Briefing on our safety campaign
Birmingham Citizens' member organisations serve households in some of the most disadvantaged communities where people face significant pressures from poor housing, few work opportunities, poor health outcomes and high crime rates. Whilst these topics have overlapping connections, people feeling safe in their local neighbourhoods & across the city has been an integral part of our community organising since founding as an alliance in 2013.
In this briefing, we:
- begin by charting over a decade of campaigning on youth safety and bringing communities together from different backgrounds;
- then outline our current priorities,
- whilst ending with what's coming up next.
Over a decade of campaigning on youth safety
In our first ever city-wide campaign launched in 2013, led by students from Birmingham Newman University we secured the commitment of NHS bosses to end the gap in access to specialist mental health treatment for 16-17 year olds (some 4,000 teenagers affected in the city).
Following this pledge made at our inaugural Accountability Assembly in May 2014 attended by over 400 people at Mt Zion Church in Aston, the 0-25 youth mental health service in Birmingham, now known as 'Forward Thinking Birmingham' was established.
Citizens UK was one of the first national partners of the #IWill Campaign which develops the capacity of young people aged 10-25 years to get involved in Youth Social Action. Between 2014-2015, our member schools with community groups in their neighbourhood, persuaded local shops and businesses in a number of inner-city high streets to become CitySafe Havens. Also at our Accountability Assembly in 2014, two of our young leaders secured the support of the then West Midlands Police Crime & Commissioner to the campaign.
In 2016, we delivered the first ever NCS (National Citizens Service) project to use community organising training and recruit young people directly via local voluntary organisations. This was to increase participation from underrepresented ethnic minority communities.
Two of the young leaders in the project went onto deliver asks at our Mayoral Assembly attended by over 900 people in 2017. They called for free public transport for 16-19 year olds in education/training.
In September 2017, the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street acted by introducing half-price travel for 16-18 year olds.
In 2021, ahead of the regional elections we held an online assembly, joined by over 200 people, where we raised the need for ‘mental health counselling in schools & colleges’ as an important action to improve youth safety producing this short video clip.
On re-election, the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, launched a Mental Health Commission focusing on young people - to which we were invited to join. The Commission accepted within its recommendations the need for access to mental health counselling in schools, colleges and other education institutions, and in 2024 the Mayor announced a £1M fund to pilot it in colleges.
Following the announcement of the Commonwealth Games coming to Birmingham, we consistently called for better access to free/low cost youth and sports facilities as well as the revamp of MUGAs (multi-use games areas) in parks leading up to the Games and as part of its legacy.
In June 2022, our youth leaders put these asks to authorities, at a public Assembly hosted by the University of Birmingham.
In January 2024, it was confirmed 17 Basketball courts in MUGAs will get revamped and over a year later in October 2025 this was delivered.
There have been a number of published strategies on reducing youth violence by authorities with occasional news of good local events or projects, but finding out what will take place on the ground over the next 12 months has been more difficult.
So, at our pre-election Assembly in 2024, attended by over 500 people, youth workers & teachers from across our alliance asked the candidates to pledge to get authorities to publish action plans.
The re-elected West Midlands Police & Crime Commissioner, Simon Foster, arranged for some of the most senior officials in the city representing West Midlands Police, West Midlands Violence Reduction Partnership and Birmingham City Council to join us in a workshop in July 2024.
It was clear, there are lots of different projects and activities taking place in the city, but no public action plans available bringing all it together to better inform local communities.
In 2025, we launched our summer youth leadership programme bringing young people from our member schools and community organisations together for the first city-wide Youth Assembly hosted by Aston University.
In July of that year, Aston University hosted our youth assembly attended by over 300 people, where our young leaders set out priorities on safety, housing and work.
Over a decade of bringing people from different backgrounds together
A key characteristic of our work since founding in 2013 has been the public turnout of people in large numbers to strengthen relationships, build trust across differences whilst acting together to win change on common issues. Thus fighting against the rising tide of forces keen to polarise communities.
In 2014, whilst there was a march held in Birmingham City Centre by a far right group, we gathered at a city Synagogue in solidarity against hate and division.
The same large gathering of civil society leaders then went onto to organise the refugee resettlement campaign hosting a national assembly on Sanctuary made up of 500 faith & community leaders at the University of Birmingham. This then led to over 500 vulnerable Syrian refugees welcomed to the city.
In 2015, immediately after the Paris Attacks tragedy we teamed up with the Diocese of Birmingham to hold a large public vigil to pay respects to those affected whilst standing in solidarity against division and hate.
The public action attended by hundreds of Brummies was joined by city elected and civil society leaders.
In 2016, we hosted a public hearing for the Citizens Commission on Islam & Public life in the city.
Citizens Commission on Islam, Participation and Public Life was an independent inquiry launched by Citizens UK in 2015 to examine how British Muslims could better engage in public life.
In 2018, we celebrated the Commonwealth Games news announcement with a major Assembly in the Birmingham Town Hall whilst launching a set of citizens guarantees.
