Local Motion Middlesbrough
Growing stronger communities, creating connections and opportunities.
Through LocalMotion Middlesbrough, we are building practical, community powered ways for residents to shape what happens here, through collaboration.
Over recent months, our work has focused on creating welcoming spaces, amplifying resident voice, and turning local insight into shared action.
Middlesbrough Voices has developed into an open, inclusive space where residents come together to speak honestly about the town its strengths, its challenges, and its future. Recent gatherings have brought together dozens of people for structured conversation, creative expression, and collective priority-setting.
Participants have co-developed a Middlesbrough Manifesto grounded in pride, fairness, and shared responsibility with a strong emphasis on including young people, disabled residents, and those whose voices are often missing from decision making spaces. There is clear energy behind taking this manifesto into public spaces, co-designing how it is shared, and turning it into visible, practical action across neighbourhoods.
Alongside in-person sessions, the Middlesbrough Voices monthly update continues to connect residents, VCSE partners, and civic leaders with growing interest in how this model can support wider resident forums and ward-level participation.
LocalMotion Middlesbrough has supported resident led conversations with the Police and Crime Commissioner on what community safety really means in practice. Rather than focusing only on enforcement, residents have identified a broader, more human set of solutions including stronger neighbour connections, better lighting, youth facilities, visible community presence, safe spaces, and more opportunities for people to gather and look out for one another.
Top community priorities emerging from this work include:
This work is shaping a community-led safety framework rooted in prevention, visibility, trust, and local leadership.
LocalMotion Middlesbrough is also investing in creative, place-based storytelling. Through the My Town poetry programme with Tees Women Poets, residents are creating new work that captures lived experience in Middlesbrough reflecting real events, neighbourhood life, and cultural identity.
Delivered through accessible workshops across different parts of town, the programme supports people with no prior writing experience to develop their voice and contribute to a shared creative record of Middlesbrough. The work culminated in a published anthology and celebration event, helping ensure local stories are visible, valued, and shared.
Our approach in Middlesbrough is simple and deliberate:
From manifesto development to creative programmes, from safety conversations to cross-sector partnerships, the direction is clear Middlesbrough’s future is being shaped through co-production to do with not to do to with the people who live, work and value Middlesbrough.
Stories From Middlesbrough
