AMT Public

The Towns Alive programme is a five-year programme developed by Action for Market Towns to help sustain and revitalise Market Town Partnerships and at the same time give them more prominence and identity.

Towns Alive has a national agenda that can be delivered regionally. The £2million programme is supported by an award of £963,000 from the Big Lottery Fund and plans to draw in just over £1million of match funding and income from other sources.

The programme has been designed to help Market Town Partnerships become more effective as agents of change and progress in their towns in four ways:

1. Partnership Sustainability

The increased sustainability of Market Town Partnerships, through effective forward planning and organisational development.

2. Strategic Influence

Increased opportunities for Market Town Partnerships to influence policy, strategy and practice at the local, sub-regional, regional and national levels.

3. Shared Practice

The improved sharing of knowledge, skills and good practice in planning, managing and programme delivery between Market Town Partnerships at the sub-regional, regional and national level.

4. Support and Promotion

The development of the necessary systems, products, services, and knowledge by Action for Market Towns, to be fully effective in supporting Market Town Partnerships to sustain themselves, influence policy, share good practice and to be able to serve as an authoritative national voice on behalf of Market Town Partnerships.

These objectives will be achieved by Action for Market Towns through the development and implementation of four distinct but inter-related new products and services:

The Market Towns Academy

AMT proposes to develop a nationally co-ordinated training programme tailored to provide the ‘breadth’ and ‘depth’ of training required to support the forward planning and organisational development needs of MTPs. The Market Towns Academy will develop and run structured training programmes – including online courses – to help partnerships more effectively organise, plan and manage their resources.

The development of diagnostic online tests will ensure that MTP’s understand their individual training and development needs and will also enable year-by-year tracking of progress. The programme will carry a National Open College Network (NOCN) accreditation for participants completing the whole programme, but it will also be possible for Partnerships to select and attend specific modules to meet their own training needs.

As with all strands of the Towns Alive Programme, delivery of the Market Towns Academy will have a strong focus on attaining and monitoring outcomes.  The intended overall outcome for the Market Towns Academy is that the future sustainability of more Market Town Partnerships is secured through effective forward planning and organisational development.

The Knowledge Hub

The Market Towns Knowledge Hub will be established as a focal point to increase the engagement and corresponding strategic influence of MTPs. This will consist of two aspects:

a) A Market Towns Think Tank as a hub for co-ordinating evidence, research and policy affecting towns

b) A Strategic Information Service to facilitate proactive consultation and involvement in policy development by MTPs.

The aim is that through these two elements the Knowledge Hub will provide an important steer to national, regional and sub-regional policy formation and will be very important in distilling the type of authoritative understanding of issues from practitioners.

The intended overall outcome for the Knowledge Hub is to create increased opportunities for MTPs to influence policy, strategy and practice at the local, sub-regional, regional and national levels.

Towns-4-Towns

A structured Towns-for-Towns programme will be established to improve the sharing of skills and knowledge between voluntary and community sector practitioners working in market towns. As its name suggests, Towns-4-Towns will focus on facilitating structured peer-to-peer learning as an effective way of sharing good practice in planning, managing and programme delivery. Key features of Towns-4-Towns are that it will be practitioner-led and effective at capturing transferable good practice.  Its operation will be structured around three key elements:

• An enhanced regional and national Market Town Awards scheme
• Theme-based knowledge exchange fund and events, such as seminars and study tours
• Online forums to share good practice

Towns-4-Towns will have a strong outcomes focus and be very responsive to customer feedback.  The intended overall outcome of Towns-4-Towns is the improved sharing of knowledge, skills and good practice in planning, managing and programme delivery between MTPs at the sub-regional, regional and national level.

National Voice for Market Towns

Over the next five years, AMT will increase its national profile to serve as a a more fully effective National Voice for Market Towns.  This will involve  developing the necessary systems, services and knowledge to provide co-ordinated central support as a strong voice for market towns and their partnerships and will entail developing effective internal performance management systems and high quality external communications.

The overall outcome for the National Voice role will involve the development of the necessary systems, products, services, knowledge and level of resources by Action for Market Towns to become fully effective in providing coordinated support to help Market Town Partnerships to sustain themselves, influence policy and share good practice and to be able to serve as an authoritative national voice for market towns.