News
The Institute for Community Studies reborn
The original Institute for Community Studies (ICS) was established by social researcher Michael Young in 1954, set up to examine the lives of ordinary working-class people whose interests hadn’t been recognised by those in power. In 2005, the Institute merged with the Mutual Aid Centre and became The Young Foundation. And now, 65 years after it was originally launched, it is back “… to bridge the chasm between the voices of people and those in power .”
Helen Goulden, CEO of the Young Foundation, explains why the Institute for Community Studies is needed now:
This is not to paint a calamitous picture of our future, it’s more a belief that it is outside work, outside politics, outside shopping and Netflix, in that empty, ungoverned space of un-coerced association – in our communities in other words – where we will – and are – finding agency, a sense of control, mutual support and the capacity to transform. Academic and other institutions need to find ways of working with that power and that intelligence, involving communities in ways which increases our collective understanding, and shift policies and practice together.