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Connection Trailblazers

We’re delighted to reveal the two successful organisations chosen as Connectors-UK Trailblazers: 174 Trust and CAN! 
Backed by the National Lottery Community Fund, the Connection Trailblazers programme offers a space to step away from the firefighting and try new things while building long-term connections with peers. We’ll be supporting 174 Trust and CAN as part of a small number of pilot organisations across the UK to develop as leaders, test ideas and incubate new models. 
Over time, our society has become more disconnected. The evidence shows we are lonelier, less trusting, and more unequal than ever before. Three-quarters of the public say the UK feels divided, with more than one in four saying it feels very divided. Across class, age and ethnicity, there can often be a sense that we are living separate lives.
 
Community organisations are leading the fightback against these trends. They exist to bring places together – providing safe and welcoming spaces, offering inclusive services, putting communities in charge of their neighbourhoods. In the face of huge challenges – from austerity to Brexit, Covid to cost of living – community organisations have been connecting local people and providing hope for the future.
 
But we know how hard ongoing crisis conditions make it just to keep going. What’s more, funding is increasingly focused on short-term service delivery, rather than enabling organisations to work with their communities to build connection over the long term.

How Connection Trailblazers is helping

Connectors-UK aims to provide organisations with the space to step off the delivery treadmill, and really focus on connection. Supported by the National Lottery Community Fund, we are a partnership of the leading membership organisations supporting community organisations across the UK – Locality, Development Trusts Association Scotland, Development Trusts Association Wales, and Development Trusts Northern Ireland.

We know lots of our members will have great ideas they want to develop, which just haven’t aligned with public sector contract demands or funders’ project priorities. There will be tried and tested methods that have been put on the back burner; or approaches successfully used in one area of work that are waiting to be scaled into others.

This opportunity will offer our selected Trailblazers a mix of funding and support to help them develop and transform their connection practice.

The support offer consists of:

  • A grant that enables the organisation to free up staff capacity and backfill roles to enable them to further their connection work.
  • Relationship manager support. This will be provided by DTNI to support the Trailblazers organisation to develop their idea and overcome barriers.
  • Funding to cover the senior leader’s time to participate in a leadership development programme alongside counterparts in England, Scotland and Wales.
  • Enabling them to develop our as a cohort of community connection leaders, who are able to drive local systems change and advocate on a national stage