Let’s start with what the Ipswich Social Mobility Alliance (ISMA) isn’t. We are not a new organisation that will seek funding for delivery – we recognise and respect there are lots of organisations with experience, expertise and networks already doing good work in our town.

We aspire to be a true alliance – organisations and individuals that work better together across sectors and hierarchies for the benefit of the children and young people of Ipswich, with the ambition to put their voice and needs at the centre of everything that we collectively do and work with them to share power and build the place that meets their needs.

The contrast we have in Ipswich (as with many places in the UK) is that while we appear to have the assets needed for strong social mobility: good schools and colleges, a university, local services and voluntary sector organisations that meet the needs of the most vulnerable, opportunities for children to gain social and cultural capital, and visible career and labour market opportunities – children and young people in our town are less likely to go as far in their education and on to the careers and lives that they hope for as in other places.

With resources and capacity as squeezed as ever, it has never been more important to be joined up in how we use them. 

The ISMA is a growing alliance of existing organisations and networks in Ipswich that are committed to challenging this status quo, by looking at how we can work better together and "getting upstream" to the source of systemic inequalities - being honest about our role in sustaining them - and behaving differently to bring about real-placed based change.

How?

Read our strategy here - a 25-year vision that sets out our core beliefs, vision, ways of working and how we'll measure success.

Our action plan for the current year is here - with the acts of leadership that our founding organisations have committed to as our first step towards 2048.

To see how we look after your data click here