Community Networks |

Three Steps to Power… »

What links a taxi driver in Birmingham with an investment banker in New York? Or, for that matter, a farmer in Mirpur, Pakistan, with a care assistant in Hackney and a retired bus conductor in Barbados? The answer might be ‘six degrees of separation’. That is, the idea that no more than six personal connections [...]

June 1, 2012 | Posted in Featured | Read More »

Now FULLY BOOKED – Communities Managing Change Event »

PLEASE NOTE – This event is now FULLY BOOKED. We will aim to get resources and information online as soon as the event as possible.

May 8, 2012 | Posted in Events,Featured | Read More »

Set up a Neighbourhood Website »

Neighbourhood Forums, Community First panels and other groups interested in setting up local websites in Birmingham are invited to take up support from Chamberlain Forum and Community Network 4 Birmingham. Any local group can set up, and get support to manage, a neighbourhood website for free as part of a project to extend local websites to cover 100 city neighbourhoods.

March 29, 2012 | Posted in Events,Featured,Resources | Read More »

Community Resilience and Self Help »

Chamberlain Forum’s 2011-12 programme focuses on Community Resilience and Self-Help.

March 19, 2012 | Posted in Policy | Read More »

Community First – Where and How? »

Community First is the new £80m government-funded programme that will run for four years, until March 2015. Despite some quirks relating to where the new fund will be available, it might actually ‘do what it says on the tin’ and start, in a small way, the practice of putting communities in the driving seat.

October 6, 2011 | Posted in Featured,News | Read More »

Building Society in Birmingham »

With talk of a ‘broken’ society – recent looting and violence on our streets – this Chamberlain Forum Resident University workshop, on 21st September 2011 is for the people and groups who are building society. Building Society is an opportunity for grassroots community and voluntary groups of all sorts to meet and share views of [...]

September 8, 2011 | Posted in Events,Featured | Read More »

What We Do

Chamberlain Forum helps civil society and local authorities to coproduce better places to live. We are non-profit, politically independent and proudly based in Birmingham.

We organise Chamberlain Lectures featuring speakers including Prime Minister David Cameron. We also organise Resident University - a peer and shared learning programme for people who live and work in neighbourhoods.

We promote and develop community networks as social capital builders, including by supporting Community Network 4 Birmingham

We support action to strengthen local civil society including through: community asset transfers; neighbourhood websites; mediation and facilitation; training and business planning.

We organise action research into aspects of coproduction and are delivering an 18 month programme, Communities Managing Change, funded by Barrow Cadbury Trust.

Chamberlain Forum Limited acts as a consultancy delivering a wide range of 'thinking and doing' services for clients including local authorities, housing associations, development trusts, health and social care bodies, local strategic partnerships and voluntary and community groups.