Reflections on the Foundation Launch
Dr. Nicola Headlam
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I'm still processing Monday's Society Matters Foundation launch at St James' Park. As I travelled back to Manchester (representing the Geordie diaspora, Manchester branch), I found myself contemplating what it means to truly transform a place – and why, despite decades of strategies and growth plans, we still face such profound regional inequalities.
What Moves and What Stays Fixed
Let me put this plainly: we need to think unimaginably bigger about what the economy is.
At the heart of place-based economic development lies a fundamental question: what moves and what stays fixed? This distinction is everything.
Capital – that most mercurial of resources – moves with bewildering speed and often capricious intent. It can appear and vanish at a keystroke, creating value somewhere with seemingly little connection to place. We've allowed a system to develop where 4,600 houses in Notting Hill accumulated as much in capital gains between 2012 and 2019 as the core cities of Newcastle, Liverpool, and Manchester combined.
This isn't accidental. This is precisely what happens with a laissez-faire approach where bits of the country accidentally float up in terms of their wealth and bugger the rest.
Meanwhile, physical infrastructure remains stubbornly fixed – our transport systems, our universities, our cultural institutions. People fall somewhere in between – mobile but constrained by opportunity, circumstance, and policy. How and where people move is perhaps the most political question of all and why society truly matters.
The Mayors and Their Kingdoms
I crossed the "kingdoms" of Burnham, Brabin and McGuinness on the train to Newcastle on Monday. Our Northern mayoralties represent significant progress, but they face profound constraints.
If they become remote kingdoms, disconnected from the people they serve, they'll achieve little.
Even the best-intentioned local growth plan will do bugger all unless we create the space for brave local leadership and collaborative partnerships with those anchored around people and place.
Kim McGuinness and her counterparts need something more valuable than just our passive support – they need our active engagement to make them brave in the rooms that matter. When your mayor sits on a panel at MIPIM (that property conference in the South of France that shapes urban development models worldwide), she needs you behind her, reminding her of the sticky reality of the North East.
Because every official leadership role faces immense pressure to conform. As I noted on Monday, "If you're not at the table, you're on the menu."
Our mayors can only speak authentically for their regions if we help them resist the gravitational pull toward conventional thinking.
The Strength of Weak Ties
This is where the Society Matters Foundation becomes so vital. It's not just another talking shop or well-intentioned foundation – it's an attempt to create what I called the infrastructure for ideas adjacent to the formal structures of the mayoralty.
Every person in that room on Monday represents potential connections – the strength of weak ties that can transform how policy is developed, how capital is directed, and how people experience place.
When I urged everyone to get on LinkedIn, create a network, it wasn't mere digital networking advice. It was a call to become part of the permanent infrastructure of change, the work of change – not something you can just take down at the end of the day, bypassed nor forgotten.
A Human-Centred Renaissance
As I reflected with Peter Bell earlier today, we reflected on what's missing from our economic conversations is a compelling vision of what comes next.
The closest framing we found is the concept of a "Digital Renaissance" – a period where technological change drives profound reflection and eventually a more proactive future.
But this can't just be about deploying new tools. It must reimagine what it means to create value, to be valuable, and to be valued.
The challenge isn't simply about growth rates or productivity metrics. It's about fundamentally reconceiving our relationship to value creation – understanding why value bubbles up, goes massive, falls off in ways that no longer follow industrial-age formulas of capital plus labour plus time.
We need different metaphors than those of the industrial and post-industrial age. We need language that captures radical connectivity, tactical movement, and partnership across formal structures.
The Impatience of Justice
I confessed to Peter that I don't know what it would feel like not to be on the borderline of apoplexy about this agenda. When a colleague suggested this might just be my personality, I pushed back: How can it just be me? The kind of institutionalised inequality that there is – we should all be bouncing off the walls with how annoying it is.
This impatience isn't just temperamental. It's the necessary fuel for change. As Audre Lorde wrote, "No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them." The mechanisms by which value sticks to some people and places but not others aren't taught in economics classes for a reason.
Yet anger alone leads to burnout. We need to transform that energy into what Peter called a "compelling arc" – a story about what could be that draws people in and makes them feel they cannot do anything other than join this collective movement.
The Road Ahead: Principled Renewal
The Society Matters Foundation has begun a crucial conversation. In the coming months, we'll be developing a critique of the local growth plan, connecting with partners, and preparing for a larger autumn event.
But our most important work is conceptual: helping everyone think unimaginably bigger about what the economy is and could be. Creating spaces where different people consistently encounter each other. Building the networks and analysis that can help our Northern mayors be brave.
What we need, and as I wrote prior to Monday's launch, is nothing less than a principled renewal of the North. This isn't just aspirational language – it's a practical framework that combines:
- A return to evidence-based policymaking that actually shapes resource allocation
- The "worst first" approach – directing support to the places and people who need it most
- Adequate scope and scale for local bodies – mayors need real power, not just ceremonial authority
- Alignment between infrastructure and governance – ending the mismatch between where decisions are made and where their effects are felt
- Long-term planning that transcends political cycles – breaking the endless cycle of initiative churn
As we watch the Spring Statement today with its predictable tinkering around the edges, I'm reminded why this work matters. We're not just seeking minor adjustments to a functioning system. We're trying to imagine and then create an entirely different relationship between people, place, and prosperity.
If you were in that room on Monday – or wish you had been – I invite you to connect. Not just digitally, but meaningfully. Because building a new economy requires new connections, new conversations, and courage that only comes from knowing you're not alone.
From Newcastle to Liverpool: The People's Powerhouse
I'll be carrying these reflections to Liverpool next week (Thursday, 3rd April) for the People's Powerhouse event – another crucial forum where Northern voices come together to shape our collective future.
Their principle of a “more inclusive north” resonates deeply with what we discussed at the Society Matters Foundation launch. To make change truly "sticky" – to borrow from my earlier metaphor – requires more than just good ideas or even sound policy. It demands radical collaboration across boundaries that have historically kept us apart.
When Northern voices speak together – across sectors, disciplines, geographies, and backgrounds – we become impossible to ignore. This isn't merely about being heard; it's about creating the connective tissue that transforms isolated concerns into regional strength. The kind of collaboration that makes our mayors brave, our institutions accountable, and our shared vision both ambitious and achievable.
Perhaps there's no better metaphor for what's possible than what unfolded at Wembley just a few weeks ago. Local lad Dan Burn – once released by Newcastle only to climb back through the divisions before returning to his boyhood club – scoring in the League Cup final to help secure the Magpies' first major domestic trophy since 1955. From Blyth to Wembley, from rejection to redemption, his journey embodies the very resurrection story the North itself is writing. And like Burn, the North has talent that has too often been overlooked, resilience that has been tested through decades of setbacks, and a capacity for joy that erupts when the right conditions finally align.
The foundation has been laid. Now the real work begins.
Dr. Nicola Headlam is a regional economics expert who previously served as Head of the Northern Powerhouse. Her work focuses on regional innovation systems, place-based economic development, and creating more equitable approaches to growth.
This article was originally published in February 2025.
