One year since our ‘Organising Change’ event on building power and relationships through tough times, and just over a week since our final ‘big system conversation’ on the Healthy Communities Together (HCT) programme in Willenhall, Coventry—we share our latest #GrapevineAt30 blog.
Firstly highlighting the release of our new ‘Neighbourhood health from the ground up’ HCT reports (and lessons for cross-sector collaboration), which you can read here.
And secondly, diving deeper into:
This moment—on the cusp of the NHS 10-Year Plan launch
What our learning from four years of HCT in Coventry brings to the national ‘Neighbourhood Health Service’ conversation
The power of community in harnessing solutions to deeply ingrained health inequalities
How our 30 years’ experience shapes our knowledge of ‘the how’ of public service reform.
An illustrated set of visual notes by artist Melissa Smith in pink and purple sharing highlights of what each member of the panel shared at HCT’s final big conversation in Willenhall on 19 June 2025.
Neighbourhood health from the ground up
The UK Government has called for the development of a ‘Neighbourhood Health Service’—one that moves health into communities and focuses on prevention, integration, and the wider determinants of health.
At its heart is the ambition to shift care closer to home, tackle health inequalities and build a more relational, integrated system—one that works with communities, not just in them.
Our new report with Coventry City Council and the NHS offers a practical guide to how this can be achieved—drawing on four years of learning from Willenhall, a neighbourhood in Coventry with some of the highest levels of deprivation and health inequality in our city.
We don’t present a blueprint or a step-by-step model. What we share are foundations — the building blocks of a community-led model of neighbourhood health, shaped by our experience, grounded in the many relationships that were formed, and unique to Coventry.
It’s an honest account of the challenges, tensions and breakthroughs involved in doing this work well. At its core is a shift: it’s about working with citizens at a neighbourhood level to shape the conditions for better health. This is neighbourhood health from the ground up.
Power in Place event at Willenhall Social Club, June 2025.
Why does it matter now?
Traditional, service-led approaches shaped around organisational priorities often fail to meet the complexity of local contexts and therefore make any inroads into reducing health inequalities that have remained unimproved for decades.
A community-led model offers a different way forward. It’s premised on the idea that health is not just clinical—it is social, collective and influenced by people’s agency and ability to act on the things that matter to them.
A model that seems to match up with the aims and driving forces behind a new ‘Neighbourhood Health Service’ for England and Wales. Get into the detail of how that model has evolved through HCT in Coventry here.
From our early connecting work putting the power to shape people’s lives into their own hands
To protecting advocacy as something ordinary people can do (looking out for neighbours when services aren’t there, for example)
To bringing public service workers out of the boardroom to walk alongside communities, solving problems together
To weathering austerity’s drastic cuts to funding for local councils and frontline services through a different, relational approach.
We know that unlocking existing capacity and resources in communities and growing mutually supportive relationships within them eases pressure on public services.
What it needs is a deep understanding of what community power is, what it takes to build it, what gets in its way and what helps to enable it.
Discover some of our key learning points in brief in our one-page HCT summaries:
The most important ingredients for building a powerful combination of community power and service delivery
At June’s ‘Power in Place’ event in Willenhall, public health system leaders and workers heard how the HCT partnership of NHS, local government, the voluntary and community sector and residents has been developing new ways of improving health together.
We heard from Dorothy about her personal journey as a Willenhall resident and Cameroonian refugee, and now leader of a bi-weekly exercise group that lifts both physical and emotional weights for its mutually supportive members.
Dorothy shares her story at the event.
We explored how HCT’s hyper-local lens contributes to the bigger, national, political picture with a keynote speech from Policy Lead for integrated neighbourhood working and Special Advisor to the NHS Confederation Chief Executive, Charlotte Ruthven.
Grapevine deputy CEO Mel Smith expanded on Charlotte’s description of a “thousand flowers blooming approach” nationally, by sharing with the audience—and fellow members of the panel—the tale of Brookstray Park. A community-led campaign to bring a neglected park back to life for people to enjoy outdoor connection once more. Read this story in detail here.
At the crux of the issue was a community feeling powerless to change the status quo. So community organiser Edwin Lukong set about the none-too-easy task of building agency, belief and leadership with people whose voice and influence had long been limited by structural inequalities over which they had no control.
Grapevine community organiser, Edwin Lukong, introduces the Power in Place event.
In the process of creating conversations, strategy and mission, something deeper took root—below the surface of the physical park—a new sense of power, confidence and possibility.
People showed up, got organised and actively started shaping outcomes. Their commitment continues as we type.
Mel said: “Transformative partnership working needs strong, empowered communities. Building community power is slow and complex—it takes time, investment, and a solid foundation. This isn’t just about resources; it also means changing the way everyone involved thinks about power, health and what communities can achieve.
“In short, it’s about creating the conditions for communities to lead, and giving them the tools and support to make an impact. This work is deep, long-term and requires a shift in mindset from everyone involved.”
We ended our Power in Place event by asking attendees to consider how they would use the building blocks and system conditions for community-led neighbourhood health in their work and what they could do to create space for them by answering three questions:
What do I need from my peers to make this happen?
What can I commit to doing as an individual?
What do I need someone/something outside the room to do?
