Let’s create a neighbourhood fit for the future | w. CIVIC SQUARE & Kate Raworth

9:18CIVIC SQUARE:We need your help so we can raise£50 ,000 and open our doors. And they did it. They raised the money. Impact Hub opened in an old warehouse in 2015.

9:29Kate Raworth:Having the physical space was a game changer. The sense of agency, good power, like, legitimacy. Our children are the ultimate portal to the future and the question is, what's going to survive with them? We were platforming authors, putting together housing labs and thinking about the future of the city.

9:55CIVIC SQUARE:What if the retrofit of our homes were led by the community that live here? When I first heard about the hub, it felt like exactly what we're lacking, a space to come together to work out what we all need and to make creating that feel doable. I can't think of any other space in this city or in other cities I've been in that's being like this. Sounds great, right? This amazing asset to the community, providing so much that made people's lives better. And for five and a half years, it was. So, and bear with me here, they closed it.

10:29Kate Raworth:It's been an honour and privilege to work alongside such incredible people for so many years. And I just want to say thanks. It felt deep in people's souls, like an amazing success while you're closing.

10:41CIVIC SQUARE:It's just weird to really think that it's coming to an end. It's just been a major part of finding a place in the world, I think. Even though the Impact Hub was heaving, we showed them practically, yeah, but look at the numbers. You see, Imi and the others didn't own the building the hub was in. And the more success the hub had, the more rent their landlord charged year on year.

11:07Kate Raworth:This is how things work. I got the property so I can make a profit off you. This work can't thrive.

11:15CIVIC SQUARE:It was working, but the value you were creating was being siphoned off into the landlords and you couldn't make what you were doing sustainable. Yeah. We've got so used to the idea that somebody who we might never meet, never see, and who never even shows up, owns the land that we live on, owns the buildings that we live in, and is continually drawing profit out of that ownership. This is the economist Kate Raworth. She's dedicated a large part of her life to rethinking the current economic system. And we asked her about how gentrification, like the kind the hub experienced, is a part of that picture.

11:49CIVIC SQUARE:It's so normal. It's so embedded in our society that we don't question it. But so often what happens is that they are taking out money that's been generated by incredible work of the local community. Why it's great to live somewhere, cafes that are popping up. Maybe there's a nearby school or a hospital or a new train station. Public goods, public investment, community investment, people making a place great to live in. And then the landlord just says, oh, oh, there's some extra money around, I think I'll raise the rent. I think a pattern that's seen again and again across societies is that the wealth holders, the owners of these fundamental assets, they get rich, but local people find themselves just continually paying the bills to underpin that.

12:34CIVIC SQUARE:And just to be clear, Kate is very far from the kind of economist that just focuses on what's wrong. She's famous for economic ideas about the future that have become central to Civic Square's mission. But we're going to come back to that for now.

12:49Kate Raworth:The hub was incredible. But unless we, as a generation, start to take some of those other things more seriously, we are going to continue to perpetuate a model no longer fit for purpose. So where we are now, Port Loop, is the middle of all of that story, right?

13:08CIVIC SQUARE:And it's here in Ladywood where new developments like Port Loop sit next to rows and rows of Victorian terraces and where white working class and migrant communities live side by side, that Civic Square set their sights on creating a new hub, one that would fix what had gone so wrong with the first one.

13:24Kate Raworth:There was these beautiful buildings and we were like making a case to the developer that this needs to not be demolished for private housing. This needs to stay as a civic and cultural hub. And we think this hub needs to be like bold to show what 21st century neighbourhood infrastructure will need to look like. but within one sentence I was like I know exactly what you're gonna do you're gonna offer us a meanwhile space and I said so we are will not make one step forward with this project unless you can promise us a very long lease or a a purchase of the freehold and they were like okay your plans are bold this sounds mad but they do have a bit of a history of really working with local communities I said, OK, cool.

14:11Kate Raworth:So at that time, we got heads of terms to say that there'd be a long lease.

14:15CIVIC SQUARE:A long lease where the terms of the deal meant, crucially, the rent couldn't be hiked year on year.

