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Beyond GDP: mapping and understanding community-led alternative economic development enterprises and practices in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire

    Cohort 2025 Research Placement Project

    About The Project

    Nottingham City Council and the newly established East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA) and Mayor have committed to a vision of inclusive growth. Inclusive growth, the foundational economy and other ‘beyond GDP’ local economic strategies are being explored by policymakers in the UK as alternative models to ensure that economic benefits are more widely and evenly distributed.

    The commitment to inclusive growth has the potential to break the cycle of inequality that has afflicted local communities by creating better jobs and more equitable opportunities. Communities in Nottingham and the wider region have struggled with the long-term impacts of deindustrialisation, which has contributed to high levels of low skill/ low pay jobs, low levels of household income, high levels of personal debt, and high levels of neighbourhood deprivation.

    While the commitment to inclusive growth is welcome, research from other localities shows that a failure to avoid ‘business as usual’ and understand the reality for people ‘on the ground’ is a significant risk for alternative local economic strategies. Nottingham, like other comparative city economies, exhibits many examples of community-led alternative economic development enterprises and practices that can provide the foundation and inspiration for a ‘beyond GDP’ local economy.

    The aim of this practitioner-based project is to audit, map and better understand the community-led alternative economic development ecology in the city. By mapping alternative economic development enterprises and practices, and comparing against existing ‘beyond GDP’ typologies the project will provide an essential framework and resource for the development of an inclusive and collaborative local economic growth model.

    Project Aims 

    • To audit existing community-led alternative economic development enterprises and practices in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire;
    • To examine the diversity of alternative approaches to economic development already in practice;
    • To map and better understand the institutional ecology of community-led, alternative economic development in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire;
    • To compare the actually existing alternative economic development ecology in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire with typologies of ‘beyond GDP’ urban and regional development approaches.

    Project Team