Thriving Places, Glasgow
Thriving Places is about bringing people together to help improve a local area. This means building stronger links between different community groups, services and organisations. There are 10 Thriving Places across Glasgow.
Thriving Places aims to:
- Empower local people to have a real say in decisions that affect the local area,
- Support local community groups, organisations and services to really engage with local people, and
- Bring together community groups, services and organisations to improve the quality of people's lives in the local area.
Despite these common principles, Thriving Places looks and feels different across the city because each local area has different types of communities and different needs and circumstances.
Each Thriving Place has a 10-year plan which must be informed by local people. These plans are for local communities, organisations, services and businesses. Glasgow City Council and Glasgow City Health and Social Care Partnership provide funding for the cost of employing a Community Connector who brings local community groups, services and organisations closer together. They are employed by an organisation that already works within the local area and has good links with local people.
The Community Connector is not the only person who does community development work in local areas. There are also community workers in Glasgow Life, further education colleges and many housing associations, for example. A steering group of local people from local community groups, organisations and services comes together as often as necessary to make sure that Thriving Places is on track to meeting the needs of local people as set out in the plans. This group helps the Community Connector to work with the right people at the right time using the right methods.
Local people should inform local priorities for each Thriving Place, but there are three main goals for the whole programme:
- The local areas feel like good places to live, learn, work or volunteer,
- Local people feel connected not just to each other and their local areas, but the surrounding city too, and
- Local people have access to the same opportunities as people from other parts of the city.