14:21Kate Raworth:We got here in 2020, ready to go in February. Yep. Right before Covid, the big pause, the great delay of plans. But like a lot of us, Civic Square adapted and did what they could. When the lockdown rules first eased, we were like, OK, I think we can do something here. And we opened up the park into a living room. You know, there was times where there was like 100, 200 people in the park just with a blanket chatting. And like in Punjabi, we called it dhukhsukh. Like, you know, you just need to go somewhere and say this is happening in my life. Like, Covid is happening. But what was a nice way to allow people to connect in hard times was also something more.

15:05Kate Raworth:We just gently started putting some little activities into it.

15:09CIVIC SQUARE:What examples? What kind of things?

15:10Kate Raworth:We were like, I don't know, like sew together, make something nice together. And then others were like, should we talk about regenerative economics? Should we talk about what this building could be? Should we talk about what emergency and crisis is telling us?

15:22CIVIC SQUARE:And all of this was happening against a countrywide backdrop. Rising inequality with just 400 families in 2023 as rich as 50 % of the UK population and increasing division, nationalist feeling has doubled between 2023 and 2025.

15:37Kate Raworth:How has it been like to bring people together with this kind of rise of a nationalism feeling here? So yes, right? Like the work of trying to bring us back together across the divides that are falsely created is something that we're obsessed with, but it sits within some structural issues, right? There's about to be one of Europe's biggest demolitions and biggest redevelopments in Ladywood Estate. The demolition of those houses and the displacement of people disproportionately impacts racialised folks, migrants, white working class communities who lose all the social ties and networks. So you pit white working class people against, you know, economic migrants, refugees, etc.

16:21Kate Raworth:You pit these groups against each other and while that is happening, wealth is hoarded. Yeah. And it's an easy story, innit? So for us, like, making that park a melting pot is, like, so important. Getting down these divides, convening, doing things that we know are important together. Eating, making, repairing, imagining, creating together. I guess it's hard to hate someone. Yeah. You know, you're seen every day or every week. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's much easier to, like, point your fingers at someone when you're just scrolling through Instagram and be like, oh, yeah, it's their fault. And from Covid and this outdoor living room, this place to reach across divides, an important realisation came about for Civic Square.

17:05Kate Raworth:The pandemic was a horror show for a lot of us, right? But what it taught us in the work, I think, was probably the greatest gift we could have ever like, have had. And why?

17:19CIVIC SQUARE:What did it like reveal or help with or unlock?

17:23Kate Raworth:that we are going to be in an era of long emergency, whatever that looks like. It might not always look like this emergency, it might not always look like COVID, but there are going to be these disruptions that are substantial to the way in which we understand how we live. Some of them are going to be like COVID, some of them are going to be like the energy crisis.

17:46CIVIC SQUARE:And to tackle this uncertain future, this era of long emergency, Civic Square realised that even a long lease wasn't going to be enough.

17:56Kate Raworth:We thought about how would the land be owned so it can't just be taken away in a few years. And how do we make sure that it stays in the hands of the community locally and the neighbourhood and what is generated from here continues to sustain for generations to come.

18:12CIVIC SQUARE:So Civic Square set about trying to raise the money they needed to buy the industrial complex they'd managed to lease and to firm up plans for their new hub.

18:21Kate Raworth:A place that would be a buffer against the emergencies we all stand to face, at the centre of a neighbourhood for the future. We have seen 20 years of ripping away lots and lots of these very important infrastructures. Things that we spent generations learning were the foundations of a thriving society, like our libraries, our community centres, our pubs, our working men's clubs. These are the sorts of things where community resilience comes from, that gives people places to meet, to build their skills, to live lives that are dignified and connected and communal.

19:01CIVIC SQUARE:And this new hub, it would bring all of that together with a central underpinning, a different, kinder, more inclusive approach to our economy called Donut Economics, One created by someone we've already met, Kate Raworth. Here she is explaining it to the crowd at Civic Square. What is this donut? Let's start where it began. Do you want to stand up and hold it up? Right. Da-da-da! Next to Kate, a neighbourhood kid is holding an oversized fabric donut, the ring kind with the hole in the middle. It's a vision, a possible compass for humanity's future. What's the goal of the donut, do you remember?