We revisited those priorities in 2022 at the University of Birmingham shortly before the Games started.
In 2019, we teamed up with Aston University to host the Law Commission in the city during it’s then review of Hate Crime legislation.
Leaders in the room shared their recent experiences of being victims of racist, islamophobic, antisemitic and homophobic hate, and navigating reporting of the incidents to authorities.
Here is the Law Commission's final report from their review.
There are few opportunities beyond the inner-city of Birmingham for communities to come together for an open Iftar meal regardless of their faith or background.
So since 2019 we teamed up with Birmingham Newman University to make this happen on 5 different occasions in Bartley Green, South Birmingham.
From 2021 to 2022, we supported research by Stephen Pihlaja at Birmingham Newman University which found how interacting with people of different faiths through the fundamental community organising tool of 1-2-1s both changed how people talked with one another, and how people understood their own religious identity.
Since coming together for an International Women's Day event in 2022, women across our alliance have built their own Community Leadership Network for solidarity, support and strengthening relationships in public life.
This initiative that started in a local community centre in Lozells has now grown to the only city network for women in community leadership. Read more about them here.
Our current priorities
On Youth Safety:
If it takes a village to raise a child, then everybody has a role to play in keeping young people safe from violence in that village. Everyone accepts that means the promotion of multi-agency working, but what is repeatedly unclear is what can families & communities expect from statutory agencies on the ground. We’ve struggled to find a public news article, blog, short film or a handout on what all agencies are collectively doing or planning to deliver in the next 12 months in an area to prevent youth violence.
Building the power of young people to influence change whilst developing their civic leadership skills is a prerequisite for tackling issues that affect them. And this has to be meaningful, moving beyond engaging young people to raise awareness about issues in summits to involving more of them on what accountability looks likes in the board room or ballot box.
So, following our powerful summer youth assembly in 2025, in the September of that year we teamed up with Aston Villa Foundation, University of Birmingham, 6 local schools and our member community organisations in the B19 postcodes of Birmingham to trial the city’s first ever cross area youth leadership programme focused on neighbourhood development backed by funding from the Youth Endowment Fund.
It has already resulted in the below moving youth manifesto produced ahead of the local elections in May 2026. Some of these young leaders have joined others from across Lozells and Newtown to be on the main YEF programme steering group ensuring follow-up on actions by all agencies.
Our second cross-neighbourhood Youth Leadership Development Programme in the city is due to launch soon in Small Heath.
On Community Safety:
Over recent years, we have been finding that the prevalence of fake-news and tropes on social media platforms is having an impact on community cohesion in the city. Along with more frequent instances of social unrest, we have seen increasing occasions of local community figures like teachers, faith and charity leaders experience online & in-person harassment.
On the 7th of November 2025, faith, education and community leaders from across Birmingham Citizens gathered for a roundtable hosted at Birmingham City Football Club's Community Hub in Small Heath. They unpacked the various headline stories reflecting this trend and committed to doubling our efforts on building trust across differences especially in less diverse areas of the city.
In January 2026, our safety campaign action team held a listening event hosted by Ark Victoria Academy in Small Heath with Jess Phillips MP on community cohesion issues impacted by online harassment and trolling. A key action from that event was to find out when is online harassment a criminal evidence and what is West Midlands Police's approach to this.
Separately, our Migrant & Refugees Action Team in the West Midlands teamed up with the University of Birmingham to co-design a myth-busting toolkit, whilst our Housing Campaign Action Team held an all-day training to unpack myths about the city's housing crisis.
What's coming up next...
Following learning from years of campaigning including undertaking local casework, our Safety Campaign driven by an Action Team of member organisations, are organising the above bespoke training workshop to pin what should statutory agencies being doing when there is news of a young person or a community at risk of/affected by violence.
More info & to register a place is available here: https://actionnetwork.org/events/21oct
If the above training workshop is about what statutory agencies should be doing, then it leaves us to answer what should be our unique response in civil society?
We know, we need to get busy offering more opportunities for people to meet face-to-face with others and have 1-2-1 relational conversations that helps builds trust. It isn’t enough to leave this mission to the few dedicated representatives attending an inter-faith gathering or delegates at the next community cohesion summit.
Increasing the prevalence of more people getting used to talking to others from different backgrounds face to face on what is putting pressure on them to find common ground, must be a stronger habit of what we do in our places of worship, schools, workplaces and community organisations.
With this core value in mind, over the next 12 months, we will be going deep in the 3 ward clusters of the city where we have member organisations: Lozells, Small Heath & Bartley Green to strengthen relationships between local communities, elected representatives and public agencies through neighbourhood organising. The photo above is of a civil society roundtable in Lozells held with the new local Councillor, Cllr Taj Uddin and member of parliament, Ayoub Khan MP to commence that.
This project supported by the Henry Smith Foundation, will also convene a city-wide collective of civil society leaders to establish a co-ordinated response to instances of any unrest or cohesion issues.
If you would like to find out more about our work on safety, please email birmingham@citizensuk.org