Moving forward on regeneration
It is a busy time for CREW
Regeneration Wales, and with the
recent excellent news that we have
been awarded three years of funding
from Welsh Government, we are now
planning and beginning to deliver on
our commitment to promote and assist
integrated best practice regeneration and
policy in Wales. With our funding security
we have been able to appoint three new
members of our team, and together
with our existing team they will be able
to ensure CREW has a major impact
across Wales in identifying best practice,
undertaking research, organising
events and training opportunities, and
disseminating knowledge.
Vibrant and Viable Places
One of the most significant recent
regeneration developments in Wales has
been the publication of the bidding guidance
for the Vibrant and Viable Places Fund.
The main aims of Vibrant and Viable
Places are to:
- revitalise and promote the sustainable
development of town centres, coastal
communities and Communities First
clusters, and making the most of their
green infrastructure, heritage and historic
character - build sustainable and vibrant communities
that are more prosperous, better
educated and healthier - tackle poverty by creating jobs,
encouraging skills development and
helping people into work - encourage wider investment in housing
- deliver strategic, regionally important
projects of significant scale.
The investment will be targeted at
town centres, coastal communities and
Communities First cluster schemes, with
£30 million contributed to programmes
over the next three years. Applications
should secure significant additional ‘levered
in’ funding, and must be submitted by
the local authority as lead partner and
grant recipient, on behalf of a partnership
of the public, private and third sectors.
The deadline for submitting the outline
proposals is July 12, 2013.
The CREW team
CREW now has an excellent range of
skills, headed by our CEO Professor Dave
Adamson who brings significant expertise
in social regeneration, the team also
includes expertise in housing, physical,
and environmental regeneration, and town
centre management, and governance and
policy development:
- Professor Dave Adamson, CEO
- Andrew Dakin, deputy CEO
- Dr Mark Lang, senior researcher
- Hayley McNamara, housing-led
regeneration officer - Jemma Bere, project officer
- Jonathan Bevan, project officer
- Alan Southall, project officer
- Sue Wilcox, office manager.
CREW also has a dedicated and team
of fellows and associates, who are highly
experienced regeneration practitioners.
Networks
CREW currently hosts the Small Towns
Policy and Delivery Network, which is
facilitated by our deputy CEO Andrew
Dakin, and a Housing-Led Regeneration
Network facilitated by Hayley McNamara,
who is a joint appointment with
Community Housing Cymru. We are also
giving consideration to the establishment
of a Heritage-Led Regeneration Network,
and are in discussions with Regeneration
Skills Collective Wales about how we might
closer support them. The role of all these
networks is central to CREW’s goal of
supporting best practice in regeneration
and more effective and integrated policy
development and delivery.
Research programme
Our research programme and activities are
central to CREW’s work and is driven by our
networks, engagement activities and events.
Each year we undertake an active research
programme, led by CEO Dave Adamson and
Mark Lang, our senior researcher. As well
as a range of shorter research outputs, such
as our recent research into the future skills
requirements of regeneration practitioners,
we also undertake a major piece of yearlong
research. This year we are undertaking
a ‘deep place’ study of Tredegar in Blaenau
Gwent. This study is a new approach to
understanding place, and how through
an integrated approach across all of the
policy fields and interventions a sustainable
community might be created by 2030 by
implementing a series of recommendations
over the course of the next ten to 15 years.
We aim to complete this study in the spring
of 2014, and when complete we hope that
the methodology can be adopted usefully
elsewhere.
Website
All of CREW’s toolkits, research outputs and
resources are free to access on our website www.regenwales.org, which we also
keep up to date with details of our events,
training opportunities and latest news. We
also have regular opinion pieces written
by leading regeneration professionals,
which provide informative insights into
the various aspects of regeneration.
The website will shortly also have a
regeneration bibliography, a new resource
we are making available to help our visitors
identify key texts and articles that have
been written on regeneration.
Tel: 01685 389153
Email: enquiries@regenwales.org
South Wales Address: Martin Evans
House, Riverside Court, Avenue de
Clichy, Merthyr Tydfil CF47 8LD
North Wales Address: Unit 6b
Lys Onnen, Parc Menai, Bangor
Gwynedd LL57 4DF
Keep up to date with all the latest
from CREW on Twitter:
@CREWRegenWales