Making missions in Camden

Photo by Zck_ on Unsplash

By Martha McPherson and Nick Kimber

Living with COVID-19 in UCL’s home borough of Camden has been hard for many residents. The borough entered the pandemic from a challenging place where change and a new focus was needed for the Council and its key partners.

Even before COVID struck, despite high overall employment, many of Camden’s citizens were not benefitting from the growth taking place around them. There were high levels of in-work poverty and insecure work, a gap in the rate of employment between those with a health condition or disability and those without, and a lower employment rate for residents from Black, Asian, and other ethnic backgrounds. Structural economic challenges have fed into the borough’s wider social challenges too, with a child poverty rate of 43% compared to a London rate of 37%, and one in four Camden children claiming free school meals.

COVID-19 has only exacerbated these inequalities and difficulties. Back in March, as we witnessed the COVID-19 crisis unfold across the globe and towards our shores, Camden Council made a pledge to its communities: no-one would go hungry; no tenant would be evicted from their home; no care worker would lose money due to illness; and everyone would be valued and treated with compassion. To fulfil these promises, the council reshaped itself and mobilised a team of 2,000 volunteers to roll out new services to prevent hunger, support distressed businesses, challenge educational disparities, set up local testing centres and tackle the multitude of other challenges caused by COVID-19.

But what is needed is not just an immediate response and a desire to ‘recover’ back to where we were before COVID19 — but an active economic renewal that makes the world a fairer, more sustainable and more resilient place to live post-COVID. The public sector has an important role to play in shaping the economic growth and direction that is to come after the pandemic. Investing in the capacity — both in the immediate and the long term — and the dynamic and innovative capabilities in the public sector to support it in co-shaping the direction of economic growth will be key to renewal. In addition, considered coordination of fiscal levers, and cross-sectoral innovation approaches will be necessary to orient the economy in a sustainable, equitable, resilient and healthy direction.

“The public sector has an important role to play in shaping the economic growth and direction that is to come after the pandemic.”

These elements are at the heart of Camden’s post-COVID renewal thinking and action. Over the past six months, the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) has been working closely with Camden Council to host the Camden Renewal Commission. Co-chaired by Camden Council Leader Georgia Gould and IIPP Founder and Director Mariana Mazzucato co-chair the Commission, the Commission is based on the mission-oriented innovation approach pioneered at IIPP and taken up across the world by multiple governments including the European Commission’s Horizon Europe research programme, the 100 Carbon Neutral Cities programme and by governments in Sweden and the UK.

In Camden, the missions are being co-developed with a multifaceted group of 15 Commissioners drawn from across Camden’s economic and social ecosystem. This includes those at the head of Camden ‘anchor institutions’ such as Christine Foster from the Alan Turing Institute and Marcel Levi from UCL Hospital; those leading Camden’s voluntary and citizens initiatives such as Alexis Keir, Director of Elfrida Rathbone Camden; and those working in key areas — healthcare, equality, sustainability — such as Pooja Agrawal from Public Practice architecture and planning and Kate Bell from the Trades Union Congress.

IIPP’s first year Masters in Public Administration students have also worked at Camden Council, both in full-time roles and through their MPA placements, which has meant that the Commission and Council have gained significant internal expertise on the mission-oriented approach.

Over the past six months the Commission has developed four missions for Camden:

• By 2030, those holding positions of power in Camden are as diverse as our community
• By 2025, every young person has access to economic opportunity that enables them to be safe and secure
• By 2030, everyone eats well every day with nutritious, affordable, sustainable food
• By 2030, Camden’s estates and streets are creative and sustainable

The Commission is not working in a vacuum. Camden residents, citizens and denizens are at the heart of our mission discussions, and citizen and youth groups have been hosting summits to dig into the missions, take ownership of them, and provide input on wording, governance, and the key ‘mission projects’ to be undertaken. Camden’s Renewal Commission brings together the talent and energy of the many people and organisations that make up Camden to tackle inequality at its source. The core idea behind the Commission is that by working together on ambitious missions we can create radical change and that we need to renew, not simply recover.

“Camden residents, citizens and denizens are at the heart of our mission discussions”

In early February, Fitzrovia Youth in Action and Small Green Shoots hosted a summit for youth in the borough, sharing stories and experiences to build into the youth mission for young people to have access to economic opportunity that enables them to be safe and secure. Having citizens and non-council actors own and govern the missions is core to the mission-oriented approach.

Image from the Youth Summit with George the Poet, one of the Camden Renewal Commissioners, sharing his thoughts with young Camden artists who shared their spoken word poetry and their stories.

The next step is for the missions to be developed into roadmaps, using the mission roadmapping methodology developed at IIPP and employed to develop missions in the European Commission’s Horizon Europe programme, for the UK’s Industrial Strategy, and in Greater Manchester’s 2038 carbon neutrality goal.

A mission roadmap with all key elements labelled.

The below diagram shows an early-stage, draft version of the roadmap for the mission on borough-wide diversity in order to give an indication of where this mission can lead to concrete, long-term activities in the borough––with action required from multiple sectors, and the ability to bring these sectors together around a shared goal.

We will be sharing more on the Commission and the missions as they develop. For more information, check out the Camden Renewal Commission website or get in touch with Sarah Albala from IIPP: s.albala@ucl.ac.uk.