Paper by Polly Mackenzie et al: “There is now a broad consensus among practitioners, funders, and policymakers that Britain is paying the costs for a decades-long depletion of civic life. A great deal of excellent work has begun to reverse this decline, but a key question remains unanswered: how do we fund the work of civic renewal at the scale that is needed?
The Marshall Plan for Civic Life is a landmark programme of research and deliberation, convened by Kinship Works and Demos, to answer this question – identifying viable financing mechanisms, and developing an overall funding architecture. The initial work has been supported by This Day and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation but we are building a coalition – adding partners and modules to deepen our understanding of the problem and possible solutions.
In this opening Discussion Paper, we share initial reflections on a range of financial mechanisms that look promising. The paper is intended to stimulate discussion and we would welcome feedback. This will be followed in Autumn 2026 with a broader paper, describing a potential architecture and supporting philosophy for a Civic Marshall Plan, alongside an estimate of the scale of the funding gap that needs to be filled…(More)”.
