Endowing The Future was the second part of the Neighbourhood Public Square proposal to be published alongside 3ºC Neighbourhood back in April 2024.

In dialogue with the findings of 3ºC Neighbourhood and the backdrop of entangled crises already compounding onto our homes, streets and neighbourhoods, this was an urgent call to philanthropy to meet the moment—endowing its resources, possibilities, assets and imagination not only to avert the worst of current trajectories, but to seed just, regenerative, and distributive futures that can invite the wisdom, creativity, energy and drive of us all.

Co-authored with Dark Matter Labs, Endowing The Future specifically calls for at least some of the wealth held by philanthropic institutional and individual wealth-holders to be moved outside of extractive financial markets and into real world civic assets that can generate a multi-capital surplus, which can then be stewarded by community governance.

The Neighbourhood Public Square site for bold demonstration of regenerative civic infrastructure at the neighbourhood scale in Ladywood, Birmingham.

Learning from instances such as the Workmen’s Medical Aid Society in Tredegar, South Wales shows how grassroots working class demonstrations can evidence possible futures that are eventually influential to policymakers, in this case seeding conditions for a cherished national institution—the NHS.

For us, Endowing The Future was the soil from which to directly grow the Investment Ask for Neighbourhood Public Square as a significant neighbourhood civic infrastructure demonstrator in Ladywood, Birmingham, as well as advocate for the resourcing of a wider field and ecosystem of possibility.

It continues to be a wider rallying cry to philanthropy to take the bold risks that the public sector cannot in order to shorten the discovery and proving period for the public goods of tomorrow, as our window within which to meet the speed and scale of transition facing our built environment and social fabric of our neighbourhoods continues to tighten.

</aside>

Endowing The Future

Endowing The Future is Chapter 9 of the Neighbourhood Public Square proposal, co-authored and co-built by CIVIC SQUARE.

This chapter is co-authored with Dark Matter Labs, and is a call for (re)imagination, bold leadership and unleashing the abundant potential of our human and more-than-human world towards a mutually flourishing future.

The scale and severity of the polycrisis is forcing us to systematically (re)evaluate the speed and scale of transition facing our built environment and the social fabric of our neighbourhoods, demanding an accelerated approach in order to shorten the discovery and proving period for public goods.

Less Valuable Quote.jpg

Here, wealth and philanthropy have a critical role to play, not to optimise the landscape on the assumption that financial capital is the only or primary capital that matters, but recognise its role alongside others to enable a supportive and thriving collaborative environment for all capitals to flow and regenerate, to meet this moment together.

Read the Endowing The Future chapter in full:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1p8l1Zm3wnWAUrsPdW649JGLNK1pVDR6Y/view

Endowing The Future Diagram v1.0

The accompanying diagram to the Endowing The Future chapter incorporates the Neighbourhood Public Square Capital Stack and Investment Ask within a roadmap for wider system adoption, orientated towards new public goods and a new social settlement.

Endowing The Future Diagram v1.1 preview small.png