Who are place matters

We are a partnership of experienced place-based change makers who are working together through a charitable venture. Our purpose is to establish a coalition of practitioners who learn together and share their knowhow openly and generously with others to build the quality of UK place-based change practice.

Place Matters is a backbone organisation whose role is to convene practitioners through communities of practice, learning events and to enable help capture and share knowhow, so practitioners can build on the shoulders of others more readily. We will work with those starting on the journey of change through our incubator programme and support those already delivering change through peer-led communities of practice. We will capture learning and make it accessible through learning events and our online platform.

We will work with funders and commissioners to share the collective knowledge and evidence of impact of practitioners to build support.

Join our community of place-based change makers to take part in the programme of learning events, receive information about the knowledge and insight we create and share and to be part of a network of people committed to delivering community-led change.

our partners

Join us

Team

Dame Julia Clevedon - Lela Kogbara - Jo Blundell - Emily Sun

Dame Julia

Chair

Dame Julia Cleverdon

Dame Julia Cleverdon DCVO, CBE is a passionate and practical campaigner who has gained an international reputation for ‘connecting the unconnected’, inspiring individuals and organisations to work together for the common good in the most challenged communities.

During her tenure as Chief Executive of Business in the Community from 1991 to 2007, Julia worked closely with the President HRH The Prince of Wales in building a movement of 850 member companies. Julia later served as Special Adviser to The Prince’s Charities and focused efforts on disadvantaged communities.

Julia co-founded Step Up To Serve (#iwill), a campaign which was set up to make meaningful social action a part of life for young people across the UK. As Chair of Teach First from 2007 to 2014, and now Vice Patron, Julia has pioneered efforts to address educational disadvantage.

Director

Lela Kogbara

Lela Kogbara is an accountant and was a senior leader in the public sector for 25 years, 16 of which were in Islington where she was Assistant Chief Executive for the Council until 2016.

Lela is current a Director of Black Thrive Global where she oversees research, communications, finance, operations and various programmes, including The National Lottery Community Fund Growing Great Ideas programme and employment programme funded by Impact on Urban Health.

Director

Jo Blundell

Jo has a background in UK public sector and in designing and delivering transformation through collaboration and through engagement with citizens and people with lived experience.

She has an MA in Service Design from the Royal College of Art and is a Design Associate with the Design Council. She co-authored ‘Are we Rallying Together. Collaboration and public sector reform’ with the Government Outcomes Lab.

Director

Emily Sun

Emily has a consulting background in working with organisations in the health, education and social sectors, that are interested in building cultures, leadership and teams where collaboration, learning and innovation can flourish. She specialises working with organisations that are focused on community centred, multi-stakeholder approaches to enabling places to regenerate and thrive.

Previously, she was head of development at Impetus Private Equity Foundation, and UK HR Director for Eli Lilly and Company. She has an MBA from INSEAD.

Lela

Emily

Programmes

place incubator

Launching place-based programmes

The Incubator programme delivers intensive action based learning to multi-sector teams starting the process of delivering place-based change.

It will support teams to plan their journey of change, building consensus around how they will tackle the change together and developing shared ways of working to enable effective collaboration.

communities of practice

Peer-based learning programmes

Communities of practice are peer individuals and groups going through a similar journey of change.

They will share their journey to both inform and support each other, working with experienced learning partners to help embed learning to improve impact.

We will also create communities of practitioners from people and organisations with specific roles and expertise e.g. funders, learning partners.

learning
events

Workshops and webinars on key topics

We will hold workshops with practitioners seeking to focus on specific aspects of practice, drawing on UK and international expertise and hold general webinars for practitioners to access.

Please join our community to receive notifications of events.

See events below for scheduled events