19:41CIVIC SQUARE:Stay out of the hole. Stay out of the hole. He's got it, right? Leave no one in the hole. Leave no one falling short on the essentials of life without the food, water, energy, healthcare, housing, voice, income. And yet, as we use Earth's resources, as we interact with the living systems of the world, we know that we start putting pressure on the planet and we start to push her out of balance. So we risk going over the limit. Don't leave anyone in the hole, but don't overshoot the limits. OK, so let's just expand on that.

20:12Kate Raworth:Yeah, so when we are outside the donut, breaching that outer ring, it means we are using so many planetary resources that we're risking our ability to thrive on the planet.

20:21CIVIC SQUARE:And on the flip side of that, inside the donut, in the hole, is where we aren't using enough resources to sustain life on Earth for everyone.

20:28Kate Raworth:So Kate's idea is that the good life, the one that works for the most people and that keeps the planet livable, happens when you stay within the sweet spot, the dough of the donut.

20:38CIVIC SQUARE:Yeah, where there are enough resources for everyone to live well. Here's Kate again.

21:08CIVIC SQUARE:turn this story around.

21:09Kate Raworth:Which I think probably a lot of us would agree with, but it's the how that is important here. Ever since The Donut was published 10 years ago in 2012, people very quickly

21:18CIVIC SQUARE:started saying, okay, how do we do it here? What would that mean? What would it mean to say, can we do this in our town or our city or our neighbourhood or our nation? For Kate, it starts with a question. How can our city become a home to thriving people in a thriving place while respecting the well-being of all people and the health of the whole planet. And the answer to that comes down to a fundamental shift. So right now we have a linear economy. We take resources from the planet, put them through a pipe of production to make stuff, use them, and then take more resources to make more stuff.

21:48CIVIC SQUARE:Hold up, right. Here's the pipe of production. Kate Handily uses a hosepipe to illustrate this. But there is another way. We have to turn that linear degenerative economy into a circular one. One of the first things you want to do with a circular economy is recognize that there are two kinds of materials. There's the biological, nature's materials. Nature makes peacocks and daffodils and food and timber. And then they decompose and they rot and they turn back into the building blocks of life and then nature builds them up again. There is no waste. And then we've got what's called the technical materials, human-made materials.

22:24CIVIC SQUARE:They may be resources that have been taken for nature, but they've been processed in ways that mean they can't just be put back. plastics, ceramics, metals, synthetics, chemicals. So we got to try and mimic nature by repairing and refurbishing and sharing and repurposing and upcycling and only ultimately recycling.

22:44Kate Raworth:So part of creating this economy that is better for most of us and for the planet comes from focusing on using natural, renewable materials where possible. Anything from wood to the energy of the sun. And when we do use technical materials, we reuse, reshape and only as a last resort, recycle.

23:04CIVIC SQUARE:Think of the opportunities for local jobs in recycling and refurbishing and upscaling. Think of the creativity. What can this now become? What more could we do with this? So that's the potential from degenerative to regenerative. And this isn't just pie in the sky. Eskilstuna in Sweden is home to the world's first shopping mall dedicated entirely to repaired, reused and upcycled goods. So you bring in your old toaster. It's checked to see if it can be sold, repaired or needs recycling. And it just goes to the relevant part of the building. Whilst you go off and buy a new, fixed up toaster. And this shows you can create a viable economy that creates local jobs and works.

23:45CIVIC SQUARE:It's been running for over a decade.

23:47Kate Raworth:I mean, that is so cool.

23:48CIVIC SQUARE:And there's other aspects to donor economics that revolve around things like social justice. and international responsibility in a super-connected world.

23:56Kate Raworth:But I think it's fair to say that Civic Square have taken all these ideas, thought deeply about them, and then they've run with them. I don't think you solve a problem, right? Like, you know, when people say, how do you solve climate change? I'm like, no, you rebuild your relationship with the land, with materials, with each other, with consumption and all of this, and it changes and it grows.

