University News Last updated 12 April 2011
Former Treasury boss Liam Byrne - recognising Birmingham City University as a place to explore new thinking - shared his thoughts on empowering local communities.
The Labour MP is among the senior policy-makers from across the political spectrum keen to test influential ideas with the University’s learning community and its stakeholders.
As well as Mr Byrne’s talk, the University has recently hosted an official visit by the Liberal Democrat’s Deputy Leader Simon Hughes who met students and shared his proposals to ensure young people have access to opportunity. While earlier this year Conservative MP and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt spoke to media experts at the University to test his big idea on local television.
Mr Byrne, now the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, visited the University’s Margaret Street campus to share his views and get feedback from an audience made up of regional RSA Fellows, including senior University staff.
The Birmingham Institute of Art and Design (BIAD) regularly hosts the RSA forums.
Mr Byrne pointed out the paradox that in a world of globalisation members of some local communities had become entrenched, neither geographically or socially mobile. He called for a fix in this “power failure” based on access to news skills, underpinned by a boost in communal and individual self-confidence.
Mr Byrne is the MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and through his constituency work he has experienced community empowerment first-hand. For example, he was founder of the area’s Local Action Network to spread community action and a sense of pride.