Geographical Association - The Citizenship Toolkit

The Citizenship Toolkit

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Introducing the Citizenship Toolkit

The Citizenship Toolkit was developed in 2008 by the Homes and Communities Agency with the help of Key Stage 3 and 4 students from a number of schools.

The Toolkit offers a variety of activities for teaching about sustainable communities and will help you and your students to plan, deliver and evaluate your own active citizenship project.

Explore the idea of 'community'
What is a 'sustainable community'?
Assess your local community
How can you improve your community?
What makes an 'ideal citizen'?
Citizenship project ideas

Active citizenship has to take place somewhere

The Active Citizenship Toolkit complements GA projects and CPD resources on sustainable communities. It is, perhaps, most suitable for partnership across subjects providing a deeper experience for young people combining what they know and understand about their communities and taking practical steps to make them better.

The About Sustainable Communities section is not in sequence but presents an appended, minimal knowledge base for use with some of the practical activities such as 'Audit your community'. The three-legged stool model allows for learners to come up with the crucial political question of 'who decides?'.

Changing circumstances

It is worth noting that the national context continues to influence the policies and terminology being used for housing and related services. The Conservative-led government of 2010 is setting a less interventionist programme and adopting terms such as localism, better neighbourhoods and 'Big Society'.

As with many learning resources, the 'big ideas' can be scrutinised for the established purposes of geographical learning. Different perspectives and frameworks are a fundamental opportunity for young learners to understand their experience of homes, working life and leisure. That is, to see how these things are for different people and how they could be made better for all communities.

February 2011

Activity menu

What makes a good community?

- Explore the idea of 'community'
- Assess and evaluate local communities
- Community audit activity
- Picture sort activity
- 'What's in the news?' activity

What can we do to improve our communities?

- Identify problems in the community
- 'Image Theatre' activity
- Create an ideal citizen
- Sustainable community career choices

Plan an activity

- How could students get involved in their community?
- Brainstorming and planning project ideas
- Inspiration for short- and long-term projects
- Adapt project ideas to incorporate geography fieldwork

Reflection and celebration

- Recognise achievements
- Provide feedback
- Share project outcomes
- Where to get further support

About sustainable communities

This page provides background information on the components of a sustainable community, a downloadable Sustainable Communities Wheel and definitions of what exactly a sustainable community is.