From self-help to class struggle: Revisiting Coventry Community Development Project's 1970s journey of discovery

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of the 1970-1975 Coventry Community Development Project in Hillfields as one of four first wave projects, and charts its avowed three stage shift from a consensual, to a pluralist and finally a class structuralist approach, developing a radical theory and practice that helped to shape the wider UK radical Community Development Project movement. While supporting the main features of the structural approach they developed in their 1975 Final Reports, we also raise critical issues that were of importance at the time, and have continuing relevance for community development in the challenging times we now face.