I am Policy and Public Affairs Manager at Power to Change, a charitable trust which supports community businesses in England. I have worked on communities policy for over half a decade. In this time, I have sought to articulate the role of community-led activity in tackling some of our biggest social, economic and environmental challenges, and to push government to look for solutions through a localist lens.

My Fellowship looks at the ways in which localism, and particularly partnership between communities and local government, can help solve the climate crisis. The Fellowship enables me to learn from the distinct experiences of local communities across the USA and Spain and the political and constitutional environments in which they exist. I will visit projects that seek to tackle the climate crisis head on in a range of different ways and the conditions that have enabled them to flourish.

This learning can be brought back to those working at the forefront of the new economy movement here in the UK, and provide practical guidance and advice on how their work can have an even bigger impact than it is already.