24:15CIVIC SQUARE:So if you take a look at the plans for the Community Hub, a hub that would sit next to the Port Loop housing estate in Ladywood, They do what Civic Square does best. They embrace both the jeopardy and the joy of the future that's coming into focus. There's a community power station, a microfactory. There's spaces for people to repair and reuse materials available to them sustainably, to meet and socialise and gather together, to grow food and learn and train in new skills around retrofitting and reuse. All this, the practical embodiment of those donut principles. I asked Kate how she felt about these plans.

24:50CIVIC SQUARE:The public infrastructure that they're planning on putting in place, imagining a world in which we know that temperatures are going to rise. We're going to face hotter summers. We might face more flooded winters. Building spaces where people can come, you know, on a day where there's a heat wave. Come to this place. It will be cool. There will be water. There will be community. We will look after you. They are, with so much joy and colour and playfulness, showing this is what a regenerative economy can look like. This is what a distributive economy will look like. Here's what it means to bring our neighbourhood into the donut.

25:31CIVIC SQUARE:So all this, the plans, the ambition, the scope of what Civic Square wanted to do with this space, it's incredible, right?

25:37Kate Raworth:And you can just feel the amount of care and love that has gone into this plan.

25:42CIVIC SQUARE:But the fundraising for it, well, that wasn't going so well.

25:48Kate Raworth:It wasn't incredibly hard in the community. People understood it quite intuitively. They just wanted to be involved. But like, for some reason, it was incredibly difficult to build the mandate to fundraise for it. I feel like that's the consequence of being brave enough to think so deeply about what is working and what isn't, is you end up challenging all the assumptions that feel foundational. and that's pretty scary to people.

26:13CIVIC SQUARE:Yeah, but I also feel like where we're sitting right now and where we're heading without changing how we think or what we're doing is also pretty scary. And in trying to make this dream a reality, IMI and the rest of Civic Square found themselves stuck in the middle of this, not for weeks, but for years.

26:29Kate Raworth:Anyone running a project or work like this will know that there are endless challenges, right? turning those bigger ideas into practice in the everyday. That's like good hard work. What a blessing to be able to be tired from work you dreamed of doing. It's the sort of challenge that I'll sit in every day. And then there comes like the real challenges. You have one foot in the future and every day you can taste that possibility, but you're pulled back by how our economic systems work, how we deal with land and housing as speculative assets. That's the trying to fight against a system to say we're better than this and there's enough money and enough resources and enough stories to draw hope from.

27:11Kate Raworth:Why aren't we listening to them? That's the kind of stuff that I find really, really soul-level challenging and what keeps me going as well. So we're back in this little wedge of green space next to the housing estate. I've been trying not to be distracted by all the amazing kind of word and art written on the awning here and over there. I'm looking at a tall fence, painted entirely black, covered with art and messages. Things like, we keep us safe and we must root ourselves back in the land. So where we're going to head to now is kind of the culmination of where we are at the moment.

27:48CIVIC SQUARE:Imi unlocks a padlock in the fence. Opening up onto a large courtyard.

27:55Kate Raworth:This is immense. It is vast, yeah.

27:58CIVIC SQUARE:Surrounded by the empty, ornate Victorian-era industrial buildings that are so central to Civic Square's mission.

28:04Kate Raworth:So now we're in the centre of the courtyard of the future Civic Square site. And it's so gorgeous. Yeah, it's beautiful. We were able to buy the full freehold outright, which means that we can now put a covenant under the land, which will mean that in perpetuity, i.e. forever, it will be in the benefit, socially and ecologically, for the neighbourhood. Just before Christmas, on the Friday at 6.55pm, the last working seconds before Christmas, we were able to take on ownership of this site.

28:44CIVIC SQUARE:This is from the celebration Civic Square held for the community early in 2025.

28:49Kate Raworth:I've been told that all of this is impossible. I've been trained to believe that all of this is impossible and I have never doubted that this was going to happen. So can we just give another big up because, yo!

