We focus on meaningful research and learning about place-based change. We try to get to the big picture and the root causes … but still make the information is relevant, accessible and concrete for practitioners and residents looking to change things today.

RESEARCH

Prepared with ThirdSpace Action Lab and the Community Opportunity Alliance. Residents formed the very first community development organizations and have played a central role throughout their history. This report digs into what residents in four communities across the United States think about the state of resident voice in the sector today and their visions for what it could look like in the future.

In too many communities, “experts” come in and talk about bringing assets into a community … with very little attention to the assets that are already there. In partnership with ArtPlace America, we explore why cultural asset mapping is so important to equitable development and how you can do it in meaningful ways.

Prepared as part of ThirdSpace Action Lab’s The People Practice. This large-scale research looks at how structural racism shows up throughout today’s community development sector, including the dominant narratives that may be holding the sector back. Then we unpack what anti-racist practice and policy can look like — and why that matters to the way we advance place-based change.

Prepared as part of ThirdSpace Action Lab’s The People Practice. If we want to build a better future in community development, first, it’s important, to get to a better understanding of what community development has been throughout history. This report unpacks how the American notions of race, place, policy and on-the-ground solutions have shaped virtually every aspect of the sector’s work today.

Prepared as part of ThirdSpace Action Lab’s The People Practice. The community development sector consists of people with a lot of different roles spread out across thousands of organizations covering everything from real estate development to research to finance. This report outlines the ways that anti-racist practice and policy might look like for these different segments of the sector.

LEARNING AND STRATEGY RESOURCES

Traditional research, learning and strategy consulting does important work … but it also tends to lock lots of people out from the resources it creates. If you don’t have the money they require, if you don’t have time to go through intensive planning processes, or if you’re working in a geography without a lot of service providers, there’s a good chance you don’t have the research, learning and strategy supports you need. We’re committed to doing our small part to change that, building materials that practitioners and residents can use to support their own work.

Unless otherwise noted, please feel free to use, share and adapt these materials for your own non-commercial use.

Prepared with ThirdSpace Action Lab. Even after you recognize how important community development leadership is, it can still be tough to figure out how best to support more equitable approaches. In this resource, we pull together prompts for considering your own leadership support work, as well as promising community development practices from across the country.

Folks doing place-based change work often have to address challenges from morning to night. But if we focus too narrowly on the problem facing us today, we might miss the longer-term, bigger picture. This exercise gives individuals and groups a framework for stepping back and thinking about root causes and what kinds of solutions could start to attack challenges at their source.

We might avoid conflict in place-based change work to protect people’s feelings, to avoid losing time on things, or just to stay away from the drama. But the conflict’s there whether we pay attention to it or not. This exercise explores how we can process conflict, talk about it openly … and maybe even find some ways for it to support our work instead of getting in the way.

Even when we’re committed to place-based change work, we can still take places for granted. Parks, business corridors, even people … We can get stuck in our thinking and stop prioritizing learning about “the where”. In this exercise, we use an observation practice to pay attention to our senses, emotions, and critical understanding and use that as a powerful learning tool.

Even when we agree that getting resources into communities is important for increasing equitable outcomes, we might not have the same read on where we should put those resources — or why. This exercise shares some sample community descriptions to help teams think through the theories of change and values behind their decision-making about resourcing..

Folks doing place-based change work often have to address challenges from morning to night. But if we focus too narrowly on the problem facing us today, we might miss the longer-term, bigger picture. This exercise gives individuals and groups a framework for stepping back and thinking about root causes and what kinds of solutions could start to attack challenges at their source.

Prepared with ThirdSpace Action Lab and the Community Opportunity Alliance. Community development work rarely centers resident voice as much as it should. Whether you’re a resident group, grassroots organization, or national or state organization, these prompts give you a starting point for candid conversation around expanding resident voice.