments towards the end of 2022.
Our work is structured under three strategic programmes:
1. Young people in civic life - Younger generations have the most to gain from long-term thinking. We bring together young people to showcase their values and experiences, build public leadership skills, and codesign intergenerational policies and services.
2. Business and social purpose - In the transition towards social, economic and environmental sustainability, every individual and organisation has a role to play. We help business leaders develop brave leadership and collaborative action for systemic change.
3. Local community and cultural life - Everyone should be able to shape their local places and enjoy everyday culture and creativity. We work with public bodies, civil society, and funders to learn and share best practice on community empowerment.
Young people in civic life
One of our strategic programmes focus on empowering young people to participate in civic and community life. We passionately believe that the civic leadership potential of young people can be best unlocked by using creative and participatory methods to engage them on their own terms. To this end, we have built a strong track record of co-designing, delivering and providing training for young people to design the policies, systems and public narratives of today and tomorrow.
This year Common Vision completed our ‘Hold This Space’ project, a collaboration with youth-led NGO Force of Nature, academic coalition Climate Cares, and a team of psychologists, environmental scientists, communications specialists, policy experts, climate activists and young people. Through a series of co-design activities with young people we created a new digital tool www.holdthis.space which helps users process difficult emotions, imagine a better future, and learn more about the impact of collective climate action. Designed for young adults who are most at risk of eco-anxiety and other mental health impacts of climate change, the self-guided journey aims to restore hope, agency and ambition towards a sustainable future. As part of the project we also published a research paper ‘A minds and hearts approach to engaging young people with climate change’, which draws together insights from narrative change theory, and hosted a ‘Stories for Hope 5 Day Pop-up Community Challenge’ which included expert masterclasses with climate scientists and psychologists, guided DIY activities, creative imagination exercises, and interactive group discussions. The project was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council.
We continued our ‘Rethinking Resilience’ project (funded by Erasmus+) following a number of discovery workshops and an imagination summit in autumn 2021. The project looks how young people define personal and collective resilience, and the ways in which individual, personal resilience is shaped by the systems we interact with and depend on in society. In turn, the resilience of those systems is interdependent with the choices we make as a society. In Spring 2022 we ran a series of policy design sprints, bringing together young people and policy experts to co-design policy ideas around the future of education, work, health and resource security.
We have also continued to involve young people directly in our work as community researchers, building on last year’s programme of training, co-design and action learning. Our ‘Grahame Park Young Futures’ community research project (supported by housing association Notting Hill Genesis) has trained 17 young researchers on a housing estate in North London to explore new ways that young people can be empowered in place-making and regeneration processes. A separate national study (supported by Power to Change) is examining ‘Young People’s Social Impact Journeys’, exploring experiences of social activism, political participation, community life, and meaningful employment to understand what could help support and motivate the younger generation of changemakers and community leaders.
Business and social purpose
Fundamental to everything we do at Common Vision is the belief that change happens when communities build collective visions about the future, by listening to and learning from each other, and by using creative and aspirational mindsets to move beyond technocratic, negative, and often divisive dialogue on social issues. This was the rationale for acquiring The Crowd In 2018. The Crowd is well-known as a trusted space for senior business leaders from large, multi-national companies. It has hosted 200+ events and has a strong following of business leaders committed to sustainability and public leadership. Following disruption of In-person events during the pandemic, last year we ran a series of events online. However this year we have paused these activities in order to focus on consultation and engagement with the network in order to define it’s future direction. We aim to launch a new programme of activities in 2023.
Local community and cultural life
In times of crisis and transition we inevitably find ourselves focusing on how to respond to short term needs and challenges. This can sometimes be at the expense of looking further ahead and scanning the long-term possibilities. This year we have launched a new series of Futures Playbooks which aim to join the dots between what is happening now, and the emerging patterns or ‘signals’ of things to come.
Our first Playbook, supported by Power to Change, looks at how civil society can be supported and strengthened through 'infrastructure' - the shared services and networks which individual charities, social enterprises and community organisations draw on for support to be more effective and achieve collective impact beyond the sum of their parts. It explores what we know about civil society infrastructure – what its purpose is, how it is resourced, how different external contexts over the years have affected the provision of infrastructure, and how building and resourcing infrastructure can support civil society to be impactful, resilient and adaptive in the future.
The second Futures Playbook, ‘Towards Regenerative Resilience’, in partnership with Local Trust, draws on insights from the pandemic as well as emergent responses to the cost of living crisis, to understand the role of local communities in strengthening our national resilience and how we can repair and renew communities’ confidence and agency in the context of long-term uncertainty and instability.
We have also been working with Arts Council England to capture the lessons in community engagement from the work of cultural organisations over the course of the pandemic. We heard about hundreds of different approaches which cultural organisations used to spark creativity in their communities and keep people feeling connected and supported. We look at what this means for developing cultural practice and engage communities in years to come.
3. STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT AND FINANCIAL POSITION
This year has been a period of steady organisational development following the disruption of the pandemic. However, ongoing economic disruption remain a threat to organisational resources and stability.
We have completed the strategic review and launched a new visual identity and website. Our reputation and profile around qualitative and participatory research projects continue to be a key organisational USP. However this shift in focus has meant that we have not had as much capacity to dedicate to activities that were previously significant to our profile and revenue such as in-person events.
We have invested heavily in the growth and development of our staff team this year, with retention levels having improved on previous years. To strengthen organisational capacity and potential for growth, we have brought in consultants to help develop codify our operational processes, staff training, and have recently begun to implement a new CRM system.