29:02CIVIC SQUARE:If you have access to land, you have space to organize, to rest, to heal, to grow food, to grow buildings and to repair our relationships to the ecologies around us.

29:16Kate Raworth:I think we're remembering our relationship to land and that we are land and the land is us.

29:28Kate Raworth:And Kate Raworth was also there that day.

29:30CIVIC SQUARE:This place here in Birmingham is the place that I most want to tell and show people and bring them here. If anything were to make me proud to be British, I want to show them here.

29:44Kate Raworth:So, the land is theirs. And I want you to let that sink in for a minute. This land isn't owned by an organisation or a private group. This is not publicly owned by the government. It cannot be shut down like your local library or community centre. it's owned by and for the community forever. In 200 years, descendants of the residents of Ladywood will stand here on this land and know it was there for them.

30:15Kate Raworth:So walking in was quite emotional for me into this space. I have to admit, I was really taken off guard by it. I know. The difference that you feel standing on a beautiful park and some lovely flats versus what you feel here, on this land, it's weird. It's kind of eerie because it's so powerful.

30:36CIVIC SQUARE:But is that because you know this is in a different space? This has been taken out of the kind of land is there to invest in and to profit from. Yeah. And this is now a space to play and experiment with how we want to live.

30:48Kate Raworth:I think so. So what's next?

30:51CIVIC SQUARE:The not insignificant job of turning this old industrial site into the beautiful plans that Civic Square have created.

30:58Kate Raworth:There's going to be a micro factory here. There's going to be workspaces, event spaces, community kitchens, offices, cafe spaces to come together. And all of them are going to be super adaptable to me designing for the best. Joy, celebration, creativity coming together, but also adaptable for when things are hard. What happens in those times? This polytunnel here, isn't that where they grow things? Shall we go inside there and show you? As we walk into this polytunnel right in the middle of the courtyard, I'm only half right because it isn't veg that Civic Square are growing. Here we were like experimenting with straw wall, clay plaster.

31:39Kate Raworth:It's the future. How incredible. We're surrounded by test spaces and materials. Walls insulated with straw, roof tiles made from wood pulp, solar panels and water tanks. We have created this space to be now the site as a classroom where folks have been learning about, you know, what would happen when the building might be a site as a community power station. We've been working with WikiHouse, who have an open source housing technology that communities can build homes. But like doing all these small things where you can just start to test the future. Let's just unpack this for a minute, because until now we've talked a lot about the big picture and the big ideas that lead up to owning a space like this.

32:20Kate Raworth:Yeah. And believe me, I am sold on the need for land owned by us and for us. But what does straw walls have to do with this future?

32:28CIVIC SQUARE:Well, they're trying to think about what we need now and in the future. For example, they have a whole three-degree plan, which looks at how we might live ideally well in a world that's three degrees warmer.

32:38Kate Raworth:Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And it really makes you realize that our governments are doing so little. We're still stuck in asking how do we prevent it or the opposite. Let's just completely ignore it. Or both. Yeah, or both at the same time. Right. But you don't hear people really talking about how do we prepare for it and what does that look like?

32:56CIVIC SQUARE:Right. A 2023 government report said government measures have not adequately prepared us for climate change. And that's exactly what Civic Square are practically trying to explore for basic things. We need healthy food, affordable energy, safe homes, all within an economic system where humans and nature can thrive.

33:13Kate Raworth:And that is a great time to walk onto Link Road because part of our work is really about thinking about the scale of the home. We're a few streets away from the new Civic Square site on a street tightly packed with red brick Victorian terraced houses, a lookalike of thousands of streets all over the UK. It's a lovely, like, terraced house. And it's one of those houses, 33 Link Road, that we're walking into now. An opportunity came to buy a house on the road that had had a landlord for 30 years. Nothing had been touched. It was like, so we only were just able to take ownership a couple of months ago.

33:53Kate Raworth:Inside the house feels damp, chilly, and you can tell it's been unloved for many years. But on the walls are the beginnings of something. Beautifully painted quotes, big questions, and also some answers. The telltale signs of Civic Square. We've already had some open houses so that people can come and grapple with questions that we've got all over the world. Like, you know, how do we understand how our homes are affecting our health? What do you love about your home? What's difficult? If you're like, hey, do you think that a warmer, safer, cheaper to run home, that is better for your health and better for your children is something you'd like?

