Forum Strategy Thinkpiece; January 2020
Why Academy Trusts should employ Community Organisers
Neil Jameson CBE
In his recent blog, ‘Academy Trusts at the Heart of their Communities’, Michael Pain of Forum Strategy set out the new narrative for academy trusts. In it he says: ‘There is an enormous opportunity for the Academy Trust sector to finally find its place in the world in the coming decade, to find its reason for being, and to lead the way, with trusts defining themselves as community- focussed organisations’. He ends with: ‘Academy Trusts have a choice to make. They can become the caricature that seems to have stuck a little- distant, removed, obsessively focussed on growth, bigger numbers and what the ‘powers that be’ define as successful – often seen to be working in spite of our communities. Or do something more profound, with a spirit of partnership, looking outwards to the passion, knowledge, capacity and aspirations of those around us – within and beyond Trusts – to find the best way forward and to achieve sustainable success together.’
