Empowering Community

“Localisation stands, at best, at the limits of practical possibility, but it has the decisive argument in its favour that there will be no alternative” - David Fleming, Surviving the Future (2016)

 

Strong, well-organised, resilient communities are essential to our ability to survive and overcome the current threats we face. This has been amply demonstrated during the current Coronavirus crisis in 2020 as people have pulled together to meet the collective needs of the community.

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Nidd Gorge Community Action came about because a top-down approach didn’t meet the needs of the local community.

The local community, in Harrogate & Knaresborough, enjoyed and appreciated our green spaces and the historic character of our two, distinct towns and didn’t want the new road that was being proposed and imposed from above. They didn’t want to share our green spaces with a road and they didn’t want the development that would have inevitably followed the road.

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The overwhelming rejection of the road was a fine example of community power in action. It was a demonstration of how effective the bottom-up organisational model can be when local people are empowered and act collectively for the good of the community.

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The Long Lands Common project is a continuation of that community empowerment. Putting local communities back in control of the land around them.