About Us

We Make Camden – renewing our vision for the borough

In Camden, we have a rich history of coming together to tackle inequality and take action together as a community. We call this our “rebellious spirit”. This spirit and the way we pull together in times of crisis or to make positive change happen, are the things that make our borough unique.

As we look to the future, We Make Camden provides a framework for what we want to achieve for the borough, the change we want to see and how everyone in Camden has a role to play.

We Make Camden builds on the five ambitions of Camden 2025. We’ve changed the way these are described to better reflect what Camden says is important now and to acknowledge what has changed, and we’ve added one more.

In Camden, we’ve got a proud history of standing up to injustice and tackling inequality together. It’s what gives us our rebellious spirit.

Alongside the council, Camden’s communities, citizens and partners have a rich history of coming together to bring about real social change.

In March 2022, we published We Make Camden – our community vision for the future of our borough. It sets out what we want to achieve with our partners and our communities and how we will share power and lead together.

Camden is a purpose-led and mission-oriented organisation. Our four Missions represent our cross-cutting ambitions for our future – requiring deep partnerships across sectors as well as drawing on the insight, creativity and ambition of our communities. Through our Missions we have the opportunity to find new allies inside and beyond Camden – including developing our strong collaborative working with national Government.

Our changed title, We Make Camden, better reflects the way we need to continue to work together and how the people and institutions of Camden make it the special place that it is. We want to work with people and organisations with first-hand knowledge of problems, with the council taking a partnership role but responding to new information and ideas from our communities.

In addition to the six ambitions, Camden has identified ten big issues facing the borough, which we plan to tackle together to make a real difference. These include four Camden Missions and six Camden Challenges.

How We Work

We want to continue to connect with our communities on a human level, listening deeply during every conversation and responding creatively to what we are seeing and hearing. We need to continue to support our workforce to ensure that everyone has the tools and permission they need to make this possible, and that they feel empowered to do so.

The pandemic has reinforced how important our core services are to our local communities – and we consistently deliver them to a high standard. This helps us to work deeply with our communities and to develop and build strong relationships with them.

We also have a history of innovating to improve our core services, which we want to keep doing to make sure that we can continue to meet residents’ needs and expectations now and in the future. The Local Government Association (LGA) Peer Review in 2020 described Camden as a special organisation, with brilliant quality staff, who strive for social justice and are dedicated to succeeding and delivering for residents.

We can adapt and become more open and human-centred. We can safely share data and resources more effectively while always ensuring that we respect the privacy of those who have trusted us to keep their information safe. We can share power and support social action in a way that historically has been hard for us while recognising and respecting our democratic mandate and our members who exercise that mandate.

But we know that we don’t have all the answers. We can only make progress by learning and adapting. And we need to work together, knowing that no person in our organisation has all the answers.

For more information please see The Way We Work