About us
Renaisi was founded by Hackney Council in 1998 to regenerate deprived neighbourhoods in Hackney, East London.
On becoming an independent social enterprise, we went on to deliver large-scale neighbourhood regeneration programmes like the Single Regeneration Budget, New Deal for Communities and Neighbourhood Renewal Funding.
In 2011 Renaisi was part of the consortium that set up the Big Local programme. Our role managing the ‘reps’ took us beyond London and allowed us to bring together the two halves of our expertise; supporting communities and social research. Alongside that national work we delivered services in Islington, Haringey and Hackney that helped migrant communities get the most out of the local school system.
While the policy and funding landscape has changed a lot in the last 20+ years, ‘place’ has remained the lens we use to consider our work. We’re constantly learning from the different perspectives we see from working directly with communities, with the providers of services and the investors in communities. It gives us a unique perspective on how systems work and how to improve places fairly.
What we do
We help people and places to thrive by:
- supporting people to learn, work and connect with their community;
- helping organisations to understand and evaluate their impact on communities; and
- and by challenging ourselves to answer the question: what does it take to improve a place?
After years of austerity and a global pandemic understanding how to strengthen communities and improve places, so nobody is left behind or excluded, is more important than ever. Place can be a unifier of ambition and endeavour, and can free us from traditional structures that stifle change and focus on issues and ‘cohorts’.
We believe in the power of place as a tool to understand people and develop meaningful solutions that improve lives.