34:29Kate Raworth:They're like, yeah. And you're like, well, it would involve some of these things. Should we work on this together? And they're like, cool.

34:35CIVIC SQUARE:Which leads us neatly back to straw-filled walls. finally.

34:39Kate Raworth:Okay, so the plan is to road test retrofitting a city house to be safe, warm and affordable.

34:44CIVIC SQUARE:With sustainable materials, one of which is straw, but also other materials like biomaterials, recycled newspaper or even wool that all work but don't cost the air.

34:54Kate Raworth:Every person from every part of the built environment, the economy, materials, contractors, etc. would say That's not possible! Until you start to go, OK, it might be complex. Let's start to build it out. And so this retrofit house demonstrator is going to be a space where we practice and show that.

35:16CIVIC SQUARE:So let me throw some stats at you.

35:17Kate Raworth:I love numbers.

35:18CIVIC SQUARE:Let's do it. Insulating your home from top to bottom with petrochemical-based insulation can cost over 12 grand.

35:23Kate Raworth:That's excessive. What's the price of straw?

35:26CIVIC SQUARE:Well, quite often farmers will give it away for free. So there's still some labour there, but the skills needed are easily learned.

35:32Kate Raworth:Be free sounds good, so you could do it yourself.

35:34CIVIC SQUARE:Or with your community. Right. Plus, straw bales are also more fire-resistant than other kinds of insulation and retain similar amounts of heat to the plastic stuff. And just as a reminder, packing your cavity walls with straw isn't the only cheap, efficient option they're exploring.

35:48Kate Raworth:It's starting to answer questions communally that at the moment are being told that this is your individual problem and there's only one way. And I know it's a big, there's a lot to do, but we're trying to rehearse those alternative.

36:00CIVIC SQUARE:So not only can you experiment with how it's going to work for everyone else, but you can help them do it by facility.

36:05Kate Raworth:And we're not doing it by ourselves. People are fearful that AI is going to take their jobs. They need high quality jobs to go to. And there is a wealth of jobs in building skills and jobs in retrofit, opportunities for young people or people changing careers. What I love most about the way that Civic Square work is that they know that everything they're learning there is needed everywhere. And so they are so generous and so meticulous in sharing out their learning, in sharing what didn't work, in sharing what they think is working, in sharing how they're going about it so that other people don't have to replicate and do the same again and again

36:42CIVIC SQUARE:as they've done. so that it's like a boost start to community action across the country and across the world. So essentially, Civic Square are creating a template, one that other neighbourhoods can follow.

36:55Kate Raworth:In November of 2025, Kate visited 33 Link Road and sat with Imi and the rest of Civic Square in the small front room.

37:03CIVIC SQUARE:So I always say, like, 21st century economics will be practised first and theorised later, and it's literally being practiced in the back rooms of a house in Birmingham. This is it. And people keep coming up to me saying, when's the next book? When's the next book? And I say, I'm not writing the next book. You know, what the world needs is action. Let's do it. And where does that happen? Grounded places like this. So it's why I've got more train tickets to Birmingham than anywhere else.

37:28Kate Raworth:We're outside Civic Square's community-owned land. My family arrives back from their own day of exploring. Hi, baby. Star of the pub. Of course he was. He is the star of everywhere he goes. And we walk around telling them everything about Civic Square and what it will be. I was thinking, because I arrived this morning with my son, I was like, wouldn't it be really cool to come back with him in like 15 years? Wow, yeah. And see what this is like.

37:54CIVIC SQUARE:Take a photo of him here later. Yeah, we will.

37:55Kate Raworth:And we can then recreate it.

37:56CIVIC SQUARE:And then we can bring him back to the site of the photo.

37:59Kate Raworth:Something about this day has been deeply moving. Sometimes when you're trying to do something so outside what is normal, it's scary. I think we're having to re-wrestle as a country with legacies of like colonialism. What does diversity really mean? Do we really believe that it's possible to live side by side with people from everywhere who are so different from you, but you share a space with you? And maybe we don't all have to believe exactly the same things. Wanting to have a neighborhood that is beautiful and safe and warm and gives us the things we want. that is enough to work together towards something.

38:38CIVIC SQUARE:But I think that's where we come back to that story at the beginning of the NHS, right? To the power of creating better ways at a local level because at the end of the day, we are a nation of neighbourhoods.

38:47Kate Raworth:I really like that, a nation of neighbourhoods.

38:49CIVIC SQUARE:And in our nation of neighbourhoods, what are the things that can help us all move forward? Well, let me take you there. Imagine a world where we all exist in thriving neighbourhoods built around community hubs that give us all a place to go in case a weather crisis hits or a blackout or just for some community where we can learn to skill up in ways to retrofit our homes to make them more affordable to live in or find local people we can do it with imagine if this happened everywhere and we could share what works between neighborhoods creating a nation of supportive resilient communities who've got each other's backs and imagine if we did all that within an economic system that kept more of our money in our pockets our areas with financial headroom and where we were slowly making our economy and our environment healthier and more resilient.

39:41CIVIC SQUARE:Yeah, it turns out that's totally possible. And together we can actually start building it, which is where we turn to you, the audience. Now, not all of us can start a new Civic Square, but their work does show how far we can go. And the fact they're sharing all they learn can really help those of us starting out at a smaller scale.

39:59Kate Raworth:So we've gathered some top tips. Number one, there is a place for everyone in the future and when we include everyone, we all thrive Whether it's like retired folks who know how to change a washer on a tap and are like sharing those experiences with younger folks in the neighbourhood whether you're newly arrived to the UK or it's like deeper knowledge of what this place used to be like or what was great about it or what we've lost It's when we've all come together across many different classes, races, different divides to build something better.

40:37CIVIC SQUARE:Number two, despite the news, people are building a better world all around us.

40:42Kate Raworth:This podcast is going to tell you the story of a phenomenon that I see everywhere. This incredible movement of people working in place. And I get frustrated by that's not the dominant story every day that we're listening to. They're like Home Street and Neighbourhood Scale. They're meeting needs now, but visioning beautiful futures and rehearsing them. And those stories, there's hundreds of them. Normally here, we do a third tip. But when we met with Kate Raworth, she said something we knew we had to end on.

41:15CIVIC SQUARE:Something that sums up the reasons why we made this podcast. So we know that it's often during crisis that people change. they say screw this let's do something else right crisis drives us to ask if things can be a different way and if they can be a better way and that's why it's so important to have positive propositional ideas something we can turn to so it's really important to be against what's wrong with the current system to protest sometimes i think that the best form of protest is to propose something new. There is another way of doing this. There's nothing as convincing to make change as seeing somebody do that thing that you thought was impossible, but there they are.

41:58CIVIC SQUARE:They're already doing it. And so the question starts to become not why are they doing that crazy thing, but why haven't you yet begun doing it too?

42:08CIVIC SQUARE:And that was the sound of the world's biggest mic drop. the world we live in is based on ideas and stories we made up but together we can make up better ones good things are happening all around us and in little ways together we build big things in a time of massive division we need to find these things that bind us the things we all need food energy housing input and decision making and work together on them so visit our website

42:43CIVIC SQUARE:It'll show you what collective action that could lead to big change is already happening within five miles of your house. And if there isn't any, it'll give you tips from folks who've already done this on how you can get started. Or follow us on social media, Antidote Live on Instagram and Antidote underscore live on TikTok.

43:01Kate Raworth:And you can tell us what you're up to there. We'd love to hear it. We'll be back next time with a story of two communities in the north of England who are not only transforming their local areas, but who are looking at how we can fix our broken democracy by talking to each other.

43:42Kate Raworth:we'd love it if you could take a minute to give us a five-star review on apple or spotify

43:46CIVIC SQUARE:and remember if you found this podcast inspiring and want to do one thing to change the world today tell someone else about it and let's grow the momentum for change