What We’re Learning From Place: Reflections From Across Greater Manchester

By Nicole McKeating- Jones | 19 December 2025 | TAGS:

I’ve had the privilege of being part of our Place Partnership approach in Greater Manchester since 2019. I’m really passionate about the power of place-based approaches and I love seeing (and hearing about) the difference it’s making in communities across our ten boroughs.  

At GM Moving, our Place Partnership approach, part of a wider national approach, is our way of tackling inactivity through a place-based, whole-system lens. Instead of approaching inactivity in the same way everywhere, our Place Partnership teams across our ten boroughs work alongside communities to understand local barriers and opportunities and partner with organisations already rooted in place to make it easier for people to move. That often means working across lots of different partners, priorities and moving parts and accepting that this approach is complex, sometimes messy and constantly evolving as communities and systems change. 

Because of this complexity, we’ve learned that traditional measures alone don’t tell us what we need to know. Counting attendance at a session, doesn’t help us understand why something worked, what enabled changed or how it might be adapted in another community.  If we’re serious about tackling inequalities and creating long-term change, we have to learn differently too.  

That’s where our reflective conversations come in. They’ve been part of our approach since the beginning, and they are a key part of how we learn as a system. They give us dedicated time to pause, step out of the day-today and really take stock of what’s happening in place – what’s changing, what’s not, what we’re learning and how that shaped where we go next.   

Why these conversations matter to me 

On a personal level, these conversations are one of my favourite parts of my job. I’m naturally curious (read: incredibly nosy) and love hearing in more detail what colleagues across Greater Manchester have been working on. There’s something powerful about creating space to celebrate successes, be honest about what’s hard, share learning and occasionally put the world to rights together. 

There is something special about the relationships that have built up over the years. I love seeing how the place leads support each other. They share learning, resources, sometimes double up as a therapist with positivity and good humour. Those friendships have created the psychological safety that has enabled our learning culture to become ‘the norm’. 

One thing that I value is that we don’t just ask this of others, we do it ourselves too. As the ‘GM Central Team’ we go through the same process, answer the same questions and open ourselves up to challenge. We often describe ourselves as the unofficial ‘11th locality’, because we know we have just as much to learn about how to support place-based, whole-system change too. Being part of this process helps us to stretch our thinking and see where we can grow.  

This year, we asked each of our ten locality teams to reflect on the top three things they’ve been working on, their key learning, and the priorities that will guide the year ahead. When you step back and listen across all those conversations, some clear themes start to emerge. 

The themes that follow aren’t about singling out particular places or prescribing solutions. They’re my attempt to make sense of what we’re hearing collectively, what feels like it’s shifting, what’s getting in the way, and what that tells us about how whole-system, place-based change really happens in practice. 

You can find a summary of all of our localities focus, key learning and priorities for the year ahead here.  

What we heard: key themes across our places 

1. Sport can be a key catalyst   

Across places, there’s a strong desire to work more closely with sport, particularly grassroots clubs and national governing bodies. Grassroots clubs often sit at the heart of communities, with trusted relationships and, in some cases, physical assets. At the same time, many are still shaped by performance-led cultures that can unintentionally exclude people experiencing health inequalities. 

Where the system is starting to align, we’re seeing what’s possible. In Wigan, the Sporting Summit is bringing VCFSE sports clubs and professional clubs together to rethink community engagement. Rochdale, focused work with women and girls, through partnerships with StreetGames and the FA, is widening participation by meeting people where they are.  

Place Partnerships can help bridge the gap between communities, clubs and governing bodies but we need help to shift cultures, expectations and the way sport is viewed in our communities.  

2. Integrating with Live Well 

We heard a clear appetite to support the Greater Manchester Live Well agenda, which shares many of the same principles as our Place Partnership work: community-led, prevention-focused and rooted in place. At the same time, levels of alignment vary, with some places already well connected and others finding it harder to keep pace with a fast-moving system agenda. 

In Bolton, work is underway to refresh the Active Lives Strategy so that it aligns explicitly with the Live Well agenda, creating clearer connections between local priorities and system-wide ambitions. Stockport is focusing on building integration as its Live Well approach develops, recognising the importance of aligning early. In Tameside, the Place Partnership work has provided a practical blueprint that is influencing other place-based initiatives such as Live Well and Pride of Place demonstrating how maturing partnerships enable learning to travel across the system. 

This reminds us that alignment doesn’t happen by default. Whole system working takes time, shared understanding, and capacity. But when they’re given space to do so our learning from our Place Partnership place-based can offer practical blueprints of community led, system enabled practice. 

3. The VCFSE sector is a critical catalyst for this work 

A strong theme was the deepening of relationships with VCFSE organisations and local infrastructure partners. These organisations often hold the trust, insight, and flexibility needed to engage communities in ways statutory systems can’t always do alone. 

In Manchester, partnerships with Step Up are helping diversify provision and reach communities facing the greatest inequalities. In Oldham, joint roles between Action Together and Public Health are strengthening trust and ensuring activity is genuinely community-led. In Salford  they are expanding their work into new neighbourhoods enabled by their strong working relationship with Salford Community Voluntary Service.  

This reinforces that whole-system change depends on sharing power. When VCFSE partners are treated as equal system actors, the work becomes more responsive, inclusive, and grounded in community reality. 

4. Learning and evaluation is becoming part of the system 

Most places reflected on the value of developing a local Theory of Change as part of the 2025–2028 phase of the approach. While time-intensive, it’s helped clarify purpose, roles, and direction. Alongside this, learning and evaluation approaches like Ripple Effects Mapping are increasingly being embedded across partners. 

In Trafford, Move More partnerships are using Ripple Effects Mapping to strengthen shared learning. Oldham is completing its first Theory of Change alongside a baseline of place maturity, while in Bury the process itself has strengthened relationships and renewed momentum. 

This tells us that sustainable system change relies on learning infrastructure. When evaluation is locally owned and meaningful, systems are better able to adapt and stay focused on long-term impact. 

5. Being loud and proud about our work 

Another theme that came through strongly is that we need to get better at talking about the impact of the work.  

Across Greater Manchester, our place teams and their networks are making real progress – shifting relationships, changing how systems respond and creating the conditions that make active lives for all a reality. Yet many of our teams describe this as ‘just doing their job’. There’s a humility there that I value, but it means we miss the opportunity to show what’s possible when you work alongside communities to change the systems around them.  

The danger is that when we stay quiet, others don’t see the scale of what’s happening locally, regionally, or nationally. That matters, especially as more Place Partnerships join us through place expansion and as we try to influence how systems think about prevention, physical activity, and community-led change. Storytelling is a crucial part of system change, it’s a way of inviting others in, influencing how decisions get made, and showing that working differently really does lead to different outcomes. 

What next?  

What I take most from these reflections is a sense of a system that’s maturing. Relationships are deeper, learning is more embedded, and there’s growing confidence in working differently, even when it feels uncomfortable. 

The challenge now is to keep building on this momentum. That means continuing to: 

• protect space for reflection and learning 

• support teams to work across boundaries and align with wider system agendas 

• help our teams be louder about their impact 

• stay focused on the communities we’re here to serve. 

A final thought 

If there’s one thing these conversations continue to remind me, it’s that learning isn’t something we do alongside system change it’s how system change happens. Whole system work only moves when we listen carefully, learn together, and act on what we hear. 

So my call to action is a simple one: Make time to pause, reflect, and learn - with your partners, with your communities, and with each other. Ask the difficult questions. Share what’s not working as well as what is. And stay open to doing things differently as the system responds.

Downloads

• GM Place Partnerships 2025 Reflections