The practice lead for this area of work is Saffron Woodcraft.

Work exploring the dynamics of community and how people live together has always been a priority for the Young Foundation, building on Michael Young's research work in East London. Our aim is to understand how communities can encourage rather than frustrate support and neighbourly contact, help everyone feel they belong in their area, and make them have an influence over local institutions when they have a problem. Often this work explores the relationship between geographical communities and communities of interest.

Our current work on communities and housing includes our Future Communities Consortium - working with local and national agencies to explore ways in which new housing developments can become socially sustainable in the long term; Local 2.0 - working with local authorities to understand how they can and should use new digital technologies at a very local level to communicate with and involve their residents; and work with three small estates to explore new approaches to entrenched deprivation in small estates.

These programmes draw on the legacy of our past work; including neighbourhoods' consortiums (Transforming Neighbourhoods, the Neighbourhood Action Network and Neighbourhood Futures); research on neighbourliness and belonging; Good Neighbours - work exploring how housing associations can work with local authorities to give residents voice in their communities; a seminar series for English Partnerships in 2008.

We aim to develop new tools that can be widely adopted, including action research methods, social network analysis and new web 2.0 platforms. With mySociety we launched fixmystreet.com, which is now being replicated internationally.

Our projects include:

• Future Communities - Bringing together local and national actors to develop fresh thinking about how new housing developments can become socially as well as economically and environmentally sustainable (supported by HCA, Local Government Improvement and Development, Peabody Trust, Aylesbury Vale District Council, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Birmingham City Council and the City of Malmö in Sweden)
  
  
• Local 2.0 - Funded by CLG's Community Empowerment Fund, we are working with four councils (Kings Lynn and West Norfolk, Kirklees, Wiltshire and Kensington and Chelsea) to find out how new digital technologies can be used by councils and other local agencies to communicate with and involve their residents
  
  
• Cohesion - the Young Foundation has conducted extensive work on community cohesion, from a project focussed on how voluntary and community sector can best work for cohesion, to a contribution to the Commission on Integration and Cohesion
  
  
• Diversity, Resilience and Communities - this research project asks the specific question: What is the relationship between resilience and diversity? We are looking at the different roles that community development and civil society play in creating resilience in communities. It focuses on two wards in Birmingham and will run from May 2010 - November 2010.

• Understanding local social networks - using social network analysis to understand the dynamics of communities and how relationships between residents, community organisations and local public services can be improved. 
  
  
• Transforming Neighbourhoods - a two-year programme of research, innovation and practical action designed to encourage devolution of power to neighbourhoods and communities in England. It ran from April 2005 to March 2007.
  
  
• Civility - We are working with the ESRC and AHRC on a project exploring whether civility matters in contemporary Britain, building on the work of our book Civility: Lost and Found. The project will investigate how people in three different communities (in London, Wiltshire and Cambridgeshire) understand civility, its relevance to their lives and how civility is related to feelings of belonging and wellbeing.

Key reading:

• Community Action Toolkit. Much is already known about how to successfully empower communities. This community action toolkit brings together knowledge, practical tools and stories about community empowerment for organisations who want to shift power and influence to local people and for communities that want to take up those opportunities. It is based on five years work the Young Foundation has undertaken with communities, local groups, councillors, local authorities, housing associations, public agencies and central government.
  

• Public Services and Civil Society working together: Promising ideas for effective local partnerships (March 2010). The report gives anecdotal and empirical evidence to suggest outcomes are improved when public services and civil society work hand in hand, and develops five new ways to do just that - from community entrepreneurs to asset sharing, new performance measures to community dividends.

• Never Again: Avoiding the mistakes of the past (January 2010). From the projets in Paris suburbs to Broadwater Farm and Park Hill in Sheffield, high hopes and dreams have soured as, over time, ambitious new developments have become the housing of last resort for the most desperate. We need to learn from these experiences, and make sure that never again is so much money and ambition wasted, so that people who move into new housing developments do not just get a home, but also the prospects of building a future for the long term, supported by a flourishing community.

• The End of Regeneration? Improving what matters on small hosuing estates (April 2010). This toolkit aims to encourage local authorities, housing associations and other public agencies to think differently about how to break the cycle of entrenched poverty and disadvantage on small housing estates.

• Transforming Neighbourhoods.  A collection of stories from the Young Foundation about innovative and inspirational neighbourhood initiatives. They originate from a consortium of 15 councils plus national organisations that are collectively seeking modern and practical ways to support community empowerment and improve neighbourhood working.

• Our seminar series for English Partnerships in 2008, exploring how to build participation in communities, create structures for longterm stewardship and governance and explore the aspirations residents have for their communities, and developed the Future Communities Consortium.