Living through change

We aim to provide practical support to help the city and people of Bradford, during and after the recession. We also hope to produce useful lessons for other regional and national policy-makers.

In 2004, the JRF made a ten-year commitment to working in Bradford. This work is part of that programme. It expresses the JRF's long-standing commitment to addressing poverty and disadvantage, and its unique relationship with the city and people of Bradford.

Overview

We are:

• exploring the impact of recession on people, businesses and communities in Bradford
• identifying evidence-based policy recommendations that might help address the longer-term social implications of recession.

We are committing £415,000 to this programme over four years.

Key issues

Bradford is already experiencing the local impacts of global and national economic downturn. There are concerns about how the different groups and communities living there will experience the next few years. It is a city which:

• is still living with the impact of past recessions
• has high levels of poverty and disadvantage
• has a history of established and recent immigration
• has seen low levels of trust between some individuals, groups and stakeholders.

Key activities

We plan to:

• commission projects which will generate robust, practical evidence;
• support development activities to produce policy and practice recommendations which build on this evidence; and
• engage with stakeholders throughout the programme to identify emerging issues or solutions.

We have identified four priority areas and in July 2011 published reports for each of the following themes along with a summary review of evidence:

• Poverty, debt and welfare
• Community relationships and cohesion
• Mental health and well-being
• Local business and enterprise

You can read more about these four projects here (PDF, 30KB).