What We Do
Sustainable communities are already being delivered. But achieving them everywhere requires an innovative and bold approach. The Academy for Sustainable Communities (ASC) is a new national and international centre of excellence for the skills and knowledge needed to create communities fit for the 21st century.
We focus on three core areas:
- Increasing skills and learning
- Targeting skills shortages
- Sharing knowledge and expertise
Increasing skills and learning
To achieve the vision of sustainable communities requires involvement and commitment across a wide range of occupations. It requires individuals with a broad set of skills and new ways of thinking and acting. Above all it requires generic skills, such as community engagement, partnership working, project management and leadership. There also needs to be greater cross-occupational learning, enabling people from different fields to work together to create sustainable communities.
ASC is working to ensure that those involved in creating sustainable communities have the skills to adapt to an ever-changing and complex environment. We aim to provide a high-profile focus on the skills agenda and sustainable communities, launching major new national learning resources.
Our work includes:
- Defining and sharing an understanding of the skills and competencies people need to create sustainable communities
- Understanding and working with partners to bridge identified skills gaps
- Increasing generic skills learning opportunities
- Creating more cross-occupational learning opportunities
Targeting skills shortages
There are not enough people working towards the creation and renewal of sustainable communities, with numbers in some professions continuing to fall drastically. It is critical that such trends are reversed by making more people aware of the many opportunities available across the country - in particular the excellent rewards and career prospects and the chance to work on projects that make a fundamental difference to local places and the people who work and live in them.
ASC is working to raise awareness of the sustainable communities agenda and increase interest in relevant careers among emerging and existing workers.
Our work includes:
- Engaging young people with the sustainable communities agenda, making the connection between better places and the people that create them
- Working to interest adults in careers in sustainable communities
- Understanding the gap between workforce supply and demand in relation to sustainable communities.
Sharing knowledge and expertise
It is essential that learning and knowledge keeps pace with the demanding needs of building a modern society and the experience of sustainable communities projects is collected, shared and embedded across the country.
ASC aims to be at the forefront of innovative thinking, building on new approaches and working to increase the knowledge and information available to those working towards sustainable communities at the local, regional, national and international levels.
Our work includes:
- Generating and sharing learning resources, information and best practice case studies
- Undertaking national and international research studies for sustainable communities
- Developing a series of skills ‘learning laboratories’ centred on sustainable communities programmes and projects across the country
- Participating in international joint-working through exchanges, mentoring, study tours, pilot programmes and other methods
- Hosting an international symposium on skills for sustainable communities