Leading Luton
Growing Luton’s next generation of community leaders
Leading Luton is a community leadership programme that brings together people who care deeply about Luton and want to play an active role in shaping a fairer, more equitable future for the town.
As a part of the borough’s Fairness Task force, and supported by The Young Foundation, the programme supports residents, volunteers, and Voluntary, Community, Faith and Social Enterprise (VCFSE) practitioners to explore how change happens, develop their own leadership style in a local context, and build meaningful connections.
What is Leading Luton?
The programme is cohort-based, and rooted in The Young Foundations long-standing commitment to community research, social innovation and place-led change. It focuses on shared learning, inquiry, lived experience and experimentation. With two cohorts now underway, participants work together to:
Explore what community leadership looks like in practice including different leadership and innovation tools
Develop skills in systems thinking, collaborative problem solving and adaptive leadership
Build strong peer relationships across neighbourhoods, sectors and lived experiences, among others
The purpose:
The programme is grounded in Luton’s 2040 ambition for a town built on fairness and social justice and therefore supports local people to:
Lead change rooted in lived experience, local knowledge and shared commitment
Develop practical tools through reflective spaces and a supportive network
Strengthen Luton’s VCFSE sector by acting on things that matter to local people and communities
Share learning and ideas within the wider system, including Fairness Taskforce events
This is enabled and achieved via whole cohort workshops, 1:1 coaching, peer learning and real-world experimentation.
Importantly, participants are not required to have any set qualifications to engage, or even to see themselves as a ‘leader’; this programme is about redefining what leadership needs to be for the Luton community - and about building leadership capacity from within.
The programme is open to people who live in Luton and work with the VCFSE sector and want to contribute to a fairer, more inclusive town. Leading Luton celebrates leadership in all its forms.
Why this matters:
Luton’s strength lies in its people – their energy, creativity, and commitment to community. The programme hears diverse voices and broad perspectives, bringing lived experience into local decision-making, connecting people who want to collaborate, and encouraging new ideas and local innovation.
Our Leading Luton Co-hort 2 is now live!
In January 2026, our second tranche of Leading Luton met for the first time. Over the next six months, they will work with the Young Foundation to develop their skills and passion for community into another series of active Luton citizens
Interested?
We anticipate opening applications for Cohort 3 in early Autumn 2026. If you’re keen to hear more in the meantime, please email: leadingluton@youngfoundation.org
