 GM Live Well is Greater Manchester’s commitment to ensuring great everyday support is available in every neighbourhood. It will tackle health, social and economic inequalities by changing how public services work with people and communities to grow opportunities for everyone to Live Well. GM Live Well will ensure everyone has the support, control, connections and resources to lead a healthy and happy life.
#GMLiveWell
In recent editions, we’ve shared a mix of news, updates, and stories. This time, we’re focusing specifically on upcoming GM Live Well events. Each one has been designed to grow the GM Live Well movement, putting people and communities at the heart of everything we do.
We hope you can find time in your busy diaries and calendars to join us - to learn, connect and be inspired by great examples of community-led and system-enabled practice across GM and connected to Live Well.
*Next Week* Tuesday 30 September, 10:30am – 12:00pm (online)
GM Live Well is all about working differently with communities. Participatory Budgeting is one way to give residents real power over decisions that shape their lives. It enables direct control over how money is spent, builds trust and ensures resources flow to what communities value most.
In this webinar we will:
- Share examples of participatory budgeting across Greater Manchester, from youth-led grant-making to neighbourhood-wide voting. “This is my first time voting” – Little Hulton resident
- Show how participatory approaches are strengthening partnerships between communities and organisations.
- Introduce the upcoming GM Participation Playbook - a new resource designed to support participatory practice across our system.
Speakers include: Jez Hall (Shared Future), Megan Powell (Young Manchester), Stewart Knights (CommUNITY Little Hulton), Katy Rubin (Participatory Democracy Practitioner).
Why attend? Learn practical ways to shift power, strengthen trust, and align funding with community priorities.
Register here to explore how to devolve decision-making
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Tuesday 11 November, 9:30am-12:30pm, Manchester – In-person
We have been working closely with a fantastic group of participatory experts to co-design the GM Participation Playbook: Shaping how we Live Well Together. This inspiring resource brings together tools and examples of participatory methods from citizens’ assemblies and participatory budgeting to co-production and digital democracy.
At this launch event you will:
- Celebrate the launch with Mayor Andy Burnham, voluntary and community leaders and explore why participation matters more than ever.
- Be the first to receive your own copy of the Playbook and explore the approaches inside.
- Hear directly from colleagues and communities across Greater Manchester who are already putting these methods into practice.
- Meet and connect with others driving the movement for community power and begin to design a participatory process of your own.
- Contribute to a Greater Manchester Live Well Participation Charter, a shared commitment to action.
Why attend? Connect across the system, strengthen participation in your own work, and align with the growing city-region movement.
Register Here to press PLAY on participation
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Wednesday 26 November, 10:00am – 11:30am (online)
Regeneration has the power to shape not just places, but people’s lives. Across Greater Manchester, community-led placemaking is showing how regeneration can be done with communities, drawing on local strengths, voices, and ambitions.
In this webinar we will:
- Highlight inspiring examples of community-led placemaking, including the Ageing in Place Pathfinder and resident-led partnerships in Miles Platting.
- Explore how residents, councils, Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise organisations, and partners are working together to create thriving neighbourhoods.
Speakers include: Ageing in Place Pathfinder Partnerships, Miles Platting Community and Age Friendly Network, and more.
Why attend? If you’re involved in regeneration, planning, housing, or community development, this is a chance to learn and build approaches that put residents in the driving seat.
Register here to reimagine regeneration with communities
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We’re pleased to share an early heads-up: During the week of 9 March 2026, we will be hosting a Live Well Festival.
As always, this will be co-designed with you – communities, partners, and colleagues across Greater Manchester.
Looking back, our March 2025 event ‘Growing Great Everyday Support in Every Neighbourhood’ was a fantastic day of energy, connection and system-wide movement building. Whether you joined us on the day or just want a flavour of what GM Live Well movement building events are all about, you can watch a short highlights video here: Live Well Event - Growing Great Everyday Support in our neighbourhoods
Over the coming months there will be:
- An open space co-design session in November – open to all who want to shape the festival together.
- Smaller co-design sessions from November at Live Well events, in teams and across GM– providing plenty of opportunities to get involved.
Main ask for now: Please keep that week free of major events so we can come together to learn, reflect, connect, and showcase what Live Well means across our communities, and what impact we are making, together.
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We’re excited to share that the GM Live Well podcast is in its final stages of production. Hosted by our Mayor Andy Burnham, GM Shapers' Folashade Alonge and the GM Live Well team, the series brings together the voices of more than 100 local people, partners, and national experts with lived and learned experience.
This isn’t your usual podcast. Instead of one-to-one chats, it takes a documentary-style approach, weaving together voices and stories from across our brilliant city region, recorded at our system-wide movement-building events over the past 18 months.
Across eight episodes, you’ll hear the journey Greater Manchester is on to grow everyday support in every neighbourhood through community-led and system-enabled approaches. Together we’ll explore how communities are growing action, power and wealth – and what it really takes to create a Greater Manchester where everyone can live well.
The series launches in October, with new episodes released each week over Autumn/Winter.
This week, locality teams from across the Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise, public services, and health sectors came together to explore how to grow genuine partnerships with communities and enable their leadership in Live Well implementation across the city-region - a key principle of the GM Live Well approach.
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The launch and exploration of the Live Well Alliance Blueprint, which has been developed by the National Lottery Community Funded Live Well Accelerator Programme and sets out an approach for working in partnership with communities, in ways that are genuinely community-led and system-enabled. You can read and download it here: Live-Well-Alliance-Blueprint.pdf
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Deep dives into community-led partnerships, sharing practical ideas and inspiration, including:
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Partnering with communities to transform decision-making: Rochdale’s Live Well Accelerator team shared their approach to growing relationships across community and system leaders to transform decision-making on anti-poverty and prevention.
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Partnering with communities to invest in grassroots neighbourhood prevention: Oldham’s Live Well Accelerator team presented their work on co-designing participatory ways to invest in neighbourhood prevention.
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Partnering with communities to grow hyper-local ecosystems of support: Manchester’s Winning Hearts and Minds shared their approach to growing community power and improving access to support by creating locally-rooted connections.
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Dedicated time for locality teams to apply the learning into their own Live Well implementation plans.
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GM Live Well’s movement-building events continue to grow as more people, networks and organisations get involved. We’d love your support in helping spread the movement further:
- Sign up to the events above and share your thoughts using #GMLiveWell, your engagement makes a huge difference.
- Share this newsletter with your networks and colleagues so more people can connect to the movement.
- Suggest future webinar topics, highlight any great work that we should showcase by emailing the GM Live Well team: gmlivewell@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk
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