Understanding Thriving Communities

The places where we live, work and spend time have an impact on our wellbeing. So do the people we know – and encounter – in these places.

The Understanding Thriving Communities report looks at what the evidence tells us about factors and interventions that influence a community’s capacity to thrive, including insight into where there are gaps in the evidence. It will help policy makers and practitioners begin to understand how all the individual/community/place factors interact and what we can expect to change with different projects.

Alongside this report we are also publishing:

A measures bank, which can be used to test the evidence with projects in practice.

Three evidence summaries on key areas for community funders and projects:

a) Community Assets

b) Community Events

b) Places and Spaces Visual Summary

These resources will be useful for: 

• Grant applicants, to support their proposals. 
• Project evaluators, to work out what type of evaluation would be possible/useful for your project.
• Researchers, to help fill gaps where project evaluations become more limited because of their scale.