DTNI, with its sister networks in England (Locality) and the Development Trust Associations in Scotland and Wales are delivering a new UK community networking, learning and development programme which involves the family of community development trusts from across the UK.

The Connectors-UK programme provides members with resources for networking across NI, and the UK, the opportunity to attend key conferences and policy symposia and participate in a major new UK leadership programme.

This project includes a number of funded offers for our members to avail of including peer learning grants, specialist networking, and cross-nation meet ups. 

DTNI are running an exciting new cross-border project with The Carmichael Centre, Dublin. This project funded by the Irish Department for Foreign Affairs. is based on a series of cross border networking and relationship building, learning, and sharing events between Community, Voluntary and Social Enterprise organisations based around Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland running from May 2024 – March 2025.

Part of this Shared Island Project is also to examine the supports available (and missing) both North and South for developing the sector, and to explore the commonalities and differences within VCSE organisations working in both parts of the island.

This project is creating a vibrant platform for ‘like’ organisations to connect, compare, and contrast our commonalities and differences We’ve handpicked 14 amazing organisations across the island who we will be working with including: Africa House, Carntogher Community Association, Grow the Glens, Ionad na Fuiseoige, Open House Festival, Rural Support, The Workspace Group and Walk, Spraoi & Spoirt, Cill Ulta, Embrace Farm, Sunflower Recycling, Partas, & Ecovision Energy Communities Co-op.

In 2015 and 2016, DTNI was commissioned to explore if a community development trust could be established to acquire the bed and foreshore from its owner, the Shaftesbury Estate.

This work involved strategic engagement with critical and diversely different stakeholder interests, including the sand dredgers and the rights of nature campaigners. We visited and drew lessons from community owned land projects in Scotland, considered the social and economic return through the establishment of new businesses and prepared a draft framework to establish community membership recruit a board of directors.

The case for community ownership was made and remains a viable option for the future management and development of Lough Neagh for the people of Ireland and beyond.

Emerging from our lead role in supporting communities apply and receive investment capital investment DTNI has set out its case for a Northern Ireland Community Ownership Fund (NI COF).

As of 2024, £8.1milllion in capital grants have been committed to communities in NI, a fraction of the demand that remains. Unsure of how COF will be developed under a new Labour government, DTNI is asking for a clearer role for a devolved regional fund, with criteria suited to the uniqueness of our community infrastructure.

To meet communities’ immediate needs, we have called for a £40m capital, revenue, and development fund. This will allow DTNI to deliver support for 100 community organisations in the coming years.

DTNI and the Strategic Investment Board (SIB) have been working to support a private individual explore and establish a legal vehicle (a community development trust) to transfer their land and property assets.

This venture into ‘legacy philanthropy’ is a new venture for DTNI and one from which we have learned many valuable lessons. The work is not yet complete, but the new Trust is expected to be up and running late 2024. The Trust will in its lifetime have bestowed upon it 250 acres of land, several rural and town properties. The assets will be manged to deliver the philanthropists objectives including increased access to rural environment by people from marginalised communities.

DTNI & SIB are keen to identify and engage with other benefactors with a shared interest in philanthropic giving.

Legislation in Great Britain has enabled citizens there to have a greater voice in community and spatial planning and in the collective management and ownership of land and buildings. Similar legislation would bring great economic and social benefit here in the north of Ireland and encourage a more participative democracy across NI.

Community rights are group rights and should be seen as an extension of the principle of democracy by expanding citizen participation in decision-shaping and decision-making.

Communities should have specific rights to enable them to deliver social and economic development priorities. These rights should sit alongside other legislative provisions that give statutory authority to public agencies and local government.

Community rights legislation can give communities the tools to drive social change and hold local public authorities to account by conferring a right to own, to buy, to participate and to challenge.

The Support Network for Social Entrepreneurs (SuNSE) developed a network of social entrepreneurship hubs across North West Europe, to act as local points for stimulating community driven economic activity in disadvantaged regions.

Partners based in UK, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands and France brought together expertise, support agencies, local authorities, universities and enterprise support specialists in a transnational partnership that helped to address common problems of market failure in economically excluded communities.

Number 4 Annesley Street, Belfast is the address of the former physiotherapy centre at the Mater Hospital and former Synagogue for Belfast’s Jewish community. DTNI is seeking to acquire this listed heritage asset and develop it as centre for the advancement of its work and that of its members across NI.

The building, when developed, will act as a meeting and conference centre, a tourism attraction, a community resource centre for local people, a centre for learning with a focus on community planning, ownership, regeneration, health, wealth, and wellbeing. It will also function as a performance arts centre providing curators from across Belfast and NI with a venue for social gathering and to expand the culture and arts economy.