Mapping power

Get a better understanding of power and how it affects a Big Local partnership.

These tools have been tried, tested and developed with Big Local areas.

Why use this tool?

• To help your local partnership discover its own power.
• To be in a stronger position to work with other local organisations in a constructive way.
• To end up with a visual map of the key sources of power one local organisation has.

An example in practice

This tool was used by the Greenmoor Big Local, a well-established partnership in inner-city Bradford at a time when some members felt they were being slightly dominated by a local organisation. They used it to plan how to handle the situation, and it helped them understand more what was going on. The main image used in this tool is a star, drawn on a flip chart as a set of crossing lines around a central point. After a short introduction, the idea of having power is applied firstly to the Big Local Partnership, then to organisations that the Partnership